A former law clerk to three federal judges and lawyer at the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Cesar Lopez-Morales is a Senior Associate in Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s DC office and a member of the firm’s Supreme Court and Appellate Practice group.

 

Cesar focuses on high-stakes appeals across a wide range of matters, with a particular emphasis on administrative law and issues of federal preemption. He has co-authored briefs in state and federal appellate courts, as well as before the U.S. Supreme Court. And as a member of the appellate group’s “issues” practice, Cesar also specializes in critical motions at the trial level, focusing on the law-intensive aspects of a case, legal strategy, preservation of issues and objections for appeal, and the framing of complex legal and factual concepts through clear and persuasive writing. Cesar also maintains an active pro bono practice, handling immigration appeals and filing amicus briefs in precedent-setting cases of public interest.

 

Before joining Orrick, Cesar was an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch, where he was counsel of record for the United States and its agencies in dozens of cases. He authored and co-authored numerous briefs, and argued and won a half-dozen dispositive motions in federal district courts across the country. He maintained a generalist practice that involved important and novel issues of constitutional and administrative law, and handled a wide range of challenges to federal government actions, policies, and programs. His experience included litigating complex matters involving the Appointments Clause; the Spending Clause; the Territories Clause; the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments; the separation of powers; the Administrative Procedure Act; the Federal Vacancies Reform Act; and the Freedom of Information Act.

 

Cesar also served as a law clerk to Judge José A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then-Presiding Judge of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Before that, Cesar clerked for Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and Judge Jay A. García-Gregory of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. And in law school, he served as a judicial extern of the late-Judge Juan R. Torruella of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

 

Born and raised in San Juan, Cesar is a proud Puerto Rican. He is also a proud graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and of Boston University School of Law, where he won the Best Team and Best Oralist awards of the school’s moot court competition (the Homer Albers Prize Moot Court Competition), which he then co-directed as a 3L.

 

Lastly, Cesar is also a member of HBA-DC and HNBA (serving on the organization’s Amicus Brief Committee), and has served as a mentor for The Appellate Project.