Dennis Fan

Dennis Fan ’15 is the founder and director of the Appellate Litigation Clinic, which represents litigants in federal and state appeals across New York State.

In his career prior to joining Columbia Law School as an associate clinical professor of law on July 1, 2024, Fan argued more than 40 appeals, including in nearly every federal court of appeals, and briefed multiple cert-stage and merits cases in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Fan was previously a senior assistant solicitor general at the Office of the New York State Attorney General. There, he focused on issues around business fraud and consumer protection, including by coordinating appeals in the civil enforcement action against the Trump Organization and managing the amicus curiae strategy in U.S. Supreme Court cases with nonprofits, advocacy groups, and other state attorneys general and localities. He has litigated appeals against e-cigarette manufacturers and gun manufacturers in the 2nd Circuit and New York appellate courts.

Before that, as an attorney in the appellate staff of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division, Fan handled matters involving the national security regulation of foreign telecommunications companies and social media platforms, presidential power disputes with Congress, and administrative actions across the federal government. He served as counsel to the assistant attorney general at the start of the Biden Administration, where he coordinated regulatory reforms to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and the executive branch’s implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Right after graduating from Columbia Law, Fan served as a law clerk to Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. As a law student, Fan was the editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review; a James Kent Scholar and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar; and the recipient of the Jane Marks Murphy Prize for clinical advocacy. Fan also was a lecturer in law at the Law School before joining the faculty.