Alan K. Chen is a law professor at the University of Denver. Although he is a full-time academic, Professor Chen frequently engages in public interest litigation, representing plaintiffs in many high-profile civil rights cases in federal courts around the country, including constitutional challenges to police use of pepper spray on peaceful protesters in California, the State of Oklahoma’s botched lethal injection execution of Clayton Lockett, “Ag-Gag” laws in Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, and Utah that punish undercover investigators and journalists, and Colorado’s mandatory Pledge of Allegiance law.
Before entering teaching, Chen was a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Chicago office, where he was a civil liberties litigator focusing primarily on cases concerning the First Amendment, police misconduct, and privacy rights. Before that, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Marvin E. Aspen, U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois.
