Caitlin Halligan > Selendy Gay PLLC > New York, United States > Lawyer Profile

Caitlin Halligan

212-390-9013 challigan@selendygay.com View profile View profile

Work Department

Appellate

Position

Partner

Career

One of the nation’s leading appellate attorneys, Caitlin J. Halligan has argued six cases and served as counsel of record in more than 45 matters in the U.S. Supreme Court, and has handled scores of cases in the federal appellate courts, the New York Court of Appeals, and other state appellate courts. She has been praised for her “impressive track record” by Chambers USA, named one of the “Top 250 Women in Litigation” by Benchmark Litigation, and recognized as one of Crain’s “100 Notable Women in Law.”

Caitlin served as solicitor general for the State of New York from 2001 to 2007, after serving as deputy solicitor general. Before that she served as the first chief of the New York attorney general’s Internet Bureau, where she developed cutting-edge law enforcement and policy initiatives regarding online consumer fraud, securities trading, and privacy practices. Caitlin also served as general counsel to the New York County District Attorney’s Office. She currently teaches a seminar on states and public law as a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, and previously taught a course on statutory interpretation and administrative law at Columbia Law School. She speaks frequently on topics that include appellate advocacy, the Supreme Court’s docket, and the impact of litigation brought by state attorney general offices.

Caitlin has expertise in a broad variety of civil matters, including challenges to federal and state regulatory action, civil procedure, federal anti-discrimination law, RICO and securities litigation. She has represented clients in high-stakes cases brought by the New York State Attorney General’s Office, and litigated numerous challenges to state and local government actions on constitutional, statutory, and administrative law grounds. During her tenure in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Caitlin was involved in a wide range of criminal investigations and prosecutions, including the successful defense of a Fourth Amendment criminal procedure case in the U.S. Supreme Court. She has argued scores of civil and criminal cases for private sector clients, as well as New York state and local governments, before New York’s high court and the State intermediate appellate courts, on a wide range of constitutional, statutory, and procedural issues.

Caitlin also has an active public interest practice. In 2018, she was appointed amicus curiae by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Schroeter v. Barr, to brief and argue issues related to the scope of immigration judges’ authority in removal proceedings. Caitlin also recently authored an amicus brief in the New York Court of Appeals regarding use of eyewitness identification evidence, on behalf of former judges and prosecutors, as well as amicus briefs in a death penalty case before the U.S. Supreme Court, a reproductive rights case before the Eighth Circuit, and a case regarding liability of military service academies for sexual assault committed on campus before the Second Circuit. Caitlin previously served as pro bono counsel to the Board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, an entity charged with leading re-development of the World Trade Center site, and on several judicial selection committees.

Languages

English

Memberships

American Law Institute
American Academy of Appellate Lawyers
Princeton-in-Asia
Arc’s Criminal Justice Advisory Panel
New York County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Committee

Education

Georgetown University Law Center
(J.D., magna cum laude, 1995)
Order of the Coif
Georgetown Law Review: Managing Editor
Olin Fellow in Law and Economics

Princeton University
(B.A., cum laude, 1988)