Kannon K. Shanmugam

Kannon Shanmugam is a partner at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He is chair of the firm’s Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice, chair of the Washington office, and co-chair of the litigation department. Kannon is widely recognized as one of the nation’s top appellate litigators. Kannon has argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, including 31 cases in private practice. He has also argued over 100 appeals in courts across the country, including arguments in all thirteen federal courts of appeals and in numerous state courts. Kannon was lead counsel in the successful constitutional challenge to the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, described by the Wall Street Journal as the “constitutional case of the year.”

Prior to private practice, Kannon served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice. He also served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and to Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, he received an A.B. summa cum laude in classics from Harvard; an M. Litt. in classics from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was executive editor of the law review and argued for the winning side in the moot-court competition.