Riley Keenan

Riley Keenan is a visiting assistant professor of law at Cornell Law School.  His teaching and writing interests include federal courts, civil procedure, and constitutional law.  His work has appeared in the Cornell Law Review and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law.

Professor Keenan attended Cornell Law School, where he graduated summa cum laude and first in his class.  After law school, Professor Keenan clerked for Judge Carlos T. Bea of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  Before joining the faculty at Cornell, Professor Keenan was an associate in the Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Group at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C.

Professor Keenan has drafted amicus and certiorari-stage briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, merits briefs in the federal courts of appeals and state high courts, and dispositive motions and pleadings in the federal district courts and state trial courts.  Professor Keenan’s pro bono representations include an appeal in which he persuaded the Ninth Circuit to partially reinstate the constitutional claims of a pretrial detainee who was held in solitary confinement for two-and-a-half years while awaiting trial.  Professor Keenan also contributed to an amicus brief filed on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Bostock v. Clayton County, the landmark Supreme Court case recognizing equal rights for LGBT people under Title VII.