Michel Paradis

Dr. Paradis has led dozens of high-profile, high-impact matters. He has led final and interlocutory appeals, in civil and criminal cases, in state, federal, and foreign courts, before three-judge panels, en banc panels, and the Supreme Court, in almost every appellate posture, including petitions for review, habeas corpus actions, extraordinary writs, and petitions for certiorari. He has exceptional insight into the standards of review, rules of appellate procedure, and nuances of jurisdiction and is accustomed to managing the unique challenges presented by multi-district/multi-fora litigation.

Starting in 2007, Dr. Paradis worked for the U.S. Department of Defense, focusing on human rights litigation and policy work arising out of Guantanamo Bay. He represented both the U.S. Department of Defense’s Military Commission Defense Organization and the detainees themselves, including the first post-trial appeal to arise out of the military tribunals in 2009. In recognition of his work, he received the U.S. Department of Defense, Secretary of Defense Global War on Terrorism Medal in 2021

Before joining Curtis, Dr. Paradis ran his own litigation practice, focusing on technology and national security law for clients ranging from start-ups to members of the Dow 30, alongside his career as an author and academic.

Besides his stellar litigation career, Dr. Paradis is a world renowned international law and national security law scholar. He has been a Lecturer at Columbia Law School since 2014, was previously an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School, and teaches courses on national security law, international law, the constitution, and the law of war. He lectures widely and has appeared on or written for Netflix, the PBS NewsHour, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, NPR, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Lawfare, Just Security, among other publications. Most recently, he is the author of the critically-acclaimed LAST MISSION TO TOKYO (Simon & Schuster 2020), about war crimes trials in the Pacific after World War II. He is also a fellow at the Center on National Security and on the board of the National Institute for Military Justice.