Millennium Magazine_5th Ed

276 Millennium - A Marquis Who’s Who Magazine C oming from a family of lawyers, David Benjamin Kopel felt compelled to follow the same path, and he has found great success in contributing to civil liberties, amendment restoration and public safety. Mr. Kopel received a BA in history from Brown University in 1982, and he later obtained a JD from the University of Michigan in 1985. One year later, he was admitted to the Colorado Bar, as well as various district and circuit courts in the following years. Since 1992, Mr. Kopel has served as research director at the Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado. He is also an associate policy analyst at the Cato Institute and an adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law. From 1988 to 1992, he was assistant attorney general to the Colorado State Attorney General, and from 1986 to 1988, he was an assistant district attorney to the Manhattan District Attorney. Mr. Kopel has also been an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell and an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law. A regular panelist on Colorado Public Television’s “Colorado Inside Out” and a columnist for the Washington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy law blog, Mr. Kopel writes on constitutional law, criminal justice, civil rights, firearms policy, international affairs, technology, politics, environmental policy and the media. He is the author of 17 books, numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and more than 100 scholarly journal articles. Mr. Kopel says his greatest career achievement was his involvement on the oral argument team in the U.S. Supreme Court’s case District of Columbia vs. Heller, a landmark case in which the Supreme Court held that the second amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms for traditionally lawful purposes, unconnected with service in a militia. Mr. Kopel is a member of the Colorado State Advisory Committee of Civil Rights. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, golf, amateur radio, sports and outdoor activities. Mr. Kopel credits much of his success to lawyer, leading scholar and and litigator Don Kates for encouraging him in the early years of his career. DAVID BENJAMIN KOPEL RESEARCH DIRECTOR Independence Institute Denver, CO LAW AND LAW ENFORCEMENT