Daniel P. Sheehan is a Harvard College, Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School-trained Constitutional Trial Lawyer and Appellate Attorney. Over the last forty-five years his work as an trial lawyer, appellate attorney, public speaker, author, and college and law school educator, Daniel Sheehan has helped to expose injustice, protect fundamental rights and elucidate a compelling vision for the future of humanity. His dedication and passion have put him at the center of many of the most important legal cases and social movements of our lifetimes.
Daniel Sheehan received his B.A. in American Government Studies and American Foreign Policy, with Honors, from Harvard College in 1967. He earned his Juris Doctor Degree three years later, in 1970, from the Harvard Law School. After graduating from Harvard Law School, where he co-founded and served as the Co-Editor of The Harvard Civil Rights Law Review.
Dan was retained as a Trial Attorney for America’s #1 Litigation Law Firm on Wall Street, the firm of Cahill, Gordon, Sonnett, Reindel & Ohl where he carried those two cases, and other important First Amendment cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, most notably New York Times v. U.S. (the Pentagon Papers Case). As Chief Trial Counsel for the National Office of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Rocky Mountain Regional Office in Denver, Colorado, Dan served as Chief Trial Counsel on numerous cases on behalf of Native American rights including as Amicus Counsel in The Wounded Knee Occupation and its following trials…thereinafter being made Legal Counsel for the Native American Rights Committee of ACLU National. Dan also served as Special Counsel to the law firm of famed criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey during that firm’s representation of Watergate Burglary wiretapping specialist James McCord – the man who “blew the whistle” on Richard Nixon and his infamous “Plumbers Unit” that led directly to the resignation of Richard Nixon as President.
After the completion of The Wounded Knee Case and The Watergate Burglary Case, Dan returned to Harvard University where he pursued his Masters Degree and then his Ph.D in the field of Christian Social Ethics and Comparative Ethics.
Dan then became a Candidate for the Jesuit Priesthood and served as General Counsel to the United States Jesuit Headquarters in Washington, D.C. for ten years, where he also served as the Co-Director of the American Jesuit Order’s National Office of Social Ministry.
Dan’s Harvard training, both as an American Public Policy Scholar & Comparative Social Ethicist and a Constitutional Scholar and Litigation and Appellate Attorney, uniquely qualified Dan to teach Constitutional Law at the Law School level and American Public Policy & History at the college level, which Dan did at the University of California, in both Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, in conjunction with his service as President and Chief Trial Counsel for The Romero Institute.
This training also qualified Dan to serve as General Counsel to The UFO Disclosure Project and to the Institute for Cooperation in Space…and to serve as the attorney for Dr. John Mack, the Chair of the Department of Clinical Psychology at Harvard Medical School, in an important academic freedom case before the Harvard Faculty Committee following the publication of his controversial book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens in 1994.
Dan’s work in California has focused largely on identifying and cultivating cooperative models for change. He served as Director of the New Paradigm Project at Mikhail Gorbachev’s State of the World Forum and is currently engaged in establishing The New Paradigm Academy for young leadership training and a global policy think-tank to be named The Global Cooperative Forum at The Academy. For the past five years, Dan has also headed the Lakota People’s Law Office in Rapid City, South Dakota two weeks out of every month, working with tribal leaders in South Dakota to ensure compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and to transfer all federal funding for Indian Family Services in the State of South dakota from the state to the tribes.
Dan currently lives in Santa California with Sara and their two sons, Danny-Paul and Daegan.
Learn more about Daniel Sheehan’s complete history, his work as an attorney, speaker, and educator, and the services that he provides at www.danielpsheehan.com.
