David A. Reiser has experience over a broad range of civil and criminal litigation and public policy development. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal courts of appeals. He has briefed or argued cases in the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 11th, and District of Columbia Circuits, as well as the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and has authored numerous amicus curiae briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Reiser's civil practice focuses on litigation involving Native American tribal sovereignty and tribal land rights. In addition, he participates in other complex civil litigation. Before joining Zuckerman Spaeder, Mr. Reiser served in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where, among other things, he supervised both agency enforcement and defensive litigation with significant policy implications.
Mr. Reiser's extensive litigation experience include many serious felony trials as an attorney at the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, representation of a client under sentence of death in post-conviction proceedings at the Office of the Capital Collateral Representative in Florida, as well as representation of clients in grand jury and congressional investigations.
During 1995-1996, Mr. Reiser taught appellate practice as a visiting clinical professor at George Washington University National Law Center. He also taught trial advocacy and criminal law as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, and he taught and supervised students as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. He has been a member of the Teaching Team at the Harvard Law School Trial Advocacy Workshop and has lectured on issues such as DNA analysis and recent developments in the Supreme Court.
In the policy arena, while at HUD Mr. Reiser worked with other agencies, White House counsel, and congressional staff on housing preservation, lead paint poisoning prevention, fair housing, HOPE IV public housing development, and other issues. Mr. Reiser has also worked as a consultant to the Defender Services Division of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to develop policies and management systems related to representation in death penalty cases. In addition, Mr. Reiser has testified and prepared testimony for Congress as the Special Litigation Counsel and the first General Counsel of the DC Public Defender.
Immediately after law school, Mr. Reiser served as a law clerk to the Honorable Walter K. Stapleton, then of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.