Daniel N. Abrahamson, Director, Office of Legal Affairs

Daniel Abrahamson serves as director of legal affairs and directs the Office of Legal Affairs in Berkeley, which he founded in 1996. Abrahamson is an active litigator in state and federal courts across the country, including the United States Supreme Court, and is co-author of several state and local legislative initiatives, including California’s highly successful treatment-instead-of-incarceration law, Proposition 36. He is the 2001 recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Developing Leadership in Reducing Substance Abuse award in recognition of his efforts to expand access to drug treatment while reducing the rate and length of incarceration for drug law offenders.

Abrahamson has taught courses on criminal justice and capital punishment at Yale University, Fisk University and Hastings College of the Law, and currently serves as an adjunct professor of law at the University of California Berkeley where he teaches an upper-level seminar on the social and legal implications of the war on drugs. He received his B.A. from Yale University, his M.A. from Oxford University as a Keasbey Scholar, and his J.D. from New York University School of Law where he was a Root-Tilden scholar. Upon graduating from law school, Abrahamson clerked for the Hon. Gilbert S. Merritt, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and for the Hon. William L. Dwyer, Western District of Washington.