Roman Martinez, global chair of the Supreme Court and Appellate Practice at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C., is the guest speaker May 1 at the Jacksonville Bar Association Law Day lunch and meeting.
It begins at noon at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Jacksonville Riverfront on the Southbank Downtown.
He will discuss his experiences working in and appearing in the nation’s highest court and the landmark decision overturning Chevron v. NRDC—a ruling that reshaped administrative law and affects trial and appellate litigation strategies nationwide.
His biography on the law firm’s website says Martinez has argued 14 cases in the Supreme Court, including cases in the fields of the First Amendment, administrative arbitration, copyright, patent law, criminal law, civil rights, employment and civil and criminal procedure.
He also has argued dozens of appeals in most of the D.C. federal circuits, as well as in New York, California, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee appellate courts, among others.
Martinez prevailed in 20 of the last 23 cases he argued to a decision in the federal courts of appeals.
During the Supreme Court’s 2023 term, he secured a significant victory for one set of petitioners in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which the Court overruled the Chevron deference doctrine.
Martinez graduated from Harvard College in 2001 where he studied American political history, focusing on the Civil War and Cold War and receiving Harvard’s David H. Donald Prize in American History.
He also received a master’s in philosophy from Cambridge University in England.
From 2002 to 2005, Martinez was an adviser on the Iraqi political and constitutional process in various roles at the White House, at the U.S. Embassy and Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and at the U.S. Department of Defense. He received the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Global War on Terror.
Martinez attended Yale Law School and after receiving a J.D. he was law clerk to then-D.C. Circuit Judge Brent Kavanaugh in 2008-09, then in 2009-10 was clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Martinez was an associate at Latham & Watkins from 2010 to 2013 then left to be an assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General.
He returned to the law firm as a partner in 2016.
Martinez is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Administrative Law & Government Litigation Advisory Committee, the Advisory Council of the Federal Circuit and the Federalist Society’s Administrative Law & Regulation Practice Group.
He previously served as a member of the D.C. Circuit’s Advisory Committee on Procedures and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia’s Committee on Grievances.
His commentary has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and other publications. Martinez has appeared on “PBS NewsHour” and other television programs to discuss the Supreme Court.