Richard W. Clary is a Lecturer on Law at the Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses on Complex Litigation, Class Actions, and Evidence. 

In addition to teaching (since 2011), Mr Clary practiced law for 40 years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York City, where he was a Partner for 35 years and served as a Managing Partner and as the Head of Litigation, retiring at the end of 2020. His broad litigation practice covered both defence-side and plaintiff-side engagements in a wide array of subject areas, including securities, antitrust, bankruptcy, intellectual property, fraud, and general commercial litigation, as well as civil and constitutional rights. He handled both trials and appeals in US federal and state courts, as well as international and domestic arbitrations. Mr Clary served as a Vice President of the New York City Bar Association and a Vice Chair of the New York City Legal Aid Society. He began his legal career as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the US Supreme Court. 

Mr Clary has been an active participant with the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford and with the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society. He spoke at the New Putney Debates for 2017 (representative democracy), 2018 (federalism), 2020 (separation of powers in the US Constitution), and 2021 (the US model of federalism), and delivered the keynote lecture for 2023 (“Democracy in Crisis?”). He has also contributed several chapters to two Putney Debates publications, one of which he co-edited (see below).

Mr Clary earned his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he won the Sears Prize and was an officer on the Law Review, and his B.A. magna cum laude from Amherst College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Selected Publications

Democracy in Crisis? The Putney Debates 2023, ed. by Richard W. Clary, Zim Nwokora and DJ Galligan (Bloomsbury, 2025)

‘Debating the Crisis of Representative Democracy’, in Democracy in Crisis? (with Zim Nwokora)

‘Is Representative Democracy in Crisis?’, in Democracy in Crisis?

‘The Administrative State: Friend or Foe of Representative Democracy?’, in Democracy in Crisis?

‘Thoughts From Across The Pond: The US Constitution (1787, 2017)’ in Constitution in Crisis: The New Putney Debates, ed. by Denis Galligan (Bloomsbury, 2017)