Philip Jacob Weiser is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the 39th
Colorado Attorney General
The Attorney General of the State of Colorado is the chief legal officer for the U.S. state of Colorado and the head of the Colorado Department of Law, a principal department of the Colorado state government. It is an elected position with a four ...
, since 2019. He is the Hatfield Professor of Law and Telecommunications, Executive Director and Founder of the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, and Dean Emeritus at the
University of Colorado Law School
The University of Colorado Law School is one of the professional graduate schools within the University of Colorado System. It is a public law school, with more than 500 students attending and working toward a Juris Doctor or Master of Studies in ...
.
[Professor Philip J. Weiser faculty profile](_blank)
University of Colorado. Retrieved September 15, 2017. He previously served in the
Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
and
Clinton Administrations in the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
and
Justice Department. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected
Attorney General for the State of Colorado in the
2018 election, defeating
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
George Brauchler on November 6, 2018.
He was re-elected in 2022.
Early life and education
Weiser was born to an
Ashkenazi Jewish family. His grandparents survived the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, and his mother Estare was born in the
Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945.
After high school, Weiser studied
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
at
Swarthmore College, graduating in 1990 with a
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...
with high honors. He then attended the
New York University School of Law
New York University School of Law (NYU Law) is the law school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. Established in 1835, it is the oldest law school in New York City and the oldest surviving law school in N ...
, where he was an Articles Editor for the ''
New York University Law Review
The ''New York University Law Review'' is a bimonthly general law review covering legal scholarship in all areas, including legal theory and policy, environmental law, legal history, and international law. The journal was established in 1924 as a c ...
''. He graduated from NYU Law in 1994 with a
Juris Doctor degree and
Order of the Coif
The Order of the Coif is an honor society for United States law school graduates. The name is a reference to the ancient English order of advocates, the serjeants-at-law, whose courtroom attire included a coif—a white lawn or silk skullcap, whi ...
honors.
Career
Law clerk and Clinton administration
After graduating, Weiser served as law clerk to
Judge David Ebel of the
Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (in case citations, 10th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:
* District of Colorado
* District of Kansas
* Distric ...
from September 1994 to August 1995. He was then a law clerk to
Justices Byron R. White and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by Presiden ...
in the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
from September 1995 to August 1996. Following his clerkships, he was senior counsel to
Joel Klein
Joel Irwin Klein (born October 25, 1946) is an American lawyer and school superintendent. He was the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States, serving more than 1.1 million st ...
, the
Assistant Attorney General
Many of the divisions and offices of the United States Department of Justice are headed by an assistant attorney general.
The president of the United States appoints individuals to the position of assistant attorney general with the advice and ...
for the Justice Department's
Antitrust Division from 1996 to 1998.
Academia career
In 1999, Weiser joined the
University of Colorado
The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University o ...
Law School in
Boulder as a professor of law and telecommunications. There, Weiser established the national center of excellence in telecommunications and technology law and founded the ''Journal on Telecommunications & High Technology Law''.
He also founded the
Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship and he wrote and taught in the areas of competition policy, innovation policy, and Internet policy.
From June 2011 through July 2016, Weiser served as the fifteenth dean of the law school, and he was named one of the National Jurist's most influential leaders in legal education. Through the Silicon Flatirons Center, Weiser developed a range of programs to build up CU Boulder’s support for entrepreneurship and has linked it to the local startup community. Some of the initiatives include Tech Lawyer Accelerator, the Corporate Counsel Intensive Institute and the
Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative.
Obama administration
![Weiser Family with President Obama](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Weiser_Family_with_President_Obama.jpg)
In 2009, President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
appointed Weiser as
Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's
Antitrust Division. He took the post in July 2009, taking a leave of absence from the University of Colorado Law School. In 2010, President Obama named him senior advisor for technology and innovation to the
National Economic Council Director, and he participated in a series of policy initiatives.
Attorney General of Colorado
Weiser was elected
Attorney General for the State of Colorado in the
2018 election, defeating Republican George Brauchler on November 6, 2018.
Weiser took office in January 2019, becoming the first Democratic Colorado Attorney General in 15 years. Later that same month, Weiser withdrew Colorado from a lawsuit that his predecessor, Republican Cynthia Coffman, had filed against the
Clean Power Plan
The Clean Power Plan was an Obama administration policy aimed at combating anthropogenic climate change (global warming) that was first proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 2014. The final version of the plan was unveil ...
.
In the
2022 Colorado Attorney General election, Weiser was re-elected for a second term, defeating Republican challenger John Kellner and winning over 54% of votes cast.
Catholic Church investigation
On October 23, 2019, Weiser released the results of an eight month investigation revealing that 43 Catholic clergy were credibly accused of sexually abusing at least 166 children throughout the state of Colorado since 1950. On October 16, 2020, it was revealed that all three of Colorado's Catholic Dioceses, the Archdiocese of Denver, the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and Diocese of Pueblo, had paid $6.6 million in compensation to 81 victims of clergy sex abuse within the past year, regardless of how long ago the abuse happened. On December 1, 2020, Weiser's final report revealed that there were an additional 9 credibly accused clergy and 46 alleged victims in both in the Archdiocese of Denver and its suffragan Diocese of Pueblo.
Statewide, 52 Colorado Catholic priests were named in Weiser's final report as committing acts of sex abuse. Prominent Archdiocese of Denver priest Fr. Charles B. Woodrich, also known as "Father Woody," was among those listed.
Father Woody was known for his work in local homeless shelters.
Personal life
In 2002, Weiser married Heidi Wald, a physician, in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
, and they now live together with their two children in
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
.
Selected publications
Books
* Phil Weiser & Jon Nuechterlein, ''Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age'' (MIT Press 2013) .
* Phil Weiser, Stuart Benjamin, Howard Shelanski & James Speta, ''Telecommunications Law and Policy'' (Carolina Academic Press 2012) .
* Phil Weiser, ''The Jury and Democracy: How Jury Deliberation Promotes Civic Engagement and Political Participation'' (Oxford University Press 2010) .
Articles
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See also
*
*
Attorney General Alliance
References
External links
Government websiteCampaign websiteSilicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship''Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law''
''Colorado Technology Law Journal'' University of Colorado School of Law.
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Weiser, Philip J.
1968 births
20th-century American lawyers
21st-century American politicians
Colorado Attorneys General
Colorado Democrats
Colorado lawyers
Jewish American people in Colorado politics
Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
Deans of law schools in the United States
Living people
New York University School of Law alumni
Obama administration personnel
Swarthmore College alumni
United States Department of Justice lawyers
University of Colorado Boulder faculty
University of Colorado Law School faculty