Deacon has written about a broad range of topics, including the Supreme Court’s use of historical practice in administrative law cases, agencies’ obligation to respond to alternatives to their chosen course of action, and the history and future of telecommunications and internet regulation. His article on the US Supreme Court’s recent major questions cases, co-written with Professor Leah Litman, won the Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law from the American Constitution Society. His work has appeared in journals such as the Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, The Yale Law Journal, and Administrative Law Review. He currently serves as the academic consultant for a project by the Administrative Conference of the United States on best practices for drafting regulatory preambles.
Before entering academia, Deacon practiced law at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP. He has experience representing clients before the Federal Communications Commission and at all three levels of the federal judiciary. While at the Law School, he represented the ACLU of Michigan before the Michigan Supreme Court, helping to secure a ruling that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates the state’s civil rights laws.
