About Daniel R.
Daniel R. Ortiz has built a career at the intersection of teaching and the federal judiciary. He is a law professor who entered academia after a sequence of prestigious clerkships in the early 1980s. His path runs through top universities and into one of the country’s major law schools.
Ortiz’s academic credentials include degrees from Yale and Oxford. He earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1978, studying English, history and mathematics. He went on to take an M.Phil. in English at Oxford University in 1980 and completed a J.D. at Yale Law School in 1983. Those years framed his early intellectual formation and set the stage for a short but consequential stint in the courts.
He began his post-law-school career clerking for judges in the federal system. In 1983 he served as a law clerk to Judge Stephen G. Breyer on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The following year he clerked for Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. at the United States Supreme Court. Those experiences placed him in the thick of appellate reasoning and gave him an intimate view of judicial decision-making.
By 1985 Ortiz moved into legal education. He joined the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he combined classroom teaching with scholarly work. Over decades on the faculty, he taught students at different stages of their legal training. His career in academia has been steady. He has been part of a faculty that shapes future lawyers and contributes to legal literature.
Outside the law school, Ortiz is a member of the Virginia State Bar. He has held membership since 1988 and is licensed to practice in Virginia. That affiliation ties his academic work to the professional responsibilities of the bar and keeps him connected to state-level practice and regulation.
Students and colleagues know him as a long-serving faculty member who moved from high-level clerkships into a durable academic role. He has balanced teaching duties with scholarship and has maintained ties to the legal profession through bar membership. He remains based at the University of Virginia School of Law and continues to teach and produce legal scholarship.
He currently teaches courses at the University of Virginia School of Law and pursues legal scholarship there.
