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The Federalist Society notes with great sadness the untimely passing of Marisa Maleck. Marisa was most recently a partner at King & Spalding in the Data Privacy & Security and Appellate Litigation Practices. But we first knew her almost 16 years ago when she joined the Federalist Society staff as the effervescent recent graduate of Amherst whose idea of a good time was reading the Volokh Conspiracy. Marisa played a critical role in helping to launch our Faculty Division. She went on to the University of Chicago Law School, where not surprisingly she was an extremely successful President of our student chapter, including sorting out administrative problems in record time because when she had her mind set on something no one wanted to cross her. She went on to clerk for Judge Pryor, to work as an associate at Gibson Dunn’s DC office, to clerk for Justice Thomas, as she had been determined to do before she went to law school, and to join King & Spalding as a partner. No matter where she was, Marisa was a force to be reckoned with, while at the same time managing to be a thoughtful and generous person. It is almost impossible to believe she is gone.
Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
B.A., Yale; J.D., University of Chicago. Lee Liberman Otis is the Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President at the Federalist Society. She also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference (ACUS), and as the co-chair of the National Constitution Center's Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board. She previously was a special assistant and an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Department of Energy, an associate in the appellate section of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, an associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and a law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She also served as an assistant professor of law at George Mason, where she taught legislation, federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, civil procedure, and appellate advocacy. Ms. Otis has been an important member of the Federalist Society team since the organization’s beginnings. Together with David McIntosh, she led the effort to start what became the Chicago chapter of the Society. She also helped organize the Society’s first conference at Yale, its second conference at Chicago, and its first Lawyers Division chapter in Washington DC, as well as the effort to incorporate the Society, recruit its permanent staff, and obtain its early funding. She was a Founding Director of the Federalist Society.