After law school Drew Days served in the Peace Corps in Honduras with his wife Ann from 1967-1969. He then began work at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York City as its First Assistant Counsel, where he litigated cases in the areas of school desegregation, police misconduct, employment discrimination, and prisoners’ rights until 1977.
At the age of 30, Days won a lawsuit that desegregated his childhood Tampa schools as part of the trial team in Mannings v. Board of Public Instruction of Hillsborough County, Florida.
President Jimmy Carter nominated him to be the first African American Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice in 1977. In that capacity, he was responsible for nationwide enforcement of federal civil and criminal civil rights laws. In 1978, he led the successful effort to endorse affirmative action programs in the landmark case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
Days joined the Yale Law faculty in 1981. At Yale, his teaching and writing was in the fields of civil procedure, federal jurisdiction, Supreme Court practice, antidiscrimination law, comparative constitutional law (Canada and the United States), and international human rights. In 1991, he was named Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law. From 1988 to 1993, he was also the founding director of the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. From 1993–1996, Days served as the Solicitor General of the United States for the Clinton Administration.
“Drew was a gentle, courageous lawyer of principle, deeply committed to human and civil rights. He always spoke quietly and modestly, but with such moral authority,” said former Dean and Sterling Professor of International Law Harold Hongju Koh. “Along with his mentor Burke Marshall, another former head of the Civil Rights Division, he was one of the moral centers of the Yale Law School in the late-20th century. He cared nothing for titles or recognition, because his client was always the Constitution, not the political powers of the moment. His life will be remembered as a reminder of the moral urgency of putting principle first.”
