David B. Owens, a proud Seattle native, received his J.D. and an M.A. in Philosophy from Stanford University in 2010. At Stanford Law, Owens was the Senior Articles Editor of the Stanford Law Review, a Member Editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, received the Gerald Gunther Prize for Outstanding Performance in Federal Courts, earned Pro Bono distinction, and served as a fellow in the Levin Center for Public Interest.
During law school, Owens was a member of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where he worked on numerous cases at the United States Supreme Court, most notably representing a number of civil rights groups in banking regulation litigation and advocating against application of a mandatory-minimum sentencing statute on behalf of an indigent criminal defendant. In addition, Owens has drafted a brief for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in support of First Amendment rights to use and protest in public areas; he helped an anti-death-penalty nonprofit in Lagos, Nigeria, to institute legal protections against coerced confessions; and he has conducted appellate work as an extern to the Honorable Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
After law school, Owens clerked for the Honorable Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the Honorable Myron H. Thompson of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in Montgomery, Alabama. Owens returned to Chicago and joined Loevy & Loevy in 2012.
Owens’s practice focuses on police misconduct and brutality, excessive use of force, false arrest, wrongful convictions, First Amendment violations, appellate advocacy, and the treatment of prisoners and detainees. More generally, Owens’s advocacy is centered on providing remedies to clients for the violation of their constitutional rights; an area in which he has published academic papers as well.
Owens is Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago, where he co-teaches in the school’s wrongful-conviction legal clinic, The Exoneration Project. Owens has a strong and long-held interest in teaching. He earned an M.A. in Elementary Education in 2006, which culminated his time as a Teach For America corps member teaching Sixth Grade in Los Angeles.
