Although Fisher acknowledges that his argument was “a bit of a gamble,” seven justices ultimately ruled in its favor.

Fisher’s Supreme Court run didn’t end there.

Within five months, he found himself in a similar situation when a lawyer on another case, Blakely vs. Washington, also did not want to appeal the state’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Blakely case involved a question over the state of Washington’s sentencing guidelines and whether judges had the right to increase the severity of a criminal sentence decided by a jury.

Fisher argued that this violated the right to a trial by jury, and the Supreme Court ruled five to four in his favor.

“After the Blakely case was decided, it became pretty clear that the same result had to happen for the federal sentencing guidelines,” Fisher says. “Another case was brought forward and the Supreme Court then ruled that the federal sentencing guidelines were unconstitutional as well. Blakely served as the bridge to this important decision.”

A LIFE OF LAW

At today’s ceremony, Fisher plans to discuss his early misconceptions about a law career with the HLS class.

“When I was in law school, I had this impression that lawyers took what was given to them and navigated it the best they could, but that it would be hard to change the law,” Fisher says. “Changing the law is something I have been lucky enough to do now, and it is just astonishing how many issues are out there and that you can really make a difference.”

With his Supreme Court cases now closed, Fisher has been working with DWT on a federal appeals case pertaining to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and on some other First Amendment work focusing on the journalistic privilege to keep sources confidential.

Born in Kansas City, Fisher graduated from Duke University in 1992 and then took two years off before attending the University of Michigan Law School, earning his law degree in 1997.

“I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do after college,” Fisher says. “I taught tennis for some time and then got a job as a paralegal in Washington, D.C. It was there that I became interested in the moral and philosophical issues in our culture that seemed, to me, to be played out in the law, and decided that a law career seemed like a good day-to-day life.”

Fisher said that the “law just clicked” with him while in law school, which landed him clerkships with Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhart and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stevens in the two years after he graduated.

Fisher says his work with Justice Stevens gave him confidence to argue a case in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I had a good idea of what the rhythms of the court room are like,” Fisher said. “It turned out that I was aligned across from Justice Stevens when I argued the Crawford case. He gave me a smile as the justices left which really relaxed me.”

Fisher lives in Seattle with his wife, Lisa Douglass, and their two-year-old daughter.

—Staff writer Carolyn A. Sheehan can be reached at csheehan@fas.harvard.edu.