Current and Former Rappaport Fellows

2024-2026 Rappaport Fellow

ISAIAH OGREN

Isaiah Wray Ogren is the Rappaport Fellow at Harvard Law School. He is interested in questions at the intersection of statutory interpretation and political theory. His current project argues that prominent statutory interpretation doctrines impermissibly aggrandize the judiciary by interfering with Congressional prerogatives to structure the use of plenary legislative time. The project draws on parliamentary theory and historical evidence to argue that Congress enjoys the power to use legislative time as it sees fit and then deploys insights from political and moral philosophy to argue that judicial doctrines like the major questions doctrine wrongfully interfere with this power. Another project excavates the structure and effects of “obligations to consider”—evidence rules like the requirement that federal agencies consider public comments—which require decisionmakers to consider a source of legal meaning or effect, but do not require that any particular weight be assigned to that source. 

Isaiah received his J.D. from Yale Law School where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. Before that, he received an MA in Legal and Political Theory from University College London, graduating with distinction. His BA is from the University of Minnesota, where he graduated summa cum laude. After completing his fellowship, he anticipates clerking on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. His work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Washington University Jurisprudence Review, and Lawfare.

View Isaiah’s CV