Dan M. Peterson is a Washington Fellow at The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life. An attorney and constitutional litigator, Peterson’s scholarship focuses on legal and policy issues concerning the natural, legal, and constitutional right to keep and bear arms, including under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and state analogues.

A graduate of the Harvard Law School, Dan is a longtime member of the United States Supreme Court bar.

Early in his career, Peterson served as General Counsel for the Gulf & Great Plains Legal Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri (now Landmark Legal Foundation). During the latter part of the 1980s, he was Executive Director of the Center for Judicial Studies in Washington D.C. and Associate Editor of Benchmark magazine. For many years he was a full equity partner with Fulbright & Jaworski LLP (now Norton Rose Fulbright), where he concentrated on federal regulatory and administrative law.

In 2010, Peterson began his own law practice focusing on the Second Amendment and firearms regulatory issues. In addition to litigating Second Amendment and other firearms-related cases, he has engaged in multiple lawsuits against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.

Peterson is a member of the bars of Virginia, the District of Columbia, Iowa (inactive status), and Texas. He is admitted to practice before numerous federal courts including the First Circuit, Second Circuit, Fourth Circuit, Fifth Circuit, Eighth Circuit, Ninth Circuit, Tenth Circuit, D.C. Circuit, and Court of Federal Claims.

Peterson's writings have appeared in the Houston Law Review, The American Spectator, American Legion Magazine, The Legal Times, Delaware Lawyer, The World & I, USA Today, Jurist and The London Daily Mail. He has taught at the George Mason School of Law (now Antonin Scalia Law School) and Baylor College of Medicine.

He earned his B.A. degree in political science magna cum laude from the University of Iowa.

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