Stephen Mortellaro joined the University of Maryland Carey School of Law in Fall 2019 to teach in the first-year legal writing program. He continues to teach first-year students the fundamentals of legal reasoning, legal writing, and law practice in the innovative Lawyering program that has replaced the legal writing program. As of Fall 2020, Professor Mortellaro additionally directs the law school's Writing Center and teaches the upper-level Writing Fellows seminar. Professor Mortellaro has also taught several courses at The George Washington University Law School, including legal research and writing courses for first-year students and scholarly writing courses for upper-level J.D. students and LL.M. students.
Professor Mortellaro's scholarly interests include voting rights and political law, civil rights law, legal writing, and legal education. His recent scholarship has focused on the political rights of renters, noncitizen suffrage, and federalism-based constraints on Congress's ability to disenfranchise voters.
Before his career in law teaching, Professor Mortellaro practiced voting rights law at organizations including FairVote, Project Vote, and Voters Initiative. His work included enforcing the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, advocating for election reform legislation, and managing national voter education projects. He was also appointed to the Montgomery County Right to Vote Task Force and served from 2013 to 2015. In addition to his voting rights work, Professor Mortellaro was a Policy Associate for the Montgomery County Renters Alliance. Before entering law practice, he worked as an educational and environmental lobbyist in Florida. Throughout his career, he has served on several nonprofit and community organization boards.
Professor Mortellaro is licensed to practice law in Maryland. He earned both his J.D. and LL.M. from The George Washington University Law School.
