Zachary Norris

Zachary Norris is the Niskanen Center’s Legal Director. He is known as Niskanen’s “Swiss Army knife,” wielding a variety of legal tools to support each of the center’s policy teams. With nearly 20 years of legal experience spanning civil, administrative, and criminal law, Zack is uniquely situated for his multifaceted role at the organization.

Zack is a bridge connecting Niskanen’s policy and advocacy worlds. He helps translate Niskanen’s policy work to concrete legislative and regulatory text, and coordinates with Niskanen’s government affairs team to revise that text in response to feedback from lawmakers, agency officials, and their staff. Zack drafts administrative comments and helps Niskanen staff navigate the labyrinthine workings of administrative procedure to achieve desired regulatory outcomes. He also leverages state and federal open records laws to obtain information necessary for Niskanen’s policy analyses. When necessary, Zack litigates cases in state and federal court to hold government officials accountable to their constitutional and statutory duties.

Zack began his legal career at the Office of the Public Defender for the District of Oregon, defending indigent clients accused of crimes involving terrorism in federal court. He then spent over 15 years with two major international law firms, where he developed a reputation as a jack-of-all-trades capable of handling disputes in any arena. Zack’s experience includes:

• Advising renewable energy developers, lenders, and investors in project permitting and transactions totaling over 50,000 megawatts of new energy generation;
• Counseling an association of regulated entities in rulemaking to renew and update California’s GHG cap-and-trade program and in litigation defending the program against the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle it;
• Representing residential housing developers in land use litigation, including disputes arising under CEQA, NEPA, and local zoning and building code provisions;
• Representing various immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in federal immigration proceedings; and
• Representing physicians administering end-of-life care in California in litigation that prompted the state legislature to modernize their scope of practice.

Zack holds a J.D., cum laude, from Lewis and Clark Law School and a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry, with honors, from Texas Christian University. He completed post-graduate studies at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University and has lectured at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University, and at the Presidio Graduate School.

Prior to law school, Zack taught high school biology in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was awarded the Baltimore Freedom Academy’s Teacher of the Year Award, and he co-founded Youth Organizing Urban Revitalization Systems (YOURS), a 501(c)(3) organization devoted to providing Baltimore’s youth an opportunity to start their own businesses. Zack serves on the Board of Directors of the Sustainable Business Council and, in his free time, he coaches high school basketball at De Pere High School, Wisconsin’s 2022 Division I State Champion.