Joseph A. Morris is a partner in the law firm of Morris & De La Rosa, with offices in Chicago and London. Mr. Morris is resident at the Chicago office. The firm was founded in1989. He maintains an active practice conducting trials and appeals, particularly in the areas of constitutional, business, labor, administrative, and international law. He is a member of the Bars of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court of Illinois, and of several other courts.
He serves pro bono publico as the President and General Counsel of The Lincoln Legal Foundation and is active in a number of other bar, civic, and charitable organizations. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the American Prosecutors Research Institute, the research and development arm of the National District Attorneys Association.
Mr. Morris served under President Reagan as Assistant Attorney General of the United States and Director of the Department of Justice Office of Liaison Services, in which capacity he was the Attorney General’s top assistant in charge of international affairs and of liaison with state and local prosecutors and law enforcement agencies; the General Counsel of the United States Office of Personnel Management; the Special Counsel to the Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and the Chief of Staff and General Counsel of the United States Information Agency. He has also been an American delegate to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and both a government and a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Mr. Morris is a national director of the American Conservative Union and has been Chairman and President of the United Republican Fund of Illinois.
A frequent lecturer and debater, he has appeared on such national and local television and radio programs as ABC’s “Good Morning, America”, NBC's “Nightly News”, the syndicated “Entertainment Tonight”, CNN's “Day Watch” and “Crossfire”, C-SPAN's “Washington Journal”, WTTW-TV’s “Chicago Tonight”, and WGN-Radio's “Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg”. He was formerly co-host of “Equal Time”, a public affairs show broadcast weekday evenings on WBEZ-Radio, the National Public Radio affiliate in Chicago. He has spoken and published widely on business, legal, economic, public policy, and foreign relations matters, frequently under the auspices of such organizations as the Adam Smith Institute, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Philadelphia Society, of which he is a member.
Born on October 24, 1951, in Gary, Indiana, Mr. Morris is an alumnus of the College and the Law School of The University of Chicago. During his university days he served for three years as Chairman of Students for Capitalism and Freedom, whose faculty adviser was the late Milton Friedman. He is married to Kathleen Morris and resides in Chicago, Illinois.