Bio

Samuel Damren is an attorney and author living in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he was born in 1950.  His legal career spanned over four decades beginning in 1975 as an Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor.  In 1978, he became an Assistant United States Attorney in Detroit where he served under James K. Robinson.  Robinson later became the Chief of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration.

In 1981, Damren left public service and joined the newly formed business law firm Miro Miro & Weiner in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.  In 2003, Damren became a member of Dykema Gossett, a national law firm based in Detroit. He retired from Dykema in 2017.

During his legal career, where he focused on commercial litigation representing prominent entrepreneurs and companies in Southeastern Michigan, Damren authored numerous articles in law reviews and historical journals. The articles discussed the intersection of legal theories and law with other disciplines as well as landmark legal cases.  Included in those diverse topics was an analysis of  Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of private language and the objective/subjective theories of contract interpretation, the use of syllogisms in legal reasoning, the rise of Stare Decisis in English and American Common Law, the substantist/formalist debate in economic and legal anthropology, Restorative Justice theory's origins in Native Culture, and Affirmative Action in the context of teachings from the Enlightenment. In addition to serving as a private mediator and arbitrator,  he lectured on prosecutorial ethics at the University of Michigan Law School and served pro bono as a hearing panelist on the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board for over twenty years.  He and his wife are members of the Henry P. Tappan Society at the University of Michigan and benefactors of the Dziewiatkowski Awards at the Medical and Dental Schools.

Damren is the author of two books, What Justice Looks Like which is his most recent publication, and Wintercut published in 1994.  A twenty-fifth anniversary publication of Wintercut in ebook form is available now.

Damren earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in cultural anthropology with a minor in music composition.  He graduated with Highest Honors and Distinction from the Honors College.  Damren received his Juris Doctor from Wayne State University.  He is a life long resident of Michigan, married to Jane since 1971. They are the parents of three children.  Upon returning to Ann Arbor in 2018, he and his wife live two miles from the home he grew up in and on the edge of the same forest that he walked through as a boy.  "You Can't Go Home Again" may have been true for Thomas Wolfe, but it is not true when home is Ann Arbor.