Dennis M. Perluss

Justice Perluss has served as Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Seven, since January 2003. He was appointed an Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal (also in Division Seven of the Second Appellate District) in October 2001 after serving for two years as a Judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, sitting in juvenile (dependency), misdemeanor and felony trial courts.

While a member of the trial and appellate courts, Justice Perluss has chaired the Judicial Council's Civil and Small Claims Advisory Committee, served as co-chair of the Tribal Court-State Court Forum and participated on several Supreme Court Advisory Task Forces charged with developing new rules of professional conduct for attorneys. Justice Perluss has lectured to, and written for, other appellate and trial judges, practicing attorneys and law students on a wide range of legal topics. He has been a member of the American Law Institute since 1995.

Prior to his appointment to the bench, Justice Perluss actively practiced trial and appellate law for more than 24 years. He was a partner in the Los Angeles office of Morrison & Foerster, an international law firm, and Hufstedler & Kaus, a boutique litigation firm, emphasizing securities and other complex financial matters, as well as issues of constitutional law. He served as a Visiting Professor (Business Associations) at the UCLA School of Law and a Lecturer in Law (Law and the Family) at the USC Law Center. Prior to entering private practice, Justice Perluss was a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and to Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Active in professional and community affairs throughout his legal career, Justice Perluss was Deputy General Counsel of the Independent ("Christopher") Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, President of the Barristers (Young Lawyers) of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers, Public Counsel and the Los Angeles County Bar Foundation.

A native Californian, born in Sacramento on May 12, 1948, Justice Perluss graduated "with great distinction" from Stanford University in 1970, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his law degree magna cum laude in 1973 from Harvard Law School where he was Articles Editor for the Harvard Law Review.