Peter Larsen remembers the very day he became interested in pursuing law.
It was his junior year of high school, and the Minnesota Supreme Court was hearing a case at his school about a drunk driver who hit a family of four after leaving a local American Legion post. It was the middle of the day, other students at South High School were falling asleep, but Larsen was fascinated.
“That’s when I started thinking, not only is the law really interesting and something I might want to do, but I started to understand how someone’s life can change so drastically based on something small, like interpreting a clause in an organizational charter.” A passion for helping people through the law was awoken that day.
Larsen joined the Mitchell Hamline faculty this fall as an assistant professor of law, one of six faculty positions added for 2024-25. He said he’s excited to pass on to students his enthusiasm for the law’s power to improve people’s lives. “I hope that first and foremost I can inspire the next generation of civil rights attorneys,” he said. This includes, for him, being an available resource and serving as a mentor.
A native of Minneapolis, Larsen attended Minneapolis Community and Technical College for his associate’s degree. While there, he became involved in public access television and was appointed to the Minneapolis Television Network board of directors at age 18 and became chairman at 21. “I was really interested in First Amendment rights and who is disenfranchised from being able to express their point of view,” Larsen said. He also was appointed by the city council to the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights. This work solidified his interest in civil rights and pushed him in that direction for his educational and professional career.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science, international relations, and religion from Augsburg University and his master’s degree studying historical civil rights policies at the University of Chicago.
He then went to Drake University to earn his J.D. This move to Iowa was the right choice, he said, because he was able to work with some influential changemakers in the legal field, including U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, a chief author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Iowa Supreme Court Justice Brent Appel, who was the last remaining justice of the seven who had legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa prior to other states.
After passing the bar, Larsen opened his own practice, Larsen Law Firm, while entering a Ph.D. program at the University of Iowa. He wanted to continue teaching and learning while also putting his degree to use to help others.
“I’m a very good attorney but a very bad businessman,” he said. “I think it’s really important to do pro bono work. When it’s something that’s easy for me, that’s pro bono. It may seem simple to me and yet it changes somebody’s life. I feel the responsibility to continue doing that.”
In his Ph.D. program, he pursued cultural studies, particularly how culture intersects with law and how the idea of allyship has been reduced to a checklist in today’s cultural contexts. “I felt that it was important as a complement to my legal career because problems inherent in the law have a cultural component,” he said. His doctorate is expected to be conferred in 2024.
As a law professor, he said, one of his goals will be to help students understand the human aspect of the profession. “There are tough cases that can be emotionally taxing, sometimes even life-and-death situations. You’re meeting people at an incredibly vulnerable time in their lives, and I don’t think we do enough as a profession to prepare young attorneys that they need to be human and compassionate,” he said.
This fall, Larsen will be teaching Constitutional Liberties, with Constitutional Powers to follow in the spring. His future teaching interests include civil rights and state constitutional courses.
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