Director, Vanderbilt Health Policy Center, Vanderbilt University Law School
President, Center for Individual Rights
Todd Gaziano is the President of the Center for Individual Rights. Mr. Gaziano received his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University, summa cum laude in 1985. He was selected as a Truman Scholar from West Virginia while an undergraduate.
Mr. Gaziano’s previous legal work includes service as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Houston trial attorney, and as a chief corporate legal officer. He also served a six-year term as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008-2013), where he helped conduct oversight and investigations of civil rights agencies.
For most of the last 25 years, Mr. Gaziano was a legal scholar and public interest law leader, promoting individual liberty in the Supreme Court and Congress. From 1997 to 2013, he was the founding director of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. From 2014 until he joined CIR, he was the Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and Director of the Center for the Separation of Powers, at Pacific Legal Foundation.
Regional Deputy General Counsel, North America and Lead Counsel, Treasury, Willis Towers Watson
Partner, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis LLP
Paul Summers is a partner with Waller Lansden and practices in the area of trial and appellate litigation; regulatory matters; and government affairs. Prior to joining the firm, he served as Attorney General of the State of Tennessee. As Attorney General, he led a staff of 340, including 170 attorneys, in all civil litigation and criminal appellate litigation before state and federal courts. Major accomplishments during his term included the conclusion of a 36-year-old higher education desegregation lawsuit, Geier v. Sundquist. General Summers also successfully argued the death penalty case of Rahman v. Bell (2002) before the United States Supreme Court. While serving as the state's chief legal officer, General Summers was twice named to Business Tennessee's Power 100 list of Tennessee's most powerful people. He is recognized in The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward White, Inc.) for his work in commercial litigation and is listed in the 2009-2010 Edition of Who's Who in American Law.
Before he was appointed Attorney General in 1999 by the Tennessee Supreme Court, General Summers served as Judge of the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. He was appointed to the bench by Governor Ned McWherter in 1990 and elected in statewide retention elections in 1992 and 1998. Prior to this service, General Summers was elected District Attorney General for the multi-county 25th judicial district in West Tennessee. During his nearly nine-year tenure as a DA, General Summers also served as President of the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference. Prior to state service, he was in private practice in his hometown of Somerville, Tenn.
General Summers served as a JAG officer for more than three decades in both active and reserve duty with the Air Force, Army and National Guard. His last duty assignment was Command Staff Judge Advocate, Tennessee Army National Guard. He retired with the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army. Upon his retirement after 33 years of commissioned military service, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen awarded General Summers the National Guard Distinguished Service Medal. General Summers was awarded the Legion of Merit by President George W. Bush.
General Summers is a Fellow of the Tennessee Bar Foundation and the Nashville Bar Foundation. He is the past Chair of the Jason Foundation, Inc., a national nonprofit foundation dedicated to the education and prevention of teenage suicide. He performs regular volunteer work for the Jason Foundation.
General Counsel, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee
Director, Vanderbilt Health Policy Center, Vanderbilt University Law School
President, Center for Individual Rights
Todd Gaziano is the President of the Center for Individual Rights. Mr. Gaziano received his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University, summa cum laude in 1985. He was selected as a Truman Scholar from West Virginia while an undergraduate.
Mr. Gaziano’s previous legal work includes service as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Houston trial attorney, and as a chief corporate legal officer. He also served a six-year term as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008-2013), where he helped conduct oversight and investigations of civil rights agencies.
For most of the last 25 years, Mr. Gaziano was a legal scholar and public interest law leader, promoting individual liberty in the Supreme Court and Congress. From 1997 to 2013, he was the founding director of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. From 2014 until he joined CIR, he was the Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and Director of the Center for the Separation of Powers, at Pacific Legal Foundation.
Regional Deputy General Counsel, North America and Lead Counsel, Treasury, Willis Towers Watson
Partner, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis LLP
Paul Summers is a partner with Waller Lansden and practices in the area of trial and appellate litigation; regulatory matters; and government affairs. Prior to joining the firm, he served as Attorney General of the State of Tennessee. As Attorney General, he led a staff of 340, including 170 attorneys, in all civil litigation and criminal appellate litigation before state and federal courts. Major accomplishments during his term included the conclusion of a 36-year-old higher education desegregation lawsuit, Geier v. Sundquist. General Summers also successfully argued the death penalty case of Rahman v. Bell (2002) before the United States Supreme Court. While serving as the state's chief legal officer, General Summers was twice named to Business Tennessee's Power 100 list of Tennessee's most powerful people. He is recognized in The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward White, Inc.) for his work in commercial litigation and is listed in the 2009-2010 Edition of Who's Who in American Law.
Before he was appointed Attorney General in 1999 by the Tennessee Supreme Court, General Summers served as Judge of the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. He was appointed to the bench by Governor Ned McWherter in 1990 and elected in statewide retention elections in 1992 and 1998. Prior to this service, General Summers was elected District Attorney General for the multi-county 25th judicial district in West Tennessee. During his nearly nine-year tenure as a DA, General Summers also served as President of the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference. Prior to state service, he was in private practice in his hometown of Somerville, Tenn.
General Summers served as a JAG officer for more than three decades in both active and reserve duty with the Air Force, Army and National Guard. His last duty assignment was Command Staff Judge Advocate, Tennessee Army National Guard. He retired with the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army. Upon his retirement after 33 years of commissioned military service, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen awarded General Summers the National Guard Distinguished Service Medal. General Summers was awarded the Legion of Merit by President George W. Bush.
General Summers is a Fellow of the Tennessee Bar Foundation and the Nashville Bar Foundation. He is the past Chair of the Jason Foundation, Inc., a national nonprofit foundation dedicated to the education and prevention of teenage suicide. He performs regular volunteer work for the Jason Foundation.
General Counsel, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Director, Vanderbilt Health Policy Center, Vanderbilt University Law School
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Thomas Miller is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies health care policy, including regulatory barriers to choice and competition, market-based alternatives to the Affordable Care Act, health care litigation, and the political economy of health care reform.
A former senior health economist for the Joint Economic Committee in Congress, Mr. Miller was previously a trial attorney, journalist, and sports broadcaster.
Mr. Miller is the coauthor of the bestseller “Why Obamacare Is Wrong for America” (HarperCollins, 2011), the first in-depth examination of the impact of the Affordable Care Act. His analyses and commentary have been published and featured widely in peer-reviewed publications and in the popular press, including Cato Journal, Health Affairs, Law and Contemporary Problems, the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Politics, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Mr. Miller has also testified before Congress on the uninsured, health care costs, Medicare cost sharing, high-risk pools, health care competition, health insurance tax credits, the individual mandate, genetic information, Social Security, and the federal reinsurance of catastrophic events, among others. He also speaks regularly on various college campuses and teaches a seminar on “Shaping Law and Policy” at Duke University School of Law.
Mr. Miller has a JD from the Duke University School of Law and a BA in political science from New York University.
2010 Health Care Reform Legislation
James Blumstein, Todd F. Gaziano, J. Ammon Smartt, Paul Summers, Bill Young
Nashville Lawyers Chapter
The Nashville Lawyers Chapter hosted this panel discussion on "2010 Health Care Reform Legislation" at...
2010 Health Care Reform Legislation
James Blumstein, Todd F. Gaziano, J. Ammon Smartt, Paul Summers, Bill Young
Nashville Lawyers Chapter
The Nashville Lawyers Chapter hosted this panel discussion on "2010 Health Care Reform Legislation" at...
Panel III: Health Care and the Environment
Jonathan H. Adler, James Blumstein, Theodore "Ted" Frank, Thomas P. Miller
The Future of Federalism Conference
Prof. Jonathan Adler, Case Western Reserve University School of Law Prof. James Blumstein, Vanderbilt Law...