William J. Haynes

Mary Beth Buchanan

President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer, Merkle Science

Biography

Mary Beth Buchanan is currently President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer at Merkle Science. She was former General Counsel for Kraken Cryptocurrency Exchange. She was a partner at Bryan Cave LLP in the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations and Securities Litigation and Enforcement Client Service Groups. She concentrated her practice on white collar criminal defense, SEC and FINRA enforcement matters, corporate and accounting fraud, internal investigations, corporate compliance, foreign corrupt practices violations, Congressional investigations and complex civil litigation.

Ms. Buchanan served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania from September 2001 to November 2009, having been appointed by President George W. Bush. She is the only woman in Pennsylvania's history to be presidentially appointed to this position. As the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan oversaw the prosecution of more than 5,000 cases, including corporate and securities fraud, bank fraud, foreign corrupt practices, false claims, money laundering, health care fraud, public corruption and a broad range of violent crimes. Prior to that time, Ms. Buchanan spent more than 13 years as an Assistant United States Attorney litigating criminal, civil and appellate cases.

During her tenure as the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan also held several posts at the DOJ, including serving as the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, acting director of the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women and chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. Ms. Buchanan also served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Organizational Guidelines Advisory Committee, which made recommendations to the Commission for amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines for Business Organizations.

William J. Haynes

Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor, Blacklake Group

Biography

Jim Haynes is Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor of Blacklake Group (a privately held holding company) and concurrently advises several early and mid-stage privately held emerging technology companies, Nichols Law, and the Torridon Group.

Twice a partner in a major national law firm, Jim also previously served as a corporate executive at four public companies: General Dynamics Corporation (as Staff Vice President and Associate General Counsel from 1996-1999), Chevron Corporation (as Chief Corporate Counsel from 2008-2012); Siga Technologies, Inc. (as EVP & General Counsel from 2012-2016); and CSRA Inc. (as EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary from 2016-2018, at the end of which the company was acquired for $9.7B.)

Jim has held two presidentially appointed offices requiring Senate confirmation: General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1990-1993, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2001-2008. Chief Legal Officer and Designated Agency Ethics Officer of both departments during highly consequential times, Jim also served as Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency from 2001-2008.

Jim earned degrees from Davidson College and Harvard Law School, and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Stetson Law School. After a judicial clerkship with Judge James B. McMillan (USDJ, WDNC), Jim served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army. He is the recipient of a significant number of awards and medals from the Departments of Defense, Justice, Army, Navy, and Air Force. Jim holds a patent issued in 2025: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12367458.

For several months in 1999, Jim worked in Almaty, Kazakhstan, volunteering assistance for Mercy Corps International in managing microcredit services across six countries in Central Asia. A former Eagle Scout, Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Greater New York City Councils of the Boy Scouts of America from 2013-2023. He has served as director or advisor on many other boards.

He currently is a director or trustee of three boards: Labrynth (labrynth.ai), the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the William T. Coleman, Jr. Foundation.

William J. Haynes

Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor, Blacklake Group

Biography

Jim Haynes is Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor of Blacklake Group (a privately held holding company) and concurrently advises several early and mid-stage privately held emerging technology companies, Nichols Law, and the Torridon Group.

Twice a partner in a major national law firm, Jim also previously served as a corporate executive at four public companies: General Dynamics Corporation (as Staff Vice President and Associate General Counsel from 1996-1999), Chevron Corporation (as Chief Corporate Counsel from 2008-2012); Siga Technologies, Inc. (as EVP & General Counsel from 2012-2016); and CSRA Inc. (as EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary from 2016-2018, at the end of which the company was acquired for $9.7B.)

Jim has held two presidentially appointed offices requiring Senate confirmation: General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1990-1993, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2001-2008. Chief Legal Officer and Designated Agency Ethics Officer of both departments during highly consequential times, Jim also served as Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency from 2001-2008.

Jim earned degrees from Davidson College and Harvard Law School, and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Stetson Law School. After a judicial clerkship with Judge James B. McMillan (USDJ, WDNC), Jim served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army. He is the recipient of a significant number of awards and medals from the Departments of Defense, Justice, Army, Navy, and Air Force. Jim holds a patent issued in 2025: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12367458.

For several months in 1999, Jim worked in Almaty, Kazakhstan, volunteering assistance for Mercy Corps International in managing microcredit services across six countries in Central Asia. A former Eagle Scout, Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Greater New York City Councils of the Boy Scouts of America from 2013-2023. He has served as director or advisor on many other boards.

He currently is a director or trustee of three boards: Labrynth (labrynth.ai), the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the William T. Coleman, Jr. Foundation.

Eric J. Kadel

Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

Biography

Eric Kadel is engaged in a wide variety of corporate, transactional and regulatory matters. He is a member of the Firm’s Corporate and Finance, Financial Services, Investment Management, Alternative Investment Management, Cybersecurity, and Commodities, Futures and Derivatives Groups. With regard to financings, Mr. Kadel regularly represents participants in capital markets transactions, and dealers and end users in connection with structuring and documenting a wide variety of swaps and other derivatives, including equity, credit default and commodity swaps, options and forwards. Mr. Kadel’s work in the investment management area includes advising public and private investment companies and investment advisers on a wide variety of transactional, regulatory, compliance and other matters, including registration and regulation. Mr. Kadel also advises clients of the Firm regarding developments in the laws regulating the financial services industry and on cybersecurity issues. Mr. Kadel is currently an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School.

In addition, Mr. Kadel is one of the principal partners in the Firm’s International Trade and Investment practice. He counsels and represents clients on questions about U.S. economic sanctions, including those administered by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), United States antiboycott requirements under the Export Administration Regulations administered and enforced by the Commerce Department’s Office of Antiboycott Compliance within the Bureau of Industry and Security, Bank Secrecy Act/anti‐money laundering laws and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). Mr. Kadel’s practice includes analysis of proposed transactions and business relationships; due diligence and design and review of compliance procedures and strategies; and internal investigations, voluntary disclosures and government enforcement actions. Mr. Kadel also regularly advises clients regarding questions arising under Exon-Florio and the transaction review process administered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”), and has represented clients before CFIUS on many national security reviews.

Timothy J. Keeler

Partner, Mayer Brown

Biography

Prof. Tim Keeler, an attorney in the Government and International Trade Group, joined Mayer Brown in 2009, and brings an in-depth knowledge of international trade law and economic policy matters, and a history of working in the Executive Branch and Congress on major economic, legislative and regulatory issues.

Prior to joining Mayer Brown, Professor Keeler served in a variety of senior positions in the U.S. Government for almost 12 years. Most recently he was the Chief of Staff in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2006 - 2009, where he oversaw implementation of U.S. policy, strategy and negotiations involving all aspects of international trade and investment matters. He worked on a number of key issues including: climate change and trade; US and China relations; WTO negotiations and litigation; free trade agreement negotiations and implementation; and CFIUS decisions.

Before working for USTR, Prof. Keeler spent more than five years at the Treasury Department from 2001 – 2006. He joined the Office of Legislative Affairs in 2001 as a Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for International Issues, where he was responsible for Treasury’s legislative strategy on issues including capital market sanctions, foreign exchange rate policy testimony, appropriations for U.S. agreements to replenish the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks, multilateral debt relief, and U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund. He later managed the Office of Legislative Affairs from 2002 - 2006 and assisted on all policy and personnel issues in the Office. This included leading Treasury nominees through the U.S. Senate confirmation process, legislative strategy on Treasury Intelligence and Terrorist Financing matters, and advising on major economic legislative initiatives such as the 2003 tax cuts and social security reform proposals.

Prof. Keeler also served on the Presidential Transition Team in 2000–2001 as a policy coordinator on export control and trade remedy policy, handling the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration (now called the Bureau of Industry and Security) and the International Trade Commission (ITC).

Earlier in his career, Prof. Keeler served as a professional staff member for international trade on the US Senate Finance Committee under Chairman William V. Roth (R-DE). There he worked on legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) between the U.S. and China, preferential trade programs for Sub-Saharan Africa (the African Growth and Opportunity Act) and the Caribbean basin, the Generalized System of Preferences, legislation to bring the U.S. into compliance with the WTO decision on the Foreign Sales Corporation provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, and the miscellaneous tariff bill.

In recognition of his government service, Prof. Keeler was awarded the USTR Distinguished Service Award, the Treasury Distinguished Service Award, and the Treasury Secretary’s Honor Award twice.

Prof. Keeler is also an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Law, co-teaching a course on U.S. and WTO law, policy, and politics; is a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington International Trade Foundation; and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prof. Keeler has spoken at conferences on international trade and economic issues sponsored by, inter alia, the American Bar Association (Climate Change and Trade, March 2009), the Korea Economic Institute (the U.S. – Korea Free Trade Agreement, October 2010), and the U.S.-China Business Council (Sec. 421 tires safeguard case, July 2009; and the U.S. – China Economic and Political Relationship, January 2010).

Donald J. Rosenberg

Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, Qualcomm

Biography

Donald J. Rosenberg is executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Qualcomm Incorporated. Mr. Rosenberg reports directly to CEO Steve Mollenkopf and is a member of the company's Executive Committee. In his role as chief legal officer, he is responsible for overseeing Qualcomm's worldwide legal affairs including litigation, intellectual property and corporate matters. Qualcomm's Government Affairs, Internal Audit and Compliance organizations also report to him.

Prior to joining Qualcomm, Mr. Rosenberg served as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Apple Inc. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and general counsel of IBM Corporation where he had also held numerous positions including vice president and assistant general counsel for litigation and counsel to IBM's mainframe division.

Mr. Rosenberg has had extensive experience in corporate governance, compliance, law department management, litigation, securities regulation, intellectual property and competition issues.

Mr. Rosenberg is a board member of NuVasive, Inc., Corporate Directors Forum, CONNECT, La Jolla Music Society, La Jolla Playhouse and a trustee of Rady Children's Hospital San Diego and the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. He is immediate past National Co-Chairman of the Board of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he continues to serve on the Board and the Executive Committee.

Mr. Rosenberg is a member of the International Advisory Board, University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Global Policy and Strategy. He is also a member of the China Leadership Board for the 21st Century China Center at the UCSD. He has served as an adjunct professor of law at New York's Pace University School of Law, where he taught courses in intellectual property and antitrust law.

Mr. Rosenberg received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his juris doctor from St. John's University School of Law.

Michael Chertoff

Senior Of Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP and Executive Chairma, The Chertoff Group

Biography

Michael Chertoff concentrates in the area of White Collar Defense and Investigations. In recent years, he has handled a series of federal investigations, including complex criminal and civil regulatory matters. He has advised major clients on SEC and Justice Department investigations and successfully served as the independent monitor of a major national healthcare company under criminal and civil investigation.

In addition to his legal work, Mr. Chertoff is Founder and Chairman of The Chertoff Group, a security and risk management firm, where he provides high-level strategic counsel to corporate and government leaders on a broad range of security issues, from risk identification and prevention to preparedness, response and recovery.

In April of 2012, Mr. Chertoff was elected as the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of BAE Systems, Inc. He also sits on the board of directors or board of advisors of a number of companies and nonprofits.

Previously, Mr. Chertoff served as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. As Secretary, he led a 218,000 person department with a budget of $50 billion. Mr. Chertoff developed and implemented border security and immigration policy; promulgated homeland security regulations; and spearheaded a national cyber security strategy. He also served periodically on the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, and on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Prior to his appointment to the Cabinet, Mr. Chertoff served from 2003 to 2005 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Before becoming a federal judge, Mr. Chertoff was the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In that position, he oversaw the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and formed the Enron Task Force, which produced more than 20 convictions, including those of CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay.

Mr. Chertoff’s career includes more than a decade as a federal prosecutor, including service as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Chertoff investigated and personally prosecuted significant cases of political corruption, organized crime, and corporate fraud.

From 1994-2001, Mr. Chertoff represented major corporations and individuals in numerous white collar investigations and trials. Among other matters, he successfully represented the nation’s largest hospital company in a four year, multi-jurisdictional criminal and civil investigation, represented major corporations in corruption scandals, and obtained acquittals at trial for individual criminal defendants.

Mr. Chertoff has received numerous awards including the Department of Justice Henry E. Petersen Memorial Award (2006); the Department of Justice John Marshall Award for Trial of Litigation (1987); NAACP Benjamin L. Hooks Award for Distinguished Service (2007); European Institute Transatlantic Leadership Award (2008); and two honorary doctorates. His trial experiences have been featured in over half a dozen books and many news articles.

Harvard Law School, J.D., 1978 magna cum laude
Harvard University, B.A., 1975 magna cum laude

William J. Haynes

Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor, Blacklake Group

Biography

Jim Haynes is Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor of Blacklake Group (a privately held holding company) and concurrently advises several early and mid-stage privately held emerging technology companies, Nichols Law, and the Torridon Group.

Twice a partner in a major national law firm, Jim also previously served as a corporate executive at four public companies: General Dynamics Corporation (as Staff Vice President and Associate General Counsel from 1996-1999), Chevron Corporation (as Chief Corporate Counsel from 2008-2012); Siga Technologies, Inc. (as EVP & General Counsel from 2012-2016); and CSRA Inc. (as EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary from 2016-2018, at the end of which the company was acquired for $9.7B.)

Jim has held two presidentially appointed offices requiring Senate confirmation: General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1990-1993, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2001-2008. Chief Legal Officer and Designated Agency Ethics Officer of both departments during highly consequential times, Jim also served as Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency from 2001-2008.

Jim earned degrees from Davidson College and Harvard Law School, and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Stetson Law School. After a judicial clerkship with Judge James B. McMillan (USDJ, WDNC), Jim served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army. He is the recipient of a significant number of awards and medals from the Departments of Defense, Justice, Army, Navy, and Air Force. Jim holds a patent issued in 2025: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12367458.

For several months in 1999, Jim worked in Almaty, Kazakhstan, volunteering assistance for Mercy Corps International in managing microcredit services across six countries in Central Asia. A former Eagle Scout, Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Greater New York City Councils of the Boy Scouts of America from 2013-2023. He has served as director or advisor on many other boards.

He currently is a director or trustee of three boards: Labrynth (labrynth.ai), the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the William T. Coleman, Jr. Foundation.

John Rizzo

Senior Counsel, Steptoe & Johnson LLP

Biography

John Rizzo is Senior Counsel in Steptoe's Washington office, where he is a member of the National and Homeland Security practice and the firm’s International Department.

Mr. Rizzo provides legal advice and policy counsel to clients on matters related to national security. His work includes advising companies on the business risks related to their international operations; counseling companies involved in international mergers and acquisitions on the foreign investment review process conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States; and advising clients on the legal and policy-related aspects of working with the Intelligence Community.

Prior to joining Steptoe, Mr. Rizzo spent 34 years in the Office of General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where he provided legal counsel, policy guidance, and leadership on the most difficult and time sensitive national security issues facing the United States. From 2001 until 2002 and from 2004 to 2009, he served as the Chief Legal Officer at CIA and dealt with the most challenging legal issues in the post 9/11 era. During that time, he was responsible for all legal matters at CIA including national security and international law; administrative and contract law; and criminal and civil litigation. Also during his tenure, he served as the Deputy Director for the Office of Congressional Affairs and was the principal interlocutor with the House and Senate Congressional Committees investigating the Iran-Contra Affair. Early in his career, he was the principal drafter of the CIA regulations for the conduct of intelligence activities in the United States – regulations which remain in effect today.

He was the recipient of the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, the highest recognition accorded to a career CIA officer. In 1996, he was awarded the Thomas C. Clark Award from the Federal Bar Association as the most outstanding lawyer in government, to date he was the only Intelligence Community attorney to receive the award.

Mr. Rizzo is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a frequent speaker and has served as a guest lecturer at a number of law schools around the country.

Margaret Spellings

President, George W. Bush Presidential Center

Biography

Margaret Spellings is the president of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. She oversees all aspects of Bush Center activities, including leadership of the George W. Bush Institute, management of Bush Center business operations, and collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration, which operates the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

Previously Spellings was president and CEO of Margaret Spellings and Company, a Washington, D.C. consulting firm that provided strategic guidance to philanthropic and private sector organizations. She also served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and was president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Prior to that, Spellings served in a variety of positions in the Bush Administration.

She served as U.S. Secretary of Education from 2005 to 2009. In that role, she oversaw an agency with a nearly $70 billion budget and more than 10,000 employees and contractors. As a member of the President’s Cabinet, she led the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), a historic national initiative to provide enhanced accountability for the education of 50 million U.S. public school students.

In 2005, Spellings launched a higher education national policy debate and action plan to improve accessibility, affordability and accountability in our Nation’s colleges and universities. Spellings initiated international outreach and collaboration by leading delegations on behalf of the President of the United States as well as overseeing the development and implementation of international education agreements with such countries as China, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

As White House Domestic Policy Advisor, from 2001 to 2005, she managed the development of the President’s domestic policy agenda. Her achievements include oversight of the development of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the development of a comprehensive immigration plan to ensure long-term economic stability and to secure U.S. borders, and numerous other initiatives on health and human services, transportation, labor, justice and housing.

Prior to her service in the White House, Spellings was senior advisor to then-Governor George W. Bush of Texas, led governmental and external relations for the Texas Association of School Boards, and has served in key positions at Austin Community College and with the Texas Legislature.

She graduated from the University of Houston with a bachelor's degree in political science.

Larry D. Thompson

John A. Sibley Professor in Corporate and Business Law, The University of Georgia School of Law

Biography

Larry D. Thompson has served on the University of Georgia School of Law’s faculty as the holder of the John A. Sibley Chair of Corporate and Business Law since 2011, noting he was on a leave of absence from June 2012 through 2014. He is presently a member of the Faculty Division of the law school's Dean Rusk International Law Center Council.

Thompson first retired from PepsiCo in May 2011. In June 2012, he rejoined the company as executive vice president, government affairs, general counsel and corporate secretary. His responsibilities included leading PepsiCo’s worldwide legal function, as well as its global government affairs and public policy group and its global citizenship and sustainability team. Thompson again retired from PepsiCo in December 2014.

Thompson has extensive leadership experience in both the public and private sectors. In 2001, Thompson was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as deputy attorney general of the United States. As deputy attorney general, Attorney General John Ashcroft named Thompson in 2002 to lead the Department of Justice’s National Security Coordination Council. Also in 2002, President George W. Bush named Thompson to head the government-wide Corporate Fraud Task Force.

From 1982 to 1986, he served as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia where he led major political corruption and drug trafficking prosecutions brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. As U.S. attorney, Thompson also led the Southeastern Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.

Thompson has held other significant leadership positions in the public sector. In 1995, he was named independent counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development Investigation. In 2000, he was selected by the U.S. Congress to chair the bi-partisan Judicial Review Commission on Foreign Asset Control.

In the private sector, in addition to his leadership roles at PepsiCo, Thompson was a partner in the Atlanta law firm of King & Spalding. He was the founding co-chair of the firm’s special matters and government investigations practice.

Thompson has received numerous awards for his professional achievements, including the Edmund Jennings Randolph Award for outstanding contributions to the accomplishment of the Department of Justice’s mission, the Outstanding Litigator Award from the Federal Bar Association and a Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Pace University in New York. He has also been recognized by Atlanta’s Gate City Bar Association as a member of its hall of fame.

Thompson is an elected Fellow of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers. In 2014, Ethisphere magazine recognized him by noting that as “the outgoing General Counsel of one of the world’s most well-recognized corporations [Thompson] has set the bar high for GC’s everywhere. [His] background in both public and private sectors earned him the trust and respect of his peers worldwide as he demonstrated how ethics and integrity are essential components of business success.”

In 2004, Thompson served as a Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Thompson speaks and writes frequently on a number of legal topics. His recent publications include:

● “The Responsible Corporation: Its Historical Roots and Continuing Promise" in 29 Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 199 (2015).

● “In-sourcing Corporate Responsibility for Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act" in 51 American Criminal Law Review 199 (2014).

● “Keynote Speech: The Reality of Overcriminalization” in 7 George Mason University Journal of Law, Economics and Policy 577 (2011).

Thompson holds a B.A. from Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri, a M.A. from Michigan State University and a law degree from the University of Michigan.

John Ashcroft

Chairman, The Ashcroft Law Firm LLC, and former United States Attorney General

Biography

Former U.S. Attorney General, Governor and U.S. Senator John Ashcroft serves as the firm’s founder and chairman. As Attorney General, and the U.S. Justice Department’s CEO, Mr. Ashcroft led the world’s largest and foremost international law firm and law enforcement agency—an organization larger than most Fortune 500 companies, with over 122,000 employees. Mr. Ashcroft integrated strategic planning, budgeting, and performance measures, which resulted in the DOJ earning a clean audit for the first time in its history.

Mr. Ashcroft boldly led the Department of Justice through the transformational period after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He subsequently reorganized the Department to focus on its number one priority: preventing terrorism. The tough antiterrorism campaign he directed helped keep America safe throughout his tenure and resulted in the dismantling of terrorist cells across America and the disruption of over 150 terrorist plots worldwide.

Within two months of the attacks, and with financial markets still reeling, the unprecedented corporate scandals at ENRON, WorldCom and dozens more unfolded, further destabilizing the weakened economy. John Ashcroft was called upon to restore America’s faith in the integrity of our marketplace. He marshaled the resources of the federal government to bring to justice those guilty of massive corporate fraud. At all times, he demanded that cases be brought swiftly, with appropriate serious penalties—always taking into account the best interests of the employees and shareholders whose lives were most directly affected.

From 1985 to 1993, as Governor of Missouri, Ashcroft balanced eight consecutive budgets, built a $120 million budget surplus and established a $190 million operating reserve. His management and fiscal integrity helped generate 338,000 new jobs state-wide, a triple-A bond rating from the three major Wall Street rating agencies, a per capita state and local tax burden ranked 49th in the United States and a 12 percent increase in personal income. His new education performance standards led Fortune magazine to name him as one of the nation’s top ten Education Governors. In 1991, the non-partisan National Governors Association voted him Chairman.

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1994, he brought his management skills to Washington where he authored budget rules protecting Social Security and Medicare and helped balance the federal budget for the first time in decades. As a member of the Senate Judiciary, Foreign Relations and Commerce Committees, he worked to reform laws regulating the banking, telecommunications, aviation, transportation and information technology industries.

In 1973, Mr. Ashcroft served as Missouri Auditor, followed by two terms as Missouri Attorney General. He was raised in Springfield, Missouri, received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago.

John S. Baker

Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University

Biography

In memoriam

Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the

following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.

In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.

Thomas O. Barnett

Partner, Covington & Burling LLP

Biography

Thomas Barnett is a partner in the Washington, DC office and co-chair of the firm's Antitrust & Consumer Law Practice Group. He specializes in global antitrust and competition law practice and works closely with the firm’s white collar practice on criminal antitrust enforcement and investigative matters.

Mr. Barnett recently served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. He headed the Antitrust Division from 2005 to 2008, having previously served in the Division as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Enforcement from 2004 to 2005. During his tenure, Mr. Barnett was involved in some of the largest and most complicated criminal matters in the Division’s history, including investigations and prosecutions that involved coordination with multiple competition authorities in other jurisdictions. In the merger area, Mr. Barnett oversaw the review of all mergers investigated by the Division and supervised more than 30 cases filed in federal district court. He also oversaw an active competition advocacy program that included numerousamicusbriefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on antitrust issues and comments to a wide range of federal and state agencies. He argued before the U.S. Supreme Court asamicuson behalf of the United States inBell Atlantic Corp. v. Twomblyand testified several times before Congressional committees.

While at the Antitrust Division, Mr. Barnett worked with international antitrust authorities throughout the world and served in leadership positions in key international competition organizations, such as chairing the Working Party on International Cooperation and Enforcement of the OECD Competition Committee and serving on the Steering Committee of the International Competition Network.

Mr. Barnett received the Edmund Randolph Award, the U.S. Department of Justice’s highest honor, for his service in the Division.

Prior to 2004, Mr. Barnett was a leader in the firm’s Antitrust & Consumer Law Practice Group. He counseled Fortune 500 companies on all aspects of antitrust law and was involved in mergers and acquisitions, government antitrust investigations, and antitrust litigation involving a wide range of industries. He served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching a course on antitrust and intellectual property issues in sports in 2001 and 2003, and as a co-teacher of an advanced antitrust seminar at the University of Virginia Law School multiple times between 1991 and 2004.

Harvard Law School, J.D., 1989 - magna cum laude
London School of Economics, M.Sc., 1986 - Fulbright Scholar
Yale University, B.A., 1985 - summa cum laude

William P. Barr

Former United States Attorney General

Biography

William P. Barr was born on May 23, 1950 in New York City. Mr. Barr received his A.B. in government from Columbia University in 1971 and his M.A. in government and Chinese studies in 1973. From 1973 to 1977, he served in the Central Intelligence Agency before receiving his J.D. with highest honors from George Washington University Law School in 1977.

In 1978, Mr. Barr served as a law clerk under Judge Malcolm Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Following his clerkship, Mr. Barr joined the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge as an associate. He left the firm to work in the White House under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1983 on the domestic policy staff, then returned to the law firm and became a partner in 1985.

Under President George H.W. Bush, Mr. Barr served as the Deputy Attorney General from 1990 to 1991; the Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel from 1989 to 1990; and the 77th Attorney General of the United States from 1991 to 1993. While serving at the Department, Mr. Barr helped create programs and strategies to reduce violent crime and was responsible for establishing new enforcement policies in a number of areas including financial institutions, civil rights, and antitrust merger guidelines. Mr. Barr also led the Department’s response to the Savings & Loan crisis; oversaw the investigation of the Pan Am 103 bombing; directed the successful response to the Talladega prison uprising and hostage taking; and coordinated counter-terrorism activities during the First Gulf War.

From 1994 to 2000, Mr. Barr served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel for GTE Corporation. Mr. Barr then served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Verizon from 2000 to 2008. At both GTE and Verizon, Mr. Barr led the legal, regulatory, and government affairs activities of the companies.

After retiring from Verizon in 2008, Mr. Barr advised major corporations on government enforcement matters, as well as regulatory litigation. Mr. Barr served as Of Counsel at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in 2009 and rejoined the firm in 2017.

President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Mr. Barr on December 7, 2018, and he was confirmed as the 85th Attorney General of the United States by the U.S. Senate on February 14, 2019. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office. Mr. Barr joins John Crittenden (1841 and 1850-1853) as one of only two people in U.S. history to serve twice as Attorney General.

Lillian R. BeVier

David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Virginia School of Law

Biography

Lillian BeVier taught constitutional law (with special emphasis on First Amendment issues), intellectual property (trademark, copyright), real property and torts from 1973-2010 at the Law School, and now teaches a January Term course on judicial philosophy.

At Stanford Law School, BeVier was revising editor for the Stanford Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Before coming to Virginia, she was associate professor of law at the University of Santa Clara Law School; practiced law with Spaeth Blase Valentine & Klein in Palo Alto, Calif.; served as research associate to Professor William F. Baxter at Stanford University Law School, working on the FAA-ABA study of the legal aspects of airport noise and the sonic boom; and was assistant to the general secretary and assistant staff legal counsel for Stanford University.

BeVier received the University of Virginia Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award in 2006. The Raven Society elected her to membership in 1993 and honored her with the faculty award in 2010. She delivered the Henry Miller Memorial Lecture at Georgia State Law School in 2005, the Coen Memorial Lecture at the University of Colorado Law School in 2000, and the David C. Baum Lecture on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the University of Illinois Law School in 1996. In 1999, at the invitation of the Supreme Court Historical Society, she spoke to the Society on Free Expression in the Warren and Burger Courts. Suffolk University awarded her an honorary S.J.D. degree in 1998. In the fall of 2003, she was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Having been nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2003, she served as vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation until 2009. She serves on the national Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society. Within the Charlottesville community, BeVier has served as chair of the Board of Trustees of St. Anne’s-Belfield School and of the Martha Jefferson Hospital. She is currently chair of the board of the Martha Jefferson Health Services Corporation and of Piedmont CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates).

Clint Bolick

Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona

Biography

Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.

Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.

Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.

Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Elaine L. Chao

Secretary, US Department of Transportation

Biography

The Honorable Elaine L. Chao, the 24th U. S. Secretary of Labor who served from 2001-2009, is the first American woman of Asian descent to be appointed to a President’s Cabinet in our nation’s history. On January 31, 2017, she was confirmed as the 18th U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

An immigrant who arrived in America at the age of eight speaking no English, Secretary Chao received her citizenship at the age of 19. Her experience transitioning to a new country has motivated her to dedicate most of her professional life to ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to build better lives.

As the first U. S. Secretary of Labor in the 21st century, Elaine L. Chao focused on increasing the competitiveness of America’s workforce by restructuring department programs to empower workers and modernizing regulations to respond to the realities of the 21st century workplace. Under her leadership, the U.S. Department of Labor achieved record results in protecting the health, safety, wages, and retirement security of the nation’s workforce.

Secretary Chao’s distinguished career spans the public, private and non-profit sectors. As President and Chief Executive Officer of United Way of America, she restored public trust and confidence in one of our nation’s premier charitable institutions after it had been tarnished by financial mismanagement and abuse. As Director of the Peace Corps, she established the first programs in the newly liberated Baltic nations and the independent states of the former Soviet Union. Her government service also includes serving as Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation, Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission, Deputy Maritime Administrator, and White House Fellow. Prior to her government service, she was Vice President of Syndications at BankAmerica Capital Markets Group and a banker with Citicorp in New York.

Secretary Chao earned her MBA from the Harvard Business School and an economics degree from Mount Holyoke College. Recognized with innumerable awards for her public and community service, she is the recipient of 36 honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities across the globe.

Secretary Chao is a resident of Kentucky. Prior to her appointment as Secretary of Transportation, she was a Distinguished Fellow at the Hudson Institute.

She is the eldest of six daughters of Dr. James S.C. Chao and the late Mrs. Ruth Mulan Chu Chao.

Jesse H. Choper

Earl Warren Professor of Public Law (Emeritus), UC Berkeley School of Law

Biography

Jesse Choper served as law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court following graduation from law school. He taught at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1957 to 1960, and at the University of Minnesota Law School from 1961 to 1965. He joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 1965. Choper has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Fordham Law School, University of Milan, Free University in Amsterdam, Autonoma University in Barcelona, University of New South Wales in Sydney, University of Lucerne in Switzerland, and Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon and Porto. He served as Berkeley Law’s dean from 1982 to 1992.

From 1979 to 1998, Choper was one of the three major lecturers at U.S. Law Week’s Annual Constitutional Law Conference in Washington, D.C. He has delivered 20 titled lectures at major universities throughout the country, including the Cooley Lectures at Michigan, the Stevens Lecture at Cornell, the Baum Lecture at Illinois, and the Lockhart Lecture at Minnesota. He has served on the executive committee of the Association of American Law Schools, and on the executive council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (of which he was vice president for more than ten years). He was national president of the Order of the Coif and is a member of the American Law Institute. In 1998 he received the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award and the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction at Berkeley Law in 2006. In 2005 the Berkeley Law Alumni Association presented Choper with the Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award and the University of Pennsylvania Law School gave him the James Wilson Award, its highest award for alumni.

Choper’s major publications include the books, Judicial Review and the National Political Process: A Functional Reconsideration of the Role of the Supreme Court, which received the Order of the Coif Triennial Book Award in 1982, and Securing Religious Liberty: Principles for Judicial Interpretation of the Religion Clauses. His recent publications include the thirteenth edition of his Constitutional Law casebooks; the eighth edition of his Corporations casebook; the second edition of The Supreme Court and Its Justices; “The Political Question Doctrine: Suggested Criteria,” in Duke Law Journal (2005); “Wartime Process: A Dialogue on Congressional Power to Remove Issues From the Federal Courts,” in California Law Review (2007) (co-author); and “Who’s Afraid of the Eleventh Amendment? The Limited Impact of the Court’s Sovereign Immunity Rulings,” in Columbia Law Review (2006) (co-author).

Jeffrey Bossert Clark

Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice

Biography

Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).

Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).

He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.

Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.

In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.

President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.

Walter E. Dellinger

Partner, O'Melveny & Myers LLP

Biography

Walter Dellinger is an influential authority on appellate and Supreme Court decisions, lending his experience as a former Solicitor General and decades of legal knowledge to amicus briefs, a multitude of pro bono clients, and public and private companies involved in bet-the-company litigation. A frequent commentator for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and major television networks, Walter holds the designation of the Douglas B. Maggs Emeritus Professor of Law at Duke University. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal and recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Lawyer.

Walter, who formerly served as O’Melveny’s Diversity and Inclusion Partner, helped convince the US Supreme Court that proponents of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, did not have standing to appeal a court order invalidating it. That ruling, Hollingsworth v. Perry, cleared the way for marriage equality in California and eventually nationwide.

Walter served as Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 1993 to 1996. He was acting Solicitor General for the 1996-97 Term of the US Supreme Court. During that time, Walter argued nine cases before the Court, the most by any Solicitor General in more than 20 years. His arguments included cases dealing with physician-assisted suicide, the line item veto, the cable television act, the Brady Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the constitutionality of remedial services for parochial school children.

Walter has served as Special Counsel to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange in connection with the NYSE’s transformation into a publicly held company and its acquisition of an electronic trading company.

After serving in early 1993 in the White House as an advisor to the President on constitutional issues, Walter was nominated by the President to be Assistant Attorney General. He was confirmed by the Senate in October 1993 and served for three years. As head of the OLC, Walter issued opinions on a wide variety of issues, including: the President's authority to deploy United States forces in Haiti and Bosnia; whether the trade agreements required treaty ratification; and a major review of separation of powers questions. He provided extensive legal advice on questions arising out of the shutdown of the federal government, on national debt ceiling issues, and on loan guarantees for Mexico.

Walter has published articles on constitutional issues for scholarly journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Duke Law Journal, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New Republic, and the London Times. He has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Belgium and has given lectures to university faculties in Florence, Siena, Nuremberg, Copenhagen, Leiden, Utrecht, Tilburg, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, and has delivered major lectures at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Chicago, and other US law schools. He has testified more than 25 times before committees of Congress.

In private practice, Walter’s arguments before the United States Supreme Court have included Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. v. Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Alabama v. North Carolina, Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, Heller v. District of Columbia, Jackson v. Birmingham School District, Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington, US Airways v. Barnett, Utah v. Evans, Hunt v. Cromartie, and Hunt v. Easley. His most notable Court of Appeals and state supreme court arguments include Martha Stewart v. United States, Whiteside v. United States, and Exxon v. Alabama, LCI v. Phillips.

Edward B. Foley

Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law; Director, Election Law @ Moritz, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law

Biography

Professor Foley (known as “Ned”) directs Election Law @ Moritz at Ohio State’s law school, where he also holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law.

His book Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2016) was named Finalist for the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History and listed as one of 100 “must-read books about law and social justice”.

He has completed a new book manuscript, Presidential Elections and Majority Rule (to be published by Oxford University Press), which employs historical analysis to offer a feasible reform of state laws that would enable the Electoral College to operate as intended and thereby avoid the election of presidents who lack majority support among the voters in the states responsible for their Electoral College victories.

As Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Project on Election Administration (with his Mortiz colleague Steven Huefner, who served as Associate Reporter), Professor Foley drafted Principles of Law: Non-Precinct Voting and Resolution of Ballot-Counting Disputes, which provides nonpartisan guidance for the resolution of election disputes.

During his fellowship at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Foley wrote Due Process, Fair Play and Excessive Partisanship: A New Principle of Judicial Review of Election Law, 84 U. Chicago Law Review 655-758 (2017), which was cited in briefs in Gill v. Whitford and Benisek v. Lamone (the Supreme Court gerrymandering cases). His extensive online commentary about gerrymandering includes: Wechsler, History, and Gerrymandering, Scotusblog, and Constitutional Preservation, the Marbury Duty & Congressional Gerrymanders, Election Law Blog.

While Professor Foley has special expertise on recounts and other procedures for fairly and accurately identifying which candidate is the winner in close elections, he has written widely on all aspects of election law, including the need for nonpartisan institutions in election administration. He has also co-authored Election Law and Litigation: The Judicial Regulation of Politics (Wolters Kluwer 2014).

Professor Foley has taught at Ohio State since 1991. Previously, he clerked for Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. In 1999, he took a leave from the faculty to serve as the state solicitor in the office of Ohio’s Attorney General. In that capacity, he was responsible for the state’s appellate and constitutional cases.

Professor Foley is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law and Yale College.

Douglas H. Ginsburg

Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit

Biography

Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986. After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law. Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.

Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of: Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.

In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy.

In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.

He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.

William J. Haynes

Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor, Blacklake Group

Biography

Jim Haynes is Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor of Blacklake Group (a privately held holding company) and concurrently advises several early and mid-stage privately held emerging technology companies, Nichols Law, and the Torridon Group.

Twice a partner in a major national law firm, Jim also previously served as a corporate executive at four public companies: General Dynamics Corporation (as Staff Vice President and Associate General Counsel from 1996-1999), Chevron Corporation (as Chief Corporate Counsel from 2008-2012); Siga Technologies, Inc. (as EVP & General Counsel from 2012-2016); and CSRA Inc. (as EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary from 2016-2018, at the end of which the company was acquired for $9.7B.)

Jim has held two presidentially appointed offices requiring Senate confirmation: General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1990-1993, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2001-2008. Chief Legal Officer and Designated Agency Ethics Officer of both departments during highly consequential times, Jim also served as Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency from 2001-2008.

Jim earned degrees from Davidson College and Harvard Law School, and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Stetson Law School. After a judicial clerkship with Judge James B. McMillan (USDJ, WDNC), Jim served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army. He is the recipient of a significant number of awards and medals from the Departments of Defense, Justice, Army, Navy, and Air Force. Jim holds a patent issued in 2025: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12367458.

For several months in 1999, Jim worked in Almaty, Kazakhstan, volunteering assistance for Mercy Corps International in managing microcredit services across six countries in Central Asia. A former Eagle Scout, Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Greater New York City Councils of the Boy Scouts of America from 2013-2023. He has served as director or advisor on many other boards.

He currently is a director or trustee of three boards: Labrynth (labrynth.ai), the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the William T. Coleman, Jr. Foundation.

Douglas W. Kmiec

Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University School of Law

Biography

One of America's best known scholars and popular commentators on the law, Professor Douglas W. Kmiec holds the endowed chair in constitutional law at Pepperdine Law School. He came to this position after serving several years as dean and St. Thomas More Professor of Law at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and for nearly two decades, on the law faculty at the University of Notre Dame. As dean at Catholic University, Professor Kmiec did what many said would be impossible; he greatly increased academic quality and student selectivity at the same time he deepened the school's religious commitment. During his tenure, the law school moved into the upper tier of the U.S. News ranking from tier three. At Notre Dame, he was director of Notre Dame's Center on Law & Government, and the founder of its Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. Beyond the university setting, Kmiec served Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush during 1985-89 as constitutional legal counsel (Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice).

A wide-ranging writer and engaging speaker, Professor Kmiec writes a syndicated column for the Catholic News Service, and for several years wrote a regular column in the Chicago Tribune. He is also a frequent contributor to the pages of the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals. He is the co-author (with legal historian Stephen Presser of Northwestern) of three books on the Constitution -- The American Constitutional Order; Individual Rights and the American Constitution and The History, Structure and Philosophy of the American Constitution. Another recent book, Cease-Fire on the Family (Crisis Books/Notre Dame) attracted scholarly and popular acclaim for proposing realistic ways for families to "end the culture war" by renewing personal virtue and civic responsibility within itself. He has also written The Attorney General's Lawyer (Praeger 1992), and several respected legal treatises.

Professor Kmiec's scholarly research spans legal and non-legal subjects, from the Constitution and the federal system, to land use and the organization of America society. He is a frequent guest on national news programs, such as Nightline, the Newshour, and NPR's Talk of the Nation, analyzing constitutional questions.

A White House Fellow (1982-83), Professor Kmiec is one of a few individuals who has received the Distinguished Service Award from two cabinet departments —the Department of Justice in 1987 and Housing and Urban Development in 1983. In 1988, he was awarded the Edmund J. Randolph Award by the attorney general. He has lectured on the U.S. Constitution in Asia as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar.

An honors graduate of Northwestern, Professor Kmiec received his law degree from the University of Southern California, where he served on the Law Review and received the Legion Lex Commencement Prize for Legal Writing. He is a member of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court and the state bars of Illinois and California.

B.A., with honors, Northwestern University, 1973
J.D., University of Southern California, 1976

Margaret A. Little

Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance

Biography

Peggy Little, Senior Counsel at New Civil Liberties Alliance, a new public interest law firm challenging the administrative state founded in 2017 by Professor Philip Hamburger, has over three decades of experience as a trial and appellate litigator in complex, high-stakes regulatory, mass-tort, class-action, products liability, securities, commercial and civil rights litigation representing individuals and high-profile litigants including Fortune 50 companies, financial institutions, public companies, and universities in state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.

Peggy is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where she was awarded the Potter Stewart Prize. She was a law clerk to the Hon. Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Prior to starting her own trial and appellate law firm in 1997, where she was appellate consulting counsel to the New Haven firefighters in Ricci v.DeStefano, a landmark 2009 United States Supreme Court decision, Peggy was a partner at Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn in New Haven, Connecticut. From 2004 to early 2018, Peggy directed, part-time, the Federalist Society Pro Bono Center.

Peggy has participated in many national conferences and symposia addressing issues of current importance in constitutional law – specifically state and federal constitutional questions regarding the separation of powers and the first amendment – and regularly speaks, blogs and publishes on the topic of the unconstitutional exercise of governmental power. In May of 2017, she presented her paper, Pirates at the Parchment Gates, to a conference of state and federal judges at the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School. Her work has been published by law reviews, legal publications, the Federalist Society, the Wall Street Journal, Law and Liberty and the Manhattan Institute.

Recent publications include: How the SEC silences its critics, The SEC should listen to Sen. Cotton, Lucia v. SEC, Opening Salvos in the Opioid Litigation Wars, Straight Dope on the Opioid Crisis

Kevin J. Martin

Biography

Kevin J. Martin was nominated to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission by President George W. Bush on April 30, 2001, and was sworn in on July 3, 2001. He was designated chairman by President George W. Bush on March 18, 2005. Chairman Martin was re-nominated for a second term as commissioner and chairman by President George W. Bush on April 25, 2006.

Chairman Martin joined the Commission from the White House, where he served as a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and was on the staff of the National Economic Council. In that capacity, he focused primarily on commerce and technology policy issues. He also served as the official U.S. government representative to the G-8's Digital Opportunity Task Force, a government, non-profit, and private sector task force created to identify ways in which the digital revolution can assure opportunities for developing countries.

Prior to joining the Bush Administration, Chairman Martin served as a principle technology and telecommunications advisor on the Bush-Cheney Transition team. He assumed this role after serving as the Deputy General Counsel to the Bush campaign in Austin, Texas from July 1999 through December 2000.

From 1997 to 1999, Chairman Martin served as a Legal Advisor to FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth, advising the Commissioner on telecommunications and broadband issues. Chairman Martin had previously served in the Office of the Independent Counsel following several years of work in private practice at the Washington, DC law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding. While at Wiley, Rein & Fielding, he worked on communications, legislative, and appellate litigation matters. Before joining Wiley, Rein & Fielding, Martin was a law clerk for United States Court District Judge William M. Hoeveler in Miami, Florida.

Chairman Martin received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with Honors and Distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at Chapel Hill, Chairman Martin was elected Student Body President and President of the North Carolina Association of Student Governments. In addition, he also served on the University Of North Carolina Board Of Trustees. Chairman Martin received a Masters in Public Policy from Duke University and a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School. Chairman Martin is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Federal Communications Bar Association.

Chairman Martin was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He currently resides in Washington, DC with his wife, Catherine Jurgensmeyer Martin, and his sons Luke and William.

Michael W. McConnell

Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School

Biography

Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.

Geoffrey P. Miller

Stuyvesant P. Comfort Professor of Law; Director, Center for Financial Institutions; and Co-Director, Center for Civil Justice, New York University School of Law

Biography

Geoffrey Miller is an author or editor of a dozen books and more than 200 articles in the fields of financial institutions, contract law, corporate and securities law, constitutional law, civil procedure, legal history, jurisprudence, and ancient law. He has taught a wide range of subjects including law and economics, corporations, compliance and risk management, property, regulation of financial institutions, land development, securities law, the legal profession, and legal theory. Miller received his BA magna cum laude from Princeton in 1973 and his JD from Columbia in 1978, where he was a Stone Scholar and editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He clerked for Judge Carl McGowan of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice Byron White of the US Supreme Court. After two years as an attorney adviser at the Office of Legal Counsel of the US Department of Justice and one year with a Washington, DC, law firm, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School in 1983 and NYU School of Law in 1995.

Miller has been a visiting professor or visiting scholar at Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Minnesota, University of Basel (Switzerland), University of Genoa (Italy), Collegio Carlo Alberto (Italy), Study Center Gerzensee (Switzerland), Vanderbilt University, University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), University of Frankfurt (Germany), University of Sydney (Australia), University of Auckland (New Zealand), and the Bank of Japan. Miller is a founder of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, a scholarly organization devoted to promoting statistical and other empirical techniques in the study of legal institutions. He is founder and director of NYU School of Law’s Center for Financial Institutions, co-director of the Center for Civil Justice, co-founder of and Senior Academic Fellow at NYU's Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement, co-convener of the Global Economic Policy Forum, a member of the board of directors of State Farm Bank, and a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

Biography

Judge O’Scannlain was appointed United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit by President Reagan on September 26, 1986. He received a J.D. degree in 1963 from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in 1957 from St. John’s University. He also earned the LL.M. (Judicial Process) degree at University of Virginia Law School in 1992. He was awarded the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by the University of Notre Dame in 2002, the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by Lewis & Clark College in 2003 and the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by the University of Portland in 2011.

As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Judge O’Scannlain has participated in over 6,000 federal cases and has written hundreds of published opinions on a broad range of subjects including constitutional law, international law, securities law, administrative law, and criminal law. He hears appeals in San Francisco (court headquarters), as well as in Los Angeles (Pasadena), Portland, Seattle, Anchorage and Honolulu. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Judge O'Scannlain to the Federal Judicial Center's Advisory Committee on Appellate Judge Education. In 2009, Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge O’Scannlain to the International Judicial Relations Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference and subsequently appointed him Chairman in 2010.

President George W. Bush appointed Judge O’Scannlain to the Board of Trustees of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation in 2004. Pope Benedict XVI conferred the Order of Saint Gregory the Great on Judge and Mrs. O’Scannlain in 2007.

Judge O’Scannlain’s professional interests also include judicial administration and reform, and continuing legal education. Judge O’Scannlain is former Chair of the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association and has previously chaired the ABA’s Appellate Judges Conference, its Committee on Appellate Practice, and its 9th Appellate Practice Institute. He has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on several occasions, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, and the Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals on the subject of court reorganization. In addition to serving as a faculty member at numerous federal appellate practice seminars for judges and attorneys, including New York University Law School’s Institute for Judicial Administration, Judge O’Scannlain is an Adjunct Professor at Lewis & Clark Law School where he teaches a seminar on the Supreme Court. He has served as a Moot Court Judge at distinguished law schools across the United States including Harvard, Yale Stanford, Boalt Hall (Berkeley Law), Virginia, Cornell, Notre Dame, Fordham, Alabama, University of Southern California, King Hall (U.C. Davis) and Loyola Marymount University and in China at Xiamen and Renmin Universities.

Between graduation from Harvard and investiture as a federal judge, Judge O’Scannlain was primarily engaged in private law practice. Between 1969 and 1974, he was consecutively the Deputy Attorney General of Oregon, the Public Utility Commissioner of Oregon, and Director of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. He retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in 1978 as a Major after 23 years Reserve and National Guard service, including four years as an enlisted man.

A first generation Irish-American son of immigrant parents from Sligo and Derry, Judge O’Scannlain is married to the former Maura Nolan and has eight children: Sean, Jane, Brendan, Kevin, Megan, Christopher, Anne, and Kate, and nineteen grandchildren. His chambers are in the Pioneer Courthouse in Portland, Oregon.

Theodore B. Olson

Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP

Biography

Theodore B. Olson is a Partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C. office; a founder of the Firm’s Crisis Management, Sports Law, and Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Groups.

Mr. Olson was Solicitor General of the United States during the period 2001-2004. From 1981-1984, he was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. Except for those two intervals, he has been a lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. since 1965.

Selected by Time magazine in 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Mr. Olson is one of the nation’s premier appellate and United States Supreme Court advocates. He has argued 65 cases in the Supreme Court and has prevailed in over 75% of those cases. These include the two Bush v Gore cases arising out of the 2000 presidential election; Citizens United v Federal Election Commission; Hollingsworth v Perry, the case affirming the overturning of California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages; Murphy v NCAA, overturning a federal law prohibiting states from authorizing sports betting; and U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security v Regents of the Univ. of Calif., challenging the Trump Administration’s rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”). Mr. Olson’s practice is concentrated on appellate and constitutional law, federal legislation, media and commercial disputes, and assisting clients with strategies for the containment, management and resolution of major legal crises. He has handled cases at all levels of state and federal court systems throughout the United States. Mr. Olson co-authored “Redeeming the Dream, the Case for Marriage Equality” with David Boies. Both were featured in HBO’s award-winning documentary, “The Case Against 8.”

Mr. Olson's Supreme Court arguments have included cases involving separation of powers; federalism; voting rights; the Tenth Amendment; the First Amendment; the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses; jury trial rights; punitive damages; takings of property; the Commerce Clause; administrative law; taxation; criminal law; sports wagering; copyright, patent and antitrust; securities; campaign finance; foreign sovereign immunities; telecommunications; the environment; the internet; the Supremacy Clause; and other federal constitutional and statutory questions. As Solicitor General, during the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Olson was the Government's principal advocate in the United States Supreme Court, responsible for supervising and coordinating all appellate litigation of the United States, and a legal adviser to the President and the Attorney General. As Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration, Mr. Olson was the Executive Branch's principal legal adviser, rendering legal guidance to the President and to the heads of the Executive Branch departments on a wide range of constitutional and federal statutory questions, and assisting in formulating and articulating the Executive Branch's position on constitutional issues.

Mr. Olson has served as private counsel to two Presidents, Ronald W. Reagan and George W. Bush, in addition to serving those two Presidents in high-level positions in the Department of Justice. He has twice been awarded the United States Department of Justice's Edmund J. Randolph Award, its highest award for public service and leadership, and also received the Department of Defense's Distinguished Public Service Award, its highest civilian award, for his advocacy in the courts of the United States, including the Supreme Court. He also received the American Bar Association Medal, its highest award for “exceptionally distinguished service by a lawyer or lawyers to the cause of American jurisprudence.” Mr. Olson is to receive the 2021 Jack Valenti Friend of the White House Fellows Award in the Fall of 2021 to be presented by the White House Fellows Foundation and Association.

Mr. Olson is a member of the Commission on White House Fellowships; a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation; a member of the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society; the Board of Directors of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; and the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial Foundation. He was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in 2007. He served on the President's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from 2006 to 2008; and of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2010 to 2020. He was Co-Chair of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy from 2008-2009, and served two terms on the Board of Directors of the National Center for State Courts.

Mr. Olson is a Fellow of both the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He has been repeatedly listed in legal publications as one of the nation’s leading appellate lawyers. The late New York Times columnist William Safire described Mr. Olson as his generation's "most persuasive advocate" before the Supreme Court and "the most effective Solicitor General in decades.”

Mr. Olson received his law degree in 1965 from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) where he was a member of the California Law Review and Order of the Coif. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of the Pacific, where he was recognized as the outstanding graduating student in both forensics and journalism. He has written and lectured extensively on appellate advocacy, oral communication in the courtroom, civil justice reform, and constitutional and administrative law.

William H. Pryor

Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

Biography

William H. Pryor Jr. serves as Chief Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

In 2013–18, he served on the United States Sentencing Commission and, in 2017–18, served as Acting Chair.

He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and previously taught as an adjunct professor at the Cumberland School of Law of Samford University.

He served as the 45th Attorney General of Alabama from 1997 to 2004. When he took office, he was the youngest attorney general in the nation. In his reelection, he received the highest percentage of votes of any statewide candidate.

He graduated magna cum laude from Tulane Law School where he finished first in the common-law curriculum and was editor in chief of the Tulane Law Review. He then served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

He is a member of The American Law Institute and an Adviser for the RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW THIRD, CONFLICT OF LAWS. He is a coauthor with Bryan Garner, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and several other judges of a treatise, THE LAW OF JUDICIAL PRECEDENT. He has published in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Yale Law & Policy Review, George Mason Law Review, Florida Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, and Tulane Law Review. He has published op-eds in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Review, and USA Today. He has debated at National Lawyers’ Conventions of the Federalist Society (including on National Public Radio) and at the Oxford Union in the United Kingdom. And he is listed among several “widely admired judicial writers” in Bryan Garner’s The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style.

He is a member of the Tulane Law School Hall of Fame and has received the Defender of the Constitution Award from the Heritage Foundation, the Jurist of the Year Award from the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and the St. Thomas More Award from the St. Thomas More Society of Atlanta. Judge Pryor is also a proud member of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.

Randall R. Rader

Chief Judge (ret.), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and Honorary Professor, Tsinghua University

Biography

Randall R. Rader was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in 1990 and served as Chief Judge from June 2010 to June 2014. He was appointed to the United States Claims Court (now the U. S. Court of Federal Claims) by President Ronald W. Reagan in 1988. Judge Rader's most prized title may well be "Professor Rader."

As Professor, Judge Rader has taught courses on patent law and other advanced intellectual property courses at The George Washington University Law School,University of Virginia School of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center, and other university programs in Tokyo, Taipei, New Delhi, and Beijing. Due to the size and diversity of his classes, Judge Rader may have taught patent law to more students than anyone else. Judge Rader has also co-authored several texts including the most widely used textbook on U. S. patent law, "Cases and Materials on Patent Law," (St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson/West 3d ed. 2009) and "Patent Law in a Nutshell," (St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson/West 2007) (translated into Chinese and Japanese). Judge Rader has won acclaim for leading dozens of government and educational delegations to every continent (except Antarctica), teaching rule of law and intellectual property law principles.

Judge Rader has received many awards, including the Sedona Lifetime Achievement Award for Intellectual Property Law, 2009; Distinguished Teaching Awards from George Washington University Law School, 2003 and 2008 (by election of the students); the Jefferson Medal from the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association, 2003; the Distinguished Service Award from the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, 2003; the J. William Fulbright Award for Distinguished Public Service from George Washington University Law School, 2000; and the Younger Federal Lawyer Award from the Federal Bar Association, 1983. Before appointment to the Court of Federal Claims, Judge Rader served as Minority and Majority Chief Counsel to Subcommittees of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. From 1975 to 1980, he served as Counsel in the House of Representatives for representatives serving on the Interior, Appropriations, and Ways and Means Committees. He received a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University in 1974 and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School in 1978.

BA, Brigham Young University
JD, George Washington University

A. Raymond Randolph

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit

Biography

Judge Randolph was confirmed by the Senate and appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in July 1990.

Judge Randolph received his B.S. degree in 1966 from Drexel University, majoring in economics and basic engineering. At Drexel, he was president of the debate society, vice president of the Student Senate, and a member of the varsity wrestling squad. In 1969, he received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude. Judge Randolph ranked first in his law school class all three years and was managing editor of the Law Review.

After graduation, Judge Randolph served as a law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.

Admitted to the California Bar in 1970 (and to the District of Columbia bar in 1973), Judge Randolph worked as Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C., 1970-1973.

After two years in private practice, Judge Randolph was named Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, a position he held from 1975-1977.

In 1979, Judge Randolph was appointed Special Counsel to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the Ethics Committee) of the United States House of Representatives, remaining in this position until 1980.

In the 1980s, Judge Randolph held a number of positions while in private practice, including Special Assistant Attorney General for the states of New Mexico (1985 90), Utah (1986-1990) and Montana (1983-1990). He also served as a Member of the Advisory Panel of the Federal Courts Study Committee.

From 1971-1990, Judge Randolph argued 23 times in the United States Supreme Court, winning 20 of his cases.

As an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center from 1974-1978 he taught courses in civil procedure and injunctions. In 1992 he taught a course in constitutional law. He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason School of Law and for the past ten years has been teaching First Amendment law. He also serves on the Judicial Advisory Board of the George Mason University Law and Economics Center.

From 1993 through 1995 Judge Randolph was a member of the Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and from 1995 to 1998 served as the Committee's chairman. He also served as the judicial liaison to the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law Section.

Judge Randolph is a member of the Board of Visitors at Drexel University Law School and was named to the “Drexel One Hundred” as a leading alumnus. In 2002 he was presented the James Wilson Award by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In November 2005 he delivered the Fifth Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Annual Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society. He has published numerous articles, the most recent of which is in the June 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Judge Randolph is married to the Honorable Eileen J. O’Connor, formerly Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. His son John Trevor Randolph is an investment banker in New York. His daughter Cynthia Lee Randolph is an artist living in San Francisco.

Stuart S. Taylor

Freelance Journalist and Author

Biography

Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.

Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.

Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.

Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.

Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.

Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.

Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

Abigail Thernstrom

Vice-chair, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Adjunct Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

Biography

Abigail Thernstrom is the vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York from 1993 to 2009, and a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education for more than a decade until her third term ended in November 2006. She also serves on the board of advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She received her Ph.D. in 1975 from the Department of Government, Harvard University.

In 2007 she and her husband, Stephan Thernstrom, along with James Q. Wilson, Martin Feldstein, and John Bolton, were the recipients of a Bradley Foundation prizes for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement.

Thernstrom and her husband, Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, are the co-authors of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (Simon & Schuster, October 2003), which has been awarded the 2007 Fordham Foundation prize for “for distinguished scholarship,” and was named by both the Los Angeles Times and the American School Board Journal as one of the best books of 2003.

They also collaborated on America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (Simon & Schuster), which the New York Times Book Review, in its annual end-of-the-year issue, named as one of the notable books of 1997.

They are the editors of a Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity. Their lengthy review of William G. Bowen and Derek Bok's much-noticed work, The Shape of the River, appeared in the June 1999 issue of the UCLA Law Review.

Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Harvard University Press) won four awards, including the American Bar Association's Certificate of Merit, and the Anisfield-Wolf prize for the best book on race and ethnicity. It was named the best policy studies book of that year by the Policy Studies Organization (an affiliate of the American Political Science Association), and won the Benchmark Book Award from the Center for Judicial Studies. Along with her husband, she also won the 2004 Peter Shaw Memorial Award given by National Association of Scholars.

She is currently completing a book entitled Voting Rights and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections, and is working, as well, with her husband on another book with the tentative title of Don’t Call it Segregation: The Myth of Contemporary Apartheid. She (and two co-authors) submitted an amicus brief in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, challenging the constitutionality of Seattle's racial balancing plan.

Her frequent media appearances have included Fox News Sunday, Good Morning America, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos. For some years, she was a stringer for The Economist, and continues to write for a variety of journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the (London) Times Literary Supplement.

She serves on several boards, and from 1992 to 1997 was a member of the Aspen Institute's Domestic Strategy Group.

Jonathan R. Turley

J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law; Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center; Executive Director, Project for Older Prisoners, The George Washington University Law School

Biography

Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. After a stint at Tulane Law School, Professor Turley joined the GW Law faculty in 1990, and in 1998, became the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history.

He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS). He has written more than three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals including those of Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, and Northwestern Universities, among others. He most recently completed a three-part study of the historical and constitutional evolution of the military system.

Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy; and four former U.S. Attorney Generals during the Clinton impeachment litigation. Professor Turley also has served as counsel in a variety of national security and terrorism cases, and has been ranked as one of the top 10 lawyers handling military cases.

He has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues, and is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He also is a nationally recognized legal commentator; he ranked 38th in the top 100 most cited ‘public intellectuals’ in a recent study by Judge Richard Posner and was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country.

He is a member of the USA Today board of contributors and the recipient of the “2005 Single Issue Advocate of the Year” – the annual opinion award for the Aspen Institute and The Week magazine. More than 400 of his articles on legal and policy issues regularly appear in national newspapers. He also has worked as the CBS and NBC legal analyst, respectively, during national controversies.

John C. Yoo

Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Biography

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.

Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.

Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.

Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.

Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.

Mary Beth Buchanan

President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer, Merkle Science

Biography

Mary Beth Buchanan is currently President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer at Merkle Science. She was former General Counsel for Kraken Cryptocurrency Exchange. She was a partner at Bryan Cave LLP in the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations and Securities Litigation and Enforcement Client Service Groups. She concentrated her practice on white collar criminal defense, SEC and FINRA enforcement matters, corporate and accounting fraud, internal investigations, corporate compliance, foreign corrupt practices violations, Congressional investigations and complex civil litigation.

Ms. Buchanan served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania from September 2001 to November 2009, having been appointed by President George W. Bush. She is the only woman in Pennsylvania's history to be presidentially appointed to this position. As the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan oversaw the prosecution of more than 5,000 cases, including corporate and securities fraud, bank fraud, foreign corrupt practices, false claims, money laundering, health care fraud, public corruption and a broad range of violent crimes. Prior to that time, Ms. Buchanan spent more than 13 years as an Assistant United States Attorney litigating criminal, civil and appellate cases.

During her tenure as the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan also held several posts at the DOJ, including serving as the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, acting director of the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women and chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. Ms. Buchanan also served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Organizational Guidelines Advisory Committee, which made recommendations to the Commission for amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines for Business Organizations.

William J. Haynes

Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor, Blacklake Group

Biography

Jim Haynes is Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor of Blacklake Group (a privately held holding company) and concurrently advises several early and mid-stage privately held emerging technology companies, Nichols Law, and the Torridon Group.

Twice a partner in a major national law firm, Jim also previously served as a corporate executive at four public companies: General Dynamics Corporation (as Staff Vice President and Associate General Counsel from 1996-1999), Chevron Corporation (as Chief Corporate Counsel from 2008-2012); Siga Technologies, Inc. (as EVP & General Counsel from 2012-2016); and CSRA Inc. (as EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary from 2016-2018, at the end of which the company was acquired for $9.7B.)

Jim has held two presidentially appointed offices requiring Senate confirmation: General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1990-1993, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2001-2008. Chief Legal Officer and Designated Agency Ethics Officer of both departments during highly consequential times, Jim also served as Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency from 2001-2008.

Jim earned degrees from Davidson College and Harvard Law School, and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Stetson Law School. After a judicial clerkship with Judge James B. McMillan (USDJ, WDNC), Jim served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army. He is the recipient of a significant number of awards and medals from the Departments of Defense, Justice, Army, Navy, and Air Force. Jim holds a patent issued in 2025: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12367458.

For several months in 1999, Jim worked in Almaty, Kazakhstan, volunteering assistance for Mercy Corps International in managing microcredit services across six countries in Central Asia. A former Eagle Scout, Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Greater New York City Councils of the Boy Scouts of America from 2013-2023. He has served as director or advisor on many other boards.

He currently is a director or trustee of three boards: Labrynth (labrynth.ai), the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the William T. Coleman, Jr. Foundation.

Mary Beth Buchanan

President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer, Merkle Science

Biography

Mary Beth Buchanan is currently President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer at Merkle Science. She was former General Counsel for Kraken Cryptocurrency Exchange. She was a partner at Bryan Cave LLP in the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations and Securities Litigation and Enforcement Client Service Groups. She concentrated her practice on white collar criminal defense, SEC and FINRA enforcement matters, corporate and accounting fraud, internal investigations, corporate compliance, foreign corrupt practices violations, Congressional investigations and complex civil litigation.

Ms. Buchanan served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania from September 2001 to November 2009, having been appointed by President George W. Bush. She is the only woman in Pennsylvania's history to be presidentially appointed to this position. As the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan oversaw the prosecution of more than 5,000 cases, including corporate and securities fraud, bank fraud, foreign corrupt practices, false claims, money laundering, health care fraud, public corruption and a broad range of violent crimes. Prior to that time, Ms. Buchanan spent more than 13 years as an Assistant United States Attorney litigating criminal, civil and appellate cases.

During her tenure as the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan also held several posts at the DOJ, including serving as the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, acting director of the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women and chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. Ms. Buchanan also served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Organizational Guidelines Advisory Committee, which made recommendations to the Commission for amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines for Business Organizations.

William J. Haynes

Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor, Blacklake Group

Biography

Jim Haynes is Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor of Blacklake Group (a privately held holding company) and concurrently advises several early and mid-stage privately held emerging technology companies, Nichols Law, and the Torridon Group.

Twice a partner in a major national law firm, Jim also previously served as a corporate executive at four public companies: General Dynamics Corporation (as Staff Vice President and Associate General Counsel from 1996-1999), Chevron Corporation (as Chief Corporate Counsel from 2008-2012); Siga Technologies, Inc. (as EVP & General Counsel from 2012-2016); and CSRA Inc. (as EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary from 2016-2018, at the end of which the company was acquired for $9.7B.)

Jim has held two presidentially appointed offices requiring Senate confirmation: General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1990-1993, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2001-2008. Chief Legal Officer and Designated Agency Ethics Officer of both departments during highly consequential times, Jim also served as Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency from 2001-2008.

Jim earned degrees from Davidson College and Harvard Law School, and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Stetson Law School. After a judicial clerkship with Judge James B. McMillan (USDJ, WDNC), Jim served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army. He is the recipient of a significant number of awards and medals from the Departments of Defense, Justice, Army, Navy, and Air Force. Jim holds a patent issued in 2025: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12367458.

For several months in 1999, Jim worked in Almaty, Kazakhstan, volunteering assistance for Mercy Corps International in managing microcredit services across six countries in Central Asia. A former Eagle Scout, Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Greater New York City Councils of the Boy Scouts of America from 2013-2023. He has served as director or advisor on many other boards.

He currently is a director or trustee of three boards: Labrynth (labrynth.ai), the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the William T. Coleman, Jr. Foundation.

William J. Haynes

Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor, Blacklake Group

Biography

Jim Haynes is Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor of Blacklake Group (a privately held holding company) and concurrently advises several early and mid-stage privately held emerging technology companies, Nichols Law, and the Torridon Group.

Twice a partner in a major national law firm, Jim also previously served as a corporate executive at four public companies: General Dynamics Corporation (as Staff Vice President and Associate General Counsel from 1996-1999), Chevron Corporation (as Chief Corporate Counsel from 2008-2012); Siga Technologies, Inc. (as EVP & General Counsel from 2012-2016); and CSRA Inc. (as EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary from 2016-2018, at the end of which the company was acquired for $9.7B.)

Jim has held two presidentially appointed offices requiring Senate confirmation: General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1990-1993, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2001-2008. Chief Legal Officer and Designated Agency Ethics Officer of both departments during highly consequential times, Jim also served as Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency from 2001-2008.

Jim earned degrees from Davidson College and Harvard Law School, and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Stetson Law School. After a judicial clerkship with Judge James B. McMillan (USDJ, WDNC), Jim served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army. He is the recipient of a significant number of awards and medals from the Departments of Defense, Justice, Army, Navy, and Air Force. Jim holds a patent issued in 2025: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12367458.

For several months in 1999, Jim worked in Almaty, Kazakhstan, volunteering assistance for Mercy Corps International in managing microcredit services across six countries in Central Asia. A former Eagle Scout, Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Greater New York City Councils of the Boy Scouts of America from 2013-2023. He has served as director or advisor on many other boards.

He currently is a director or trustee of three boards: Labrynth (labrynth.ai), the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the William T. Coleman, Jr. Foundation.

Eric J. Kadel

Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

Biography

Eric Kadel is engaged in a wide variety of corporate, transactional and regulatory matters. He is a member of the Firm’s Corporate and Finance, Financial Services, Investment Management, Alternative Investment Management, Cybersecurity, and Commodities, Futures and Derivatives Groups. With regard to financings, Mr. Kadel regularly represents participants in capital markets transactions, and dealers and end users in connection with structuring and documenting a wide variety of swaps and other derivatives, including equity, credit default and commodity swaps, options and forwards. Mr. Kadel’s work in the investment management area includes advising public and private investment companies and investment advisers on a wide variety of transactional, regulatory, compliance and other matters, including registration and regulation. Mr. Kadel also advises clients of the Firm regarding developments in the laws regulating the financial services industry and on cybersecurity issues. Mr. Kadel is currently an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School.

In addition, Mr. Kadel is one of the principal partners in the Firm’s International Trade and Investment practice. He counsels and represents clients on questions about U.S. economic sanctions, including those administered by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), United States antiboycott requirements under the Export Administration Regulations administered and enforced by the Commerce Department’s Office of Antiboycott Compliance within the Bureau of Industry and Security, Bank Secrecy Act/anti‐money laundering laws and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). Mr. Kadel’s practice includes analysis of proposed transactions and business relationships; due diligence and design and review of compliance procedures and strategies; and internal investigations, voluntary disclosures and government enforcement actions. Mr. Kadel also regularly advises clients regarding questions arising under Exon-Florio and the transaction review process administered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”), and has represented clients before CFIUS on many national security reviews.

Timothy J. Keeler

Partner, Mayer Brown

Biography

Prof. Tim Keeler, an attorney in the Government and International Trade Group, joined Mayer Brown in 2009, and brings an in-depth knowledge of international trade law and economic policy matters, and a history of working in the Executive Branch and Congress on major economic, legislative and regulatory issues.

Prior to joining Mayer Brown, Professor Keeler served in a variety of senior positions in the U.S. Government for almost 12 years. Most recently he was the Chief of Staff in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2006 - 2009, where he oversaw implementation of U.S. policy, strategy and negotiations involving all aspects of international trade and investment matters. He worked on a number of key issues including: climate change and trade; US and China relations; WTO negotiations and litigation; free trade agreement negotiations and implementation; and CFIUS decisions.

Before working for USTR, Prof. Keeler spent more than five years at the Treasury Department from 2001 – 2006. He joined the Office of Legislative Affairs in 2001 as a Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for International Issues, where he was responsible for Treasury’s legislative strategy on issues including capital market sanctions, foreign exchange rate policy testimony, appropriations for U.S. agreements to replenish the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks, multilateral debt relief, and U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund. He later managed the Office of Legislative Affairs from 2002 - 2006 and assisted on all policy and personnel issues in the Office. This included leading Treasury nominees through the U.S. Senate confirmation process, legislative strategy on Treasury Intelligence and Terrorist Financing matters, and advising on major economic legislative initiatives such as the 2003 tax cuts and social security reform proposals.

Prof. Keeler also served on the Presidential Transition Team in 2000–2001 as a policy coordinator on export control and trade remedy policy, handling the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration (now called the Bureau of Industry and Security) and the International Trade Commission (ITC).

Earlier in his career, Prof. Keeler served as a professional staff member for international trade on the US Senate Finance Committee under Chairman William V. Roth (R-DE). There he worked on legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) between the U.S. and China, preferential trade programs for Sub-Saharan Africa (the African Growth and Opportunity Act) and the Caribbean basin, the Generalized System of Preferences, legislation to bring the U.S. into compliance with the WTO decision on the Foreign Sales Corporation provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, and the miscellaneous tariff bill.

In recognition of his government service, Prof. Keeler was awarded the USTR Distinguished Service Award, the Treasury Distinguished Service Award, and the Treasury Secretary’s Honor Award twice.

Prof. Keeler is also an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Law, co-teaching a course on U.S. and WTO law, policy, and politics; is a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington International Trade Foundation; and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prof. Keeler has spoken at conferences on international trade and economic issues sponsored by, inter alia, the American Bar Association (Climate Change and Trade, March 2009), the Korea Economic Institute (the U.S. – Korea Free Trade Agreement, October 2010), and the U.S.-China Business Council (Sec. 421 tires safeguard case, July 2009; and the U.S. – China Economic and Political Relationship, January 2010).

Donald J. Rosenberg

Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, Qualcomm

Biography

Donald J. Rosenberg is executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Qualcomm Incorporated. Mr. Rosenberg reports directly to CEO Steve Mollenkopf and is a member of the company's Executive Committee. In his role as chief legal officer, he is responsible for overseeing Qualcomm's worldwide legal affairs including litigation, intellectual property and corporate matters. Qualcomm's Government Affairs, Internal Audit and Compliance organizations also report to him.

Prior to joining Qualcomm, Mr. Rosenberg served as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Apple Inc. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and general counsel of IBM Corporation where he had also held numerous positions including vice president and assistant general counsel for litigation and counsel to IBM's mainframe division.

Mr. Rosenberg has had extensive experience in corporate governance, compliance, law department management, litigation, securities regulation, intellectual property and competition issues.

Mr. Rosenberg is a board member of NuVasive, Inc., Corporate Directors Forum, CONNECT, La Jolla Music Society, La Jolla Playhouse and a trustee of Rady Children's Hospital San Diego and the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. He is immediate past National Co-Chairman of the Board of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he continues to serve on the Board and the Executive Committee.

Mr. Rosenberg is a member of the International Advisory Board, University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Global Policy and Strategy. He is also a member of the China Leadership Board for the 21st Century China Center at the UCSD. He has served as an adjunct professor of law at New York's Pace University School of Law, where he taught courses in intellectual property and antitrust law.

Mr. Rosenberg received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his juris doctor from St. John's University School of Law.

William J. Haynes

Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor, Blacklake Group

Biography

Jim Haynes is Executive Vice President and Strategic Counselor of Blacklake Group (a privately held holding company) and concurrently advises several early and mid-stage privately held emerging technology companies, Nichols Law, and the Torridon Group.

Twice a partner in a major national law firm, Jim also previously served as a corporate executive at four public companies: General Dynamics Corporation (as Staff Vice President and Associate General Counsel from 1996-1999), Chevron Corporation (as Chief Corporate Counsel from 2008-2012); Siga Technologies, Inc. (as EVP & General Counsel from 2012-2016); and CSRA Inc. (as EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary from 2016-2018, at the end of which the company was acquired for $9.7B.)

Jim has held two presidentially appointed offices requiring Senate confirmation: General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1990-1993, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2001-2008. Chief Legal Officer and Designated Agency Ethics Officer of both departments during highly consequential times, Jim also served as Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency from 2001-2008.

Jim earned degrees from Davidson College and Harvard Law School, and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Stetson Law School. After a judicial clerkship with Judge James B. McMillan (USDJ, WDNC), Jim served four years on active duty in the U.S. Army. He is the recipient of a significant number of awards and medals from the Departments of Defense, Justice, Army, Navy, and Air Force. Jim holds a patent issued in 2025: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12367458.

For several months in 1999, Jim worked in Almaty, Kazakhstan, volunteering assistance for Mercy Corps International in managing microcredit services across six countries in Central Asia. A former Eagle Scout, Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Greater New York City Councils of the Boy Scouts of America from 2013-2023. He has served as director or advisor on many other boards.

He currently is a director or trustee of three boards: Labrynth (labrynth.ai), the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the William T. Coleman, Jr. Foundation.

Eric J. Kadel

Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

Biography

Eric Kadel is engaged in a wide variety of corporate, transactional and regulatory matters. He is a member of the Firm’s Corporate and Finance, Financial Services, Investment Management, Alternative Investment Management, Cybersecurity, and Commodities, Futures and Derivatives Groups. With regard to financings, Mr. Kadel regularly represents participants in capital markets transactions, and dealers and end users in connection with structuring and documenting a wide variety of swaps and other derivatives, including equity, credit default and commodity swaps, options and forwards. Mr. Kadel’s work in the investment management area includes advising public and private investment companies and investment advisers on a wide variety of transactional, regulatory, compliance and other matters, including registration and regulation. Mr. Kadel also advises clients of the Firm regarding developments in the laws regulating the financial services industry and on cybersecurity issues. Mr. Kadel is currently an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School.

In addition, Mr. Kadel is one of the principal partners in the Firm’s International Trade and Investment practice. He counsels and represents clients on questions about U.S. economic sanctions, including those administered by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), United States antiboycott requirements under the Export Administration Regulations administered and enforced by the Commerce Department’s Office of Antiboycott Compliance within the Bureau of Industry and Security, Bank Secrecy Act/anti‐money laundering laws and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). Mr. Kadel’s practice includes analysis of proposed transactions and business relationships; due diligence and design and review of compliance procedures and strategies; and internal investigations, voluntary disclosures and government enforcement actions. Mr. Kadel also regularly advises clients regarding questions arising under Exon-Florio and the transaction review process administered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”), and has represented clients before CFIUS on many national security reviews.

Timothy J. Keeler

Partner, Mayer Brown

Biography

Prof. Tim Keeler, an attorney in the Government and International Trade Group, joined Mayer Brown in 2009, and brings an in-depth knowledge of international trade law and economic policy matters, and a history of working in the Executive Branch and Congress on major economic, legislative and regulatory issues.

Prior to joining Mayer Brown, Professor Keeler served in a variety of senior positions in the U.S. Government for almost 12 years. Most recently he was the Chief of Staff in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2006 - 2009, where he oversaw implementation of U.S. policy, strategy and negotiations involving all aspects of international trade and investment matters. He worked on a number of key issues including: climate change and trade; US and China relations; WTO negotiations and litigation; free trade agreement negotiations and implementation; and CFIUS decisions.

Before working for USTR, Prof. Keeler spent more than five years at the Treasury Department from 2001 – 2006. He joined the Office of Legislative Affairs in 2001 as a Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for International Issues, where he was responsible for Treasury’s legislative strategy on issues including capital market sanctions, foreign exchange rate policy testimony, appropriations for U.S. agreements to replenish the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks, multilateral debt relief, and U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund. He later managed the Office of Legislative Affairs from 2002 - 2006 and assisted on all policy and personnel issues in the Office. This included leading Treasury nominees through the U.S. Senate confirmation process, legislative strategy on Treasury Intelligence and Terrorist Financing matters, and advising on major economic legislative initiatives such as the 2003 tax cuts and social security reform proposals.

Prof. Keeler also served on the Presidential Transition Team in 2000–2001 as a policy coordinator on export control and trade remedy policy, handling the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration (now called the Bureau of Industry and Security) and the International Trade Commission (ITC).

Earlier in his career, Prof. Keeler served as a professional staff member for international trade on the US Senate Finance Committee under Chairman William V. Roth (R-DE). There he worked on legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) between the U.S. and China, preferential trade programs for Sub-Saharan Africa (the African Growth and Opportunity Act) and the Caribbean basin, the Generalized System of Preferences, legislation to bring the U.S. into compliance with the WTO decision on the Foreign Sales Corporation provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, and the miscellaneous tariff bill.

In recognition of his government service, Prof. Keeler was awarded the USTR Distinguished Service Award, the Treasury Distinguished Service Award, and the Treasury Secretary’s Honor Award twice.

Prof. Keeler is also an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Law, co-teaching a course on U.S. and WTO law, policy, and politics; is a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington International Trade Foundation; and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prof. Keeler has spoken at conferences on international trade and economic issues sponsored by, inter alia, the American Bar Association (Climate Change and Trade, March 2009), the Korea Economic Institute (the U.S. – Korea Free Trade Agreement, October 2010), and the U.S.-China Business Council (Sec. 421 tires safeguard case, July 2009; and the U.S. – China Economic and Political Relationship, January 2010).

Donald J. Rosenberg

Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, Qualcomm

Biography

Donald J. Rosenberg is executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Qualcomm Incorporated. Mr. Rosenberg reports directly to CEO Steve Mollenkopf and is a member of the company's Executive Committee. In his role as chief legal officer, he is responsible for overseeing Qualcomm's worldwide legal affairs including litigation, intellectual property and corporate matters. Qualcomm's Government Affairs, Internal Audit and Compliance organizations also report to him.

Prior to joining Qualcomm, Mr. Rosenberg served as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Apple Inc. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and general counsel of IBM Corporation where he had also held numerous positions including vice president and assistant general counsel for litigation and counsel to IBM's mainframe division.

Mr. Rosenberg has had extensive experience in corporate governance, compliance, law department management, litigation, securities regulation, intellectual property and competition issues.

Mr. Rosenberg is a board member of NuVasive, Inc., Corporate Directors Forum, CONNECT, La Jolla Music Society, La Jolla Playhouse and a trustee of Rady Children's Hospital San Diego and the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. He is immediate past National Co-Chairman of the Board of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he continues to serve on the Board and the Executive Committee.

Mr. Rosenberg is a member of the International Advisory Board, University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Global Policy and Strategy. He is also a member of the China Leadership Board for the 21st Century China Center at the UCSD. He has served as an adjunct professor of law at New York's Pace University School of Law, where he taught courses in intellectual property and antitrust law.

Mr. Rosenberg received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his juris doctor from St. John's University School of Law.

Michael Chertoff

Senior Of Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP and Executive Chairma, The Chertoff Group

Biography

Michael Chertoff concentrates in the area of White Collar Defense and Investigations. In recent years, he has handled a series of federal investigations, including complex criminal and civil regulatory matters. He has advised major clients on SEC and Justice Department investigations and successfully served as the independent monitor of a major national healthcare company under criminal and civil investigation.

In addition to his legal work, Mr. Chertoff is Founder and Chairman of The Chertoff Group, a security and risk management firm, where he provides high-level strategic counsel to corporate and government leaders on a broad range of security issues, from risk identification and prevention to preparedness, response and recovery.

In April of 2012, Mr. Chertoff was elected as the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of BAE Systems, Inc. He also sits on the board of directors or board of advisors of a number of companies and nonprofits.

Previously, Mr. Chertoff served as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. As Secretary, he led a 218,000 person department with a budget of $50 billion. Mr. Chertoff developed and implemented border security and immigration policy; promulgated homeland security regulations; and spearheaded a national cyber security strategy. He also served periodically on the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, and on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Prior to his appointment to the Cabinet, Mr. Chertoff served from 2003 to 2005 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Before becoming a federal judge, Mr. Chertoff was the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In that position, he oversaw the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and formed the Enron Task Force, which produced more than 20 convictions, including those of CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay.

Mr. Chertoff’s career includes more than a decade as a federal prosecutor, including service as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Chertoff investigated and personally prosecuted significant cases of political corruption, organized crime, and corporate fraud.

From 1994-2001, Mr. Chertoff represented major corporations and individuals in numerous white collar investigations and trials. Among other matters, he successfully represented the nation’s largest hospital company in a four year, multi-jurisdictional criminal and civil investigation, represented major corporations in corruption scandals, and obtained acquittals at trial for individual criminal defendants.

Mr. Chertoff has received numerous awards including the Department of Justice Henry E. Petersen Memorial Award (2006); the Department of Justice John Marshall Award for Trial of Litigation (1987); NAACP Benjamin L. Hooks Award for Distinguished Service (2007); European Institute Transatlantic Leadership Award (2008); and two honorary doctorates. His trial experiences have been featured in over half a dozen books and many news articles.

Harvard Law School, J.D., 1978 magna cum laude
Harvard University, B.A., 1975 magna cum laude