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President

William Shafer

Affirmative Action and its Effect on the Legal Field
This event has concluded.
Apr 8 2025
Tuesday 1:00 p.m. CDT    

Affirmative Action and its Effect on the Legal Field

Missouri-Columbia Student Chapter

Hulston Hall
Hulston Hall
Columbia, MO 65201
Speakers:
Alison E. Somin
Topics:
Affirmative Action
Sponsors:
Missouri - Columbia Student Chapter
  • In-Person Event
Immigration Symposium
This event has concluded.
Oct 17 2024
Thursday 5:30 p.m. CDT    

Immigration Symposium

Missouri-Columbia Student Chapter

Hulston Hall, Mizzou Law School
Hulston Hall
Columbia, MO 65201
Speakers:
Ilya Somin
Sponsors:
Missouri - Columbia Student Chapter
  • In-Person Event
Debate on the Marketplace of Ideas
This event has concluded.
Sep 12 2024
Thursday 1:00 p.m. CDT    

Debate on the Marketplace of Ideas

Missouri-Columbia Student Chapter

Mizzou Law School
Hulston Hall
Columbia, MO 65211
Speakers:
Gary Myers • Russell L. Weaver
Sponsors:
Missouri - Columbia Student Chapter
  • In-Person Event
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Speaker Information
Alison E. Somin

Alison E. Somin

Legal Fellow, Center for the Separation of Powers, Pacific Legal Foundation

Biography

Alison Somin joined Pacific Legal Foundation in May 2020 as a legal fellow in the Center for the Separation of Powers and part of the equality before the law practice group.

Before joining the Pacific Legal Foundation team, Alison was a special assistant and counsel for over a decade to Gail Heriot, a member of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also has deep roots in the liberty movement. Alison was a Koch Associate at the National Federation for Independent Business Legal Foundation and, during law school, completed summer clerkships at the Institute for Justice and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. She holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in history from Dartmouth College.

Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Journal, Texas Journal of Law and Politics, and The Federalist Society’s Engage magazine and blog.

She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Ilya; two children; and golden retriever Willow. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking and cooking, children’s art projects, and training and exercising Willow.

 

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Speaker Information
Ilya Somin

Ilya Somin

Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights.  He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press,  revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017).  Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.

Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times,  CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report,  South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor,  the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.

Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.

Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research.  Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003.  In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.

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Speaker Information
Gary Myers

Gary Myers

Earl F. Nelson Professor of Law, University of Missouri at Columbia School of Law

Biography

Gary Myers is the Earl F. Nelson Professor of Law at the School of Law. Myers received his juris doctor with honors from Duke University School of Law and graduated summa cum laudewith a bachelor’s degree in economics from New York University. He also earned an MA in economics from the Duke University Graduate School as part of a joint degree program while at Duke. Myers was an article editor on the Duke Law Journaland was a member of the Moot Court Board. After graduation, he served as a law clerk for Judge Gerald Tjoflat of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Jacksonville, Fla. He then practiced complex commercial litigation with the Atlanta law firm of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, which has since merged with the Bryan Cave law firm.

Before serving as the sixteenth dean at the School of Law from 2012 to 2016, Myers was a long-time member of the faculty at the University of Mississippi School of Law. At Mississippi, Myers held the Ray & Louise Stewart Lectureship and served as its first associate dean for research. Myers has been a visiting professor of law at the College of William & Mary School of Law and Tulane University School of Law. He also served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans.

Myers is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a member of the American Law and Economics Association, and a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.  He is the author or coauthor of a series of five books: (1) Intellectual Property: Cases & Materials (West 4th edition 2012); (2) Principles of Intellectual Property (West 2d edition 2012); (3) Entertainment Law: Cases & Materials (West 5th edition 2016); (4) Intellectual Property: Questions & Answers (LexisNexis 2d edition 2014); and (5) The Intersection of Intellectual Property & Antitrust Law (West 2007). He is also the author of more than a dozen articles, including publications in the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Washington & Lee Law Review, the Columbia-VLA Journal of Law & the Arts and the Journal of Intellectual Property Law.

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Speaker Information

Russell L. Weaver

Professor at Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville

Biography

Professor Russell L. Weaver graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri School of Law in 1978. He was a member of the Missouri Law Review, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and won the Judge Roy Harper Prize. After law school, Professor Weaver was associated with Watson, Ess, Marshall & Enggas in Kansas City, Missouri, and worked for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of General Counsel in Washington, D.C.

Professor Weaver began teaching at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law in 1982, and holds the rank of Professor of Law and Distinguished University Scholar. He teaches Constitutional Law, Advanced Constitutional Law, Remedies, Administrative Law, Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure. He has received the Brandeis School of Law's awards for teaching, scholarship, and service, including the Brown Todd & Heyburn Fellowship. He has been awarded the President's Award (University of Louisville) for Outstanding Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in the Field of Social Science, the President's Award for Outstanding Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in the Career Achievement Category, and the President's Award for Distinguished Service. He is the Executive Director and past president of the Southeastern Conference of the Association of American Law Schools. He is an Honorary Associate of Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia).

Professor Weaver is a prolific author who has written dozens of books and articles over the last twenty-five years. He was named the Judge Spurgeon Bell Distinguished Visiting Professor at South Texas College of Law (affiliated with Texas A & M University) during the 1998-99 academic year, and he held the Herbert Herff Chair of Excellence at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis, during 1992-93. In addition, he has been asked to speak at law schools and conferences around the world, and has been a visiting professor at law schools in France, England, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada.

Professor Weaver is particularly noted for his work in the constitutional law area. He has served as a consultant to the constitutional drafting commissions of Belarus and Kyrghyzstan and as a commentator on the Russian Constitution. His constitutional law writings have focused on free speech issues, particularly those relating to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, and include a constitutional law case-book and two anthologies (The First Amendment Anthology and The Constitutional Law Anthology). He has a First Amendment casebook in progress.

Professor Weaver is also noted for his writings on legal education and his work in the administrative law area. In 1992 and 1993, he served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States. His writings have focused on agency interpretations of statutes and regulations, and he is co-author of one of the leading administrative law casebooks.

Professor Weaver has served on many community and professional committees. He served on the Louisville Bar Association's (LBA) Professional Responsibility Committee, and as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools' (AALS) Criminal Justice Section and serves on the AALS Planning Committee for the New Law Teacher's Workshop. He has also served on the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky's Legal Panel and Board of Directors.


Served as a consultant to the constitutional drafting commissions of Kyrghyzstanand Belarus and as a commentator on the Russian Constitution; formerly workedin the Office of General Counsel in the Department of Energy; consultant to theAdministrative Conference of the United States. 
J.D., cum laude, University of Missouri Law School
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