Partner and Executive Director, Christie 55 Solutions LLC
Rich Bagger is a Partner and Executive Director of Christie 55 Solutions, a New Jersey based consulting firm that provides strategic counsel to assist clients with business strategies and opportunities and with complex public policy and regulatory challenges at the state, federal and international levels. Rich is also an Adjunct Faculty member at Rutgers University and a member of the Board of Directors of Tonix Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to joining Christie 55 Solutions, Rich worked in the health sector for over 25 years, including as the senior most global Corporate Affairs executive for two major biopharmaceutical companies and as legal counsel for a large health plan. From 2012 through 2019, he was Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Market Access for Celgene Corporation, as well as a member of the company’s Executive Committee. During a 16-year career with Pfizer Inc, Rich served from 2006 to 2009 on Pfizer’s senior most management team as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Public Affairs and Policy. Prior to joining Pfizer, Rich was Assistant General Counsel of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey and before that practiced law with McCarter & English.
Rich has a record of public service that spans more than three decades. From 2012 until 2021, he served as a Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and was Chair of the Gateway Program Development Corporation for 2017. For six months during 2016, Rich led pre-election transition planning as Executive Director of Trump for America. Rich served from 2010 to 2012 as Chief of Staff for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, responsible for managing implementation of the Governor’s policy agenda and priorities. He was also elected to serve five terms in the New Jersey General Assembly, where he chaired the Appropriations Committee and was elected by his colleagues as Majority Conference Leader. In 2001, Rich was elected to the New Jersey Senate and served there until 2003. Before his election to the Legislature, he was a Council Member and Mayor of Westfield, New Jersey.
Rich served as Board Chair of the National Pharmaceutical Council for 2019 and is a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he chaired the Global Innovation Policy Center from 2014 to 2018. He is also on the Board of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and the Advisory Board for the Lerner Center for the Study of Pharmaceutical Management at Rutgers University Business School.
He received an A.B. degree from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and a J.D. degree from Rutgers University Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Michael B. Brennan was confirmed and sworn in as a Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in May 2018.
He previously worked as a partner in the Milwaukee law firm of Gass Weber Mullins LLC, where he tried cases and handled appeals in federal and state courts, as a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit, where he presided over a variety of criminal and civil calendars, and as an assistant district attorney in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office.
Brennan’s undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame, and his law degree from Northwestern University School of Law, where he was an editor on the law review and the moot court champion. He served as a law clerk on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Dean Emeritus and Harvey R. Miller Professor of Law & Economics, Columbia Law School
David Schizer served as Dean of Columbia Law School from 2004 to 2014, and as CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a global Jewish humanitarian organization, from 2017 to 2019. A co-chair of Columbia University's new task force on antisemitism, he also is a co-founder and co-chair of the Center for Israeli Legal Studies at Columbia Law School; co-founder and co-chair of the Richman Center for Law, Business, and Public Policy; and a Charter Trustee of Ramaz. He served as a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Executive Director, College Autism Network
Lee Burdette Williams has worked in higher education and student affairs for more than three decades and is now Executive Director of the College Autism Network, a nonprofit organization supporting the efforts of autistic college students and the institutions that serve them. She served previously as the Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and Dean of Students at the University of Connecticut.
Lee’s professional interests include student mental health, academic partnerships, learning communities and student culture. A particular interest is in the experiences of autistic students in student conduct processes. She has written extensively on these and other topics and is a frequent speaker and presenter on contemporary issues in higher education. Lee is the author of two books, Emerging Practices and Trends in Peer Education and Learning Communities in Student Affairs: Partnering for Powerful Learning. She is the director of the College Autism Summit, an annual conference that brings together professionals working to support college students with autism. Lee has taught in the student affairs graduate programs at the University of Vermont, the University of Connecticut, Appalachian State University, and the University of Maryland College Park. She received her Ph.D. in College Student Personnel Administration from the University of Maryland College Park, her M.Ed. in Counseling from Salem State University, and her B.A. from Gordon College.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Robin Fretwell Wilson is the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
A scholar in family law, bioethics and law and religion, Professor Wilson has worked extensively on behalf of state and federal law reform efforts in each realm.
Across two decades, she has worked to secure laws protecting the autonomy of patients to decide when they will be used to teach intimate exams to medical students, laws now in place in 22 states—sixteen of which have been enacted since 2019.
Professor Wilson is known for bridging differences in the culture war. In 2015, she spent a month in residence with the Utah legislature, helping Utah state lawmakers to pass anti-discrimination legislation that balances religious liberty and LGBT rights. In 2019, Professor Wilson assisted the governor of Utah to craft regulations banning gay conversion therapy. In 2019, she also aided U.S. Representative Chris Stewart with portions of the “Fairness for All” he introduced in Congress. A member of the American Law Institute and a Fulbright Specialist, Professor Wilson has served as a consultant to the United Arab Emirates’ Judicial Department as they sought to create a parallel court system for the adjudication by expatriates of family law matters using the laws of their home country or of their faith traditions.
Professor Wilson is the author of 20 books, including her 2018 book, Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground, with Yale University Professor William Eskridge, Jr., which is now in paperback at Cambridge University Press. Her other books include: The Contested Place of Religion in Family Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018, ed.), Reconceiving the Family: Critical Reflections on the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (Cambridge University Press, 2006, ed.); The Handbook of Children, Culture & Violence (Sage Publications, 2006, with Nancy Dowd and Dorothy Singer, eds.); Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, with Douglas Laycock and Anthony Picarello, eds.); Health Law and Bioethics: Cases in Context (Aspen, 2008, with Joan Krause, Sandra Johnson, and Richard Saver, eds.); Domestic Relations: Cases and Materials, 8th edition (Foundation Press, 2017, with Walter Wadlington and Raymond C. O’Brien); and Understanding Family Law, 4th edition (LexisNexis, 2013, with John DeWitt Gregory and Peter N. Swisher). Her articles have appeared in the Boston College Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Illinois Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, San Diego Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, and Washington and Lee Law Review, as well as in numerous peer-reviewed journals.
In 2010 and again in 2016, Professor Wilson was ranked among the Top Ten Family Law Scholars in the United States for scholarly impact. She ranks among the Top 10% of Authors in all time downloads on the Social Science Research Network. Professor Wilson’s scholarship has been cited by the Fifth, Seventh and Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Minnesota Court of Appeals, lower federal courts, and the Supreme Courts of Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, and Washington.
Professor Wilson’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News and World Report, ABA Journal, Chronicle of Higher Education, Chicago Tribune, CNN Headline News, Good Morning America, ABC News, CBS News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Essence Magazine, The American Prospect, People Magazine, The American Conservative, The Australian, and Al Jazeera, among others. She has presented her research across the world, including the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, China, Israel, Qatar, the Netherlands, Italy, England, Wales, Poland, Spain, Serbia, Japan, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, and France.
Professor Wilson has seven times been honored for her work on innovative laws that respect all persons. In 2007, she received the Citizen’s Legislative Award for her work on changing Virginia’s informed consent law. In 2018, Professor Wilson received the Thomas L. Kane Religious Freedom Award from the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, which is presented annually to an individual who exemplifies the spirit of religious liberty for all and who has contributed in significant ways to the defense of religious freedom in the public square.
In 2018, Professor Wilson was honored as one of the 150 for 150: Celebrating the Accomplishments of Women at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for its sesquicentennial celebration. In 2020, Professor Wilson received the 2020 Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for Advocacy for LGBTQ Affairs, a university-wide honor given by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
John B. Nalbandian serves as a United States Circuit Judge from Kentucky on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was nominated and confirmed to that position in 2018. Prior to that, Judge Nalbandian was a partner in the litigation practice group of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, where he served as the firm’s lead appellate lawyer and also practiced complex litigation in state and federal courts. Judge Nalbandian was board certified by the Ohio State Bar Association as a specialist in appellate law. Prior to joining Taft, Judge Nalbandian practiced for five years in the appellate section of Jones Day in Washington, DC. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Nalbandian clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston. While in private practice, he also served as a board member of the State Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization established by the federal government to improve the administration of justice in state courts. He served as President of the Cincinnati Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. He has also been involved in his community as a board member of the Greater Cincinnati Minority Counsel Program, and as a board member of the Asian Pacific Bar Association of Southwest Ohio. Judge Nalbandian earned his B.S., magna cum laude, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as managing editor of the Virginia Law Review.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Andrew Oldham is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before ascending to the bench, Judge Oldham served as General Counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, where he advised the Governor on a range of issues under federal and state law and managed litigation in which the Governor was an interested party. Before that he served as Deputy Solicitor General for the State of Texas, where he represented Texas in federal courts across the country, including twice before the United States Supreme Court. Before moving to Texas, Judge Oldham was an attorney at Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick in Washington, D.C. His practice focused on appellate litigation in federal courts of appeals throughout the country. Before entering private practice, Judge Oldham served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., at the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also worked as an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2006 to 2008. Judge Oldham earned a B.A. from the University of Virginia with highest honors, a Truman Scholarship for graduate school, an M. Phil., first class (with distinction), from Cambridge University, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Rao was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in March 2019. She graduated from Yale College in 1995 and the University of Chicago Law School in 1999. Following graduation, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and, in the 2001 October Term, as law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Between her clerkships, Judge Rao served as counsel for nominations and constitutional law to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In 2002, she joined the international arbitration group of Clifford Chance LLP in London, England. From 2005-2006, she served as Special Assistant and Associate White House Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2006 to 2017, Judge Rao was a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where she taught constitutional law, legislation and statutory interpretation, and the history and foundations of the administrative state. In 2014, she founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, a non-profit Center that promotes academic scholarship and public policy debates about administrative law. In July 2017, she was appointed to serve as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management Budget. She served in this position until her appointment to the D.C. Circuit.
President, US-China Business Council
On July 26, 2018, Craig Allen began his tenure in Washington, DC as the president of the US-China Business Council (USCBC), a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization representing over 200 American companies doing business with China. Prior to joining USCBC, Craig had a long, distinguished career in US public service.
Craig began his government career in 1985 at the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA). He entered government as a Presidential Management Intern, rotating through the four branches of ITA. From 1986 to 1988, he was an international economist in ITA’s China Office.
In 1988, Craig transferred to the American Institute in Taiwan, where he served as Director of the American Trade Center in Taipei. He held this position until 1992, when he returned to the Department of Commerce for a three-year posting at the US Embassy in Beijing as Commercial Attaché.
In 1995, Craig was assigned to the US Embassy in Tokyo, where he served as a Commercial Attaché. In 1998, he was promoted to Deputy Senior Commercial Officer. In 1999, Craig became a member of the Senior Foreign Service.
From 2000, Craig served a two-year tour at the National Center for APEC in Seattle. While there, he worked on the APEC Summits in Brunei, China, and Mexico. In 2002, it was back to Beijing, where Craig served as the Senior Commercial Officer. In Beijing, Craig was promoted to the Minister Counselor rank of the Senior Foreign Service.
After a four-year tour in South Africa, Craig became Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia at the US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. He later became Deputy Assistant Secretary for China. Craig was sworn in as the United States ambassador to Brunei Darussalam on December 19, 2014. He served there until July 2018, when he transitioned to President of the US-China Business Council.
Craig received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in Political Science and Asian Studies in 1979. He received a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 1985.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Indo-Pacific Security Program, Center for New American Security; Senior Advisor, Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, Purdue University
Throughout her career in foreign policy, Ambassador Kelley E. Currie has specialized in human rights, political reform, development, and humanitarian issues, with a focus on the Indo-Pacific region. Ambassador Currie is currently an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington D.C. think tank, and a Senior Advisor to the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University. She is a member of the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democray; the board of governors of the East-West Center; and the advisory boards of Spirit of America and the Vandenberg Coalition.
Ambassador Currie was unanimously confirmed in December 2019 as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues and the U.S. Representative at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and served in that position until January 2021. Prior to that appointment, she served under Ambassador Nikki Haley as the U.S. Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council and Alternative Representative to the UN General Assembly (2017-2018). While awaiting confirmation between ambassadorial appointments, she was appointed interim senior official in the Department of State's Office of Global Criminal Justice. From 2009 until her appointment to the USUN leadership, she was a Senior Fellow with the Project 2049 Institute and the founding Director of the Institute's Burma Transition Initiative. Ambassador Currie also held senior policy positions with the U.S. Congress, international organizatons, and non-governmental organizations.
Ambassador Currie received a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center with a focus on International Human Rights Law, and an undergraduate degree cum laude in Political Science from the University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs.
Executive Vice President and General Counsel, TE Connectivity
John S. Jenkins Jr. is the Executive Vice President, General Counsel of TE Connectivity. John is responsible for the company’s global legal, compliance, corporate governance, government affairs, intellectual property, security and risk management, and corporate social responsibility activities. He is also responsible for bringing TE’s industry-leading connectivity solutions, engineering, and operations expertise to the emerging markets with focus on India, China, and South America. He joined TE Connectivity in October 2012.
Prior to joining TE Connectivity, John was with Tyco International for ten years and was the Vice President, Corporate Secretary, and International General Counsel. John was responsible for the Board of Directors activities, securities and capital markets transactions and reporting, mergers and acquisitions, executive compensation, global procurement, real estate, and tax planning. Prior to 2003, John worked as a litigator with McGuireWoods, LLP. John began his career in 1987 as an Officer in the United States Navy, and served as a judge advocate both as Military Prosecutor and Senior Defense Counsel, and finally as Legislative Counsel to the Secretary of the Navy.
John earned his law degree from George Washington University with high honors and his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia.
Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Kori Schake leads foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony, and with Jim Mattis the editor of Warriors and Citizens: American Views on Our Military. Dr. Schake has taught at Stanford, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and West Point. She has also had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council.
Founder, Article III Project
Mike Davis, the former Chief Counsel for Nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, is the founder and president of the Article III Project (A3P). A3P defends constitutionalist judges and the rule of law. Davis also leads the Internet Accountability Project (IAP), an advocacy organization fighting to rein in Big Tech, along with the Unsilenced Majority, an organization dedicated to opposing Cancel Culture and fighting back against the woke mob and their enablers.
As Chief Counsel for Nominations, Davis advised Chairman Grassley and other senators on the confirmation of federal judges and senior Executive Branch appointees, serving as staff lead for 30 hearings and 41 markup meetings. He oversaw the floor votes for 278 nominees, including the confirmations of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the record number of circuit judges confirmed during President Trump’s first two years in office.
Davis has served in all three branches of the federal government, including for President George W. Bush, the Justice Department, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and current Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Davis also led the outside support team for Justice Gorsuch’s successful confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Before returning to public service in 2017, Davis spent nearly ten years as a civil litigator in Denver, working at one of the largest law firms in the world and one of the top-ranked law firms in Colorado before running his own law practice for more than five years.
Davis is from Des Moines, Iowa. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 2000 and Juris Doctor in 2004, both from the University of Iowa. In 2017, Davis received Iowa Law’s “Emerging Leader Award.” Davis also serves on the University of Iowa Political Science Advisory Board.
Presidential Scholar in Residence, New College of Florida
Professor Fish comes to the College of Law from Chicago, where he most recently served as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania (1959) and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University (1960; 1962). He has previously taught at the University of California at Berkeley (1962-74); Johns Hopkins University (1974-85), where he was the Kenan Professor of English and Humanities; and Duke University, where he was Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor of Law (1986-1998). From 1993 through 1998 he served as Executive Director of Duke University Press. Dr. Fish served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at The John Marshall Law School from 2000 through 2002.
In addition to being one of the country’s leading public intellectuals, Professor Fish is an extraordinarily prolific author whose works include over 200 scholarly publications and books. While his research covers a variety of fields, Professor Fish has written for many of the country’s leading law journals. including Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Texas Law Review. His exemplary work also includes the following books: John Skelton’s Poetry (1965); Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (1967) and a Thirtieth Anniversary Edition (1997); Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature (1972); The Living Temple: George Herbert and Catechizing (1978); Is there a Text in This Class? Interpretive Communities and the Sources of Authority (1980); Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (1989); There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too (1994); Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (1995); The Trouble with Principle (1999); and How Milton Works (2001). The Stanley Fish Reader, edited by H. Aram Veeser, was published in 1999. He has also had five books written about his books.
Currently, Professor Fish is working on several publications, including There is No Textualist Position, San Diego Law Review (Spring 2005), Intentional Neglect, New York Times (July 2005), and Academic Cross Dressing: How Intelligent Design Gets Its Arguments from the Left, Harper’s Magazine. Professor Fish will teach a Law & Religion seminar Spring 2006.
Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Joel Gora has been a professor at Brooklyn Law School since 1978, teaching constitutional law, civil procedure and a number of other related courses. He also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1993-1997 and again from 2002 through 2006. He is the author of a number of books and articles dealing with First Amendment and other constitutional law issues. He is also an expert on campaign finance law matters, working in the field as both an advocate and an academic. Prior to joining the Brooklyn Law School faculty, Professor Gora was a law clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for two years after he graduated from law school, and then a full-time lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union for almost ten years. During his ACLU career, he worked on dozens of United States Supreme Court cases, including many landmark rulings. Chief among them was the case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Court’s historic 1976 decision on the relationship between campaign finance restrictions and First Amendment rights. He has worked, on behalf of the ACLU, on almost every one of the important campaign finance cases to come before the Court. He also served for more than 25 years on the board of directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and as one of its general counsel. He has served as well on a number of policy committees of the New York City Bar, and was also a member of the board of the Federal Bar Council. Professor Gora received his B.A. from Pomona College and LL.B. from Columbia Law School.
President, Defending Education
Nicole Neily is the president and founder of Defending Education, a national membership organization that gives parents, students, and others the resources and support they need to advocate for their children’s education. She is also the executive director of PDE Action, a 501(c)4 advocacy organization.
Defending Education champions equal protection and combats race and sex-based discrimination in both the court of law and the court of public opinion, and has successfully sued school districts and the US Department of Education in federal court; facilitated tens of thousands of comments submitted to the Federal Register; filed dozens of federal OCR and EEOC complaints, as well as over two thousand public records requests since its launch in 2021. The organization regularly releases deep-dive education investigations, recently covering political spending by teachers’ unions, biased accreditation agencies, and ethnic studies curriculum in both K-12 and universities.
Prior to launching Defending Education, Nicole created Speech First, a campus free speech organization that sued 6 public universities under her leadership; she has also worked as president of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity; as executive director and senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum; and at the Cato Institute. She is the mother of two school-aged children and serves on the board of a public university.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Entrepreneur and Author of WOKE, INC.
Conservative leaders have called Vivek Ramaswamy one of “the most compelling conservative voices in the country” and “one of the towering intellects” in America.
Vivek Ramaswamy is a New York Times bestselling author and a successful entrepreneur who has founded multiple successful enterprises. A first-generation American, he is the founder and executive chairman of Roivant Sciences, a new type of biopharmaceutical company focused on the application of technology to drug development. He founded Roivant in 2014 and led the largest biotech IPOs of 2015 and 2016, eventually culminating in successful clinical trials in multiple disease areas that led to FDA-approved products.
Mr. Ramaswamy was born and raised in southwest Ohio. He graduated summa cum laude in Biology from Harvard in 2007 and began his career as a successful biotech investor at a prominent hedge fund. Mr. Ramaswamy continued to work as an investor while earning his law degree at Yale.
Mr. Ramaswamy was featured on the cover of Forbes magazine in 2015 for his work in drug development. In 2020 he emerged as a prominent commentator on stakeholder capitalism, free speech, and woke culture. He has authored numerous articles and op-eds, which have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Review, Newsweek, and Harvard Business Review.
Mr. Ramaswamy serves on the board of directors of the Philanthropy Roundtable, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, and St. Xavier High School.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Chairman, Federal Communications Commission
Brendan Carr is the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He previously served as the senior Republican Commissioner and as the FCC’s General Counsel. Nominated by both President Trump and President Biden, Carr has been confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.
Described by Axios as “the FCC’s 5G crusader,” Carr has led the FCC’s work to modernize its infrastructure rules and accelerate the buildout of high-speed networks. His reforms cut billions of dollars in red tape, enabled the private sector to construct high-speed networks in communities across the country, and extended America’s global leadership in 5G.
Chairman Carr is also focused on expanding America’s skilled workforce—the tower climbers and construction crews needed to build next-gen networks. His jobs initiative promotes community colleges and apprenticeships as a pipeline for good-paying 5G jobs. He is recognizing America’s talented tower crews through a series of “5G Ready” Hard Hat presentations.
Chairman Carr leads a groundbreaking telehealth initiative at the FCC. The Connected Care Pilot Program supports the delivery of high-quality care to low-income Americans and veterans.
Chairman Carr’s time outside of Washington helps inform his approach to the job. He regularly hits the road to hear directly from community members and learn how changes in federal policies could help improve their lives.
Chairman Carr brings nearly 20 years of private and public sector experience in communications and tech policy to his position. Before joining the FCC as a staffer back in 2012, he worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein LLP in the firm’s appellate, litigation, and telecom practices. Previously, Chairman Carr clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for Judge Dennis Shedd. After attending Georgetown University for his undergrad, Chairman Carr earned his J.D. magna cum laude from the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law where he served as an editor of the Catholic University Law Review.
Senator and Chairman, Indiana Senate Utilities Committee, Indiana State Senate
An 8th generation Hoosier, Eric grew up on a grain and livestock farm, where he learned the value of hard work and experienced the risk and rewards of the commodity markets.
He earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Georgetown University and worked on President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in the Office of Political Affairs at the Reagan-Bush ’84 Committee.
While earning his Juris Doctorate at the Indiana University School of Law, he clerked at the Bloomington law firm of McDonald, Barrett & Dakich.
He has been engaged in the private practice of law with offices in Bloomington since 1989 and Bedford since 2003. He is a member of the Monroe and Lawrence County Bar Associations, the Indiana State Bar Association, the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum, and founded and served as the first President of the Indiana Creditors Bar Association.
In 2002, he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives, where he served until being elected to the Indiana State Senate in 2016. His legislative service has been recognized by, among others, the Indiana Judges Association (Champion of Justice Award), the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association (Legislator of the Year 2008 and 2015), the Indiana Pro Bono Commission (Randall T. Shepard Award), Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher (Kentucky Colonel), and Indiana Governor Mike Pence (Sagamore of the Wabash).
He currently serves as Chairman of the Senate Utilities Committee, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce & Technology Committees, and as a member of the Senate Corrections & Criminal Law, Elections, and Family & Children Committees.
A nationally-recognized leader in energy policy, he serves as co-chairman of the Energy Supply Task Force of the National Conference of State Legislatures, as a member of the Executive Committee of the National Council on Electricity Policy, and holds a graduate certificate in Energy Policy Planning from the University of Idaho. He also serves as a member of the Federal Communication Commission Consumer Advisory Committee. He focuses on energy, telecommunications, and water policy interactions in Indiana and nationally.
He has served as a member of the Indiana Commission on Courts (2007—2011), the Indiana Probate Code Study Commission (2005—2007, 2013—2014, 2019—present), the Indiana Military Base Planning Council (2005—2019), the Board of Trustees of the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute (2006—2011), and the Indiana Public Defender Commission (2017—present). He represents Indiana as a Commissioner on The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (2018—present). As a member of the Indiana Supreme Court's Commercial Courts Committee (2019—present), he provides guidance to Indiana's Commercial Courts. He was appointed by the Indiana Supreme Court to serve on its Innovation Initiative (2019—present) to advise the Supreme Court on opportunities to increase efficiency and accessibility through innovative technology and case management, analysis of court reform, and development and testing of pilot programs related to court reform.
Eric frequently serves as a faculty member teaching continuing legal education courses, including for the Indiana State Bar Association and the Indiana Continuing Legal Education Forum. He enjoys teaching lawyers about new developments in the law and sharing his insights into the legislative process.
He is a registered civil mediator, having earned a civil mediation certificate from the Indiana University McKinney School of Law, studying under ADR expert John Krauss. Eric enjoys using the combination of his mediation skills and litigation experience to help parties settle cases and resolve disputes.
Eric is frequently appointed by judges to serve as a court-appointed fiduciary with responsibilities such as a trustee, federal multidistrict litigation plaintiffs’ steering committee member, special administrator, and personal representative.
A licensed Indiana title insurance producer, he founded Indiana Title Insurance Company in 2015 and serves as its President. His business experience also includes real estate, as President of White River Properties, Inc.; agriculture, as a partner in Koch Farms; and healthcare, as a former board member and Chairman of the Board of Dunn Memorial Hospital and St. Vincent Dunn Hospital.
He is a member of the Boards of Directors of Mid-Southern Savings Bank, FSB and its holding company Mid-Southern Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: MSVB).
His leadership in the non-profit sector has included service as a member of the Board of Governors of the Society of Indiana Pioneers, as a member of the Executive Board of the Hoosier Trails Council of the Boy Scouts of America, as a member of the Mitchell Urban Enterprise Association Board, and as a member of the Georgetown University Alumni Admissions Committee.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Menashi was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on November 14, 2019. Previously, he served as special assistant and associate counsel to the President in the White House and as acting general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. He was assistant professor of law at Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he taught administrative law and civil procedure, and a research fellow at New York University School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center. He was also a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in New York, where he practiced appellate and commercial litigation, and served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as senior articles editor of the Stanford Law Review, and from Dartmouth College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Eric Murphy has been a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since March 2019. He previously served as the ninth State Solicitor of Ohio. In that role, Eric briefed and argued appellate cases on behalf of Ohio and its state agencies and officers in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Ohio Supreme Court. Before his appointment as State Solicitor, Eric practiced appellate litigation at Jones Day. After graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from Miami University.
John J. Flynn Endowed Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Christopher Peterson is the John J. Flynn Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law. He previously served as a Special Advisor in the Office of the Director at the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as a Special Advisor in the Office of Legal Policy for Personnel and Readiness in the United States Department of Defense, and as Senior Counsel for Enforcement Policy and Strategy in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Office of Enforcement. Professor Peterson has written dozens of scholarly articles and published three books on consumer finance. He has frequently testified in Congressional hearings and has presented his research to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and at the White House in both Democratic and Republican administrations. He is a fellow of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers, the American Bar Association's Consumer Financial Services Committee, and serves on the community advisory board of the American Fintech Council. Professor Peterson is a recipient of the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators’ Consumer Advocate of the Year award and the Pentagon’s Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence.
Partner, Fusion Law, PLLC
Paul is the founding partner of Fusion Law, PLLC. He has extensive experience with state, federal, and global regulators building coalitions and implementing policies to promote innovation in financial services. He is responsible for designing and implementing the first state (Arizona) and federal (CFPB) FinTech sandboxes in the United States. He also designed the CFPB no-action letter and trial disclosure policies. He helped found the first global regulatory innovation coalition (Global Financial Innovation Network) and led the founding of the first U.S. regulatory innovation coalition (American Consumer Financial Innovation Network). He served on the Financial Stability Oversight Council subcommittee on digital assets. He also has drafted state-level laws on blockchain and utility tokens.
Paul also has significant enforcement and litigation experience. He led many multi-state consumer protection enforcement matters as Civil Litigation Division Chief at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
Prior to his government service, Paul practiced law in the areas of securities litigation and transactional work for approximately six years at two well-known law firms. He also clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Duncan received his B.A. from Louisiana State University in 1994, his J.D. from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1997, and his LL.M. from Columbia Law School in 2004.
After graduating from law school, he clerked for Louisiana-based Circuit Judge John Malcolm Duhé Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
From 2008–2012, Duncan served as Appellate Chief for Louisiana's Attorney General's office. From 2012–2014, he served as general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. From 2004-2008, he was an assistant professor of law at the University of Mississippi School of Law.
Before becoming a judge, Duncan practiced at the Washington, D.C. firm of Schaerr Duncan LLP, where he was a founding partner. He was appointed by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on May 1, 2018.
Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large, Syndicated Columnist, Host of "The Josh Hammer Show," Article III Project Senior Counsel, Newsweek, Salem Media, Article III Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center
Josh Hammer is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek and host of "The Josh Hammer Show," a podcast, a syndicated radio show, and TV program on Salem News Channel. A syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, Josh is a frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues. He is also senior counsel for the Article III Project and Internet Accountability Project, as well as a Shillman Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a fellow with the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
An outspoken conservative, Josh opines on conservative intellectual trends, contemporary domestic and foreign policy debates, constitutional and legal issues, and the intersection of law, politics and culture. He has been published by many leading outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, National Affairs, American Affairs, The New Criterion, The National Interest, National Review, RealClearPolitics, First Things, City Journal, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, Tablet Magazine, Deseret Magazine, Compact Magazine, Chronicles Magazine, The Spectator, The American Mind, The American Conservative, The European Conservative, American Greatness, American Compass, The Federalist, Blaze Media, TomKlingenstein.com, Townhall, The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller, The Epoch Times, Anchoring Truths, Fortune, Fox Business, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Journal. He has also had legal scholarship published by the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
Josh is a college campus speaker through Young America's Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and clerked for the Hon. James C. Ho on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and as a Fellow with the James Wilson Institute. He is the former host of "America on Trial with Josh Hammer," a one-season daily podcast with The First that covered the unique legal issues surrounding the 2024 presidential election.
Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
Executive Director, Southeastern Legal Foundation
Kimberly Hermann serves as Executive Director for Southeastern Legal Foundation.
Kim has worked with Southeastern Legal Foundation since 2009. Her belief in liberty and desire to serve started at a young age – instilled by her parents’ dedication to hard work, family values, and love for America.
After earning her undergraduate degree in Analytical Finance and graduate degree in Accounting from Wake Forest University, Kim worked as a licensed CPA with an international accounting firm. But her strong belief in individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government led her to pursue a career in law. While in law school at Georgia State University College of Law, Kim served as a law clerk at SLF. After graduating, Kim worked at a private law firm in Atlanta where she specialized in financial and business litigation but continued to serve SLF in a pro bono capacity. In 2013, Kim returned to SLF full-time and is proud to dedicate her career to the freedom-based law movement.
Kim advances liberty through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts on issues ranging from government overreach, free speech, property rights, and economic liberty. In addition to representing clients, Kim testifies before state legislatures, drafts model legislation, and regularly publishes legal articles. Through SLF’s legal initiatives, she informs Americans about their constitutional rights, equipping them with the tools they need to stand up to government overreach. Her work and that of Southeastern Legal Foundation is regularly covered by national media and you will frequently hear or see her on radio, podcasts, and television.
Kim is an active member of the Federalist Society where she serves as an expert on the Federalist Society’s Civil Rights Executive Committee. She is also an active member of her community and when she isn’t fighting for liberty, you can find her at her children’s school or on the sports fields cheering them on. She lives in the Atlanta area with her husband and two children.
Managing Director of the Legal Network, Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism
Letitia Kim is the Managing Director of the Legal Network at the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, a nonprofit civil rights organization that launched in March 2021. Letitia’s work at FAIR focuses on advocating for the rights of parents, students, and employees under Title VI, Title VII, Equal Protection, and the First Amendment, and funding litigation to protect those rights. Letitia also led the committee that produced FAIR’s model legislation to ensure greater transparency in schools.
Before joining FAIR, Letitia was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Civil Division of the Northern District of California, where she litigated cases under Title VII, the Federal Tort Claims Act, and the Constitution. She also practiced at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal (now Denton’s), focusing almost exclusively on federal litigation and appellate practice, including at the Ninth Circuit.
Letitia is a graduate of Cornell University and Michigan Law School. She lives in San Francisco with her family.
President and CEO, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, Freedom From Speech, and FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus. Most recently, he co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Jonathan Haidt. This New York Times best-seller expands on their September 2015 Atlantic cover story of the same name. Greg is also an Executive Producer of Can We Take a Joke? (2015), a feature-length documentary that explores the collision between comedy, censorship, and outrage culture, both on and off campus, and of Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020), a feature-length film about the life and career of former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser.
Greg has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and numerous other publications. He frequently appears on TV shows and radio programs, including the CBS Evening News, The Today Show, and NPR’s Morning Edition. In 2008, he became the first-ever recipient of the Playboy Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Award, and he has testified before both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives about free speech issues on America’s college campuses.
Professor of Law and Journalism, University of Florida
Professor Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the Levin College of Law and at the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law.
Professor Bambauer’s research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Professor Bambauer’s research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Her work has also been featured in media outlets, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fox News, and Lawfare, where she is a contributing editor.
Professor Bambauer currently serves as the Chair of the National AI Advisory Committee Subcommittee on Law Enforcement, and she has previously served as the deputy director of the Center for Quantum Networks, a multi-institutional engineering research center funded by the National Science Foundation. She holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Professor of Law, Michigan State University (currently serving as FCC General Counsel)
Professor Candeub joined the MSU Law faculty in fall 2004. He is also a Fellow with MSU's Institute of Public Utilities. Prior to joining MSU, he served as an advisor at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). From 1998 to 2000, Professor Candeub was a litigation associate for the Washington D.C. firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue and also has served as a corporate associate with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, also in Washington, D.C. Immediately following law school, he clerked for Chief Judge J. Clifford Wallace, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. While in law school, Professor Candeub was an articles editor for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
Professor Candeub's scholarly interests focus on the law and regulation of communications, internet, technology. His numerous law review articles and scholarly papers have placed him at the center of legal and policy controversies, and he often writes for popular outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and US News. Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have cited and relied upon his work.
He joined the Trump administration in 2019 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Telecommunications and Information and assumed the role of Acting Assistant Secretary. He later joined the Department of Justice as Deputy Associate Attorney General.
Professor Candeub is a senior fellow at the D.C.-based Center of Renewing America.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Barbara Lagoa was born in Miami, Florida. She received her Bachelor of Arts cum laude in 1989 from Florida International University where she majored in English and was a member of the Phi Kappa Phi honor society. Judge Lagoa received her Juris Doctor from Columbia University School of Law in 1992, where she served as an Associate Editor of the Columbia Law Review. She is fluent in English and Spanish. On December 6, 2019, she received her commission as a judge on the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals from President Donald Trump.
On January 9, 2019, she became the first Hispanic woman and the first Cuban American woman appointed to serve on the Florida Supreme Court. Prior to her appointment by Governor Ron DeSantis to the Florida Supreme Court, Governor Jeb Bush appointed her in June of 2006 to serve on the Third District Court of Appeal. At that court, she became the first Hispanic woman and the first Cuban American woman appointed to serve on the Third District Court of Appeal. On January 1, 2019, she became the first Hispanic female Chief Judge of the Third District Court of Appeal.
Prior to joining the bench, Judge Lagoa practiced in both the civil and criminal arenas. Her civil practice at Greenberg Traurig focused on general and complex commercial litigation, particularly the areas of employment discrimination, business torts, securities litigation, construction litigation, and insurance coverage disputes. In 2003, she joined the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida as an Assistant United States Attorney, where she worked in the Civil, Major Crimes and Appellate Sections. As an Assistant United States Attorney, she tried numerous criminal jury trials, including drug conspiracies and Hobbs Act violations. She also handled a significant number of appeals.
While a practicing lawyer, Judge Lagoa was admitted to The Florida Bar, the United States District Courts for the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She was also a member of many local, state, and national professional groups including the Dade County Bar Association, and the Florida Association for Women Lawyers.
Judge Lagoa’s civic and community activities include service on the Board of Directors for the YWCA of Greater Miami and Dade County, the Film Society of Miami, Kristi House, and the FIU Alumni Association. She was also a member of the Federal Judicial Nominating Commission. She is currently a member of the Eugene P. Spellman and William Hoeveler Chapter of the American Inns of Court.
Judge Lagoa is married to Paul C. Huck, Jr., an attorney. They have three daughters.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Showcase Panel III: Corporate and Academic Management Today
Richard Bagger, Michael B. Brennan, David M. Schizer, Lee Burdette Williams, Robin Fretwell Wilson
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
20th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture
Theodore B. Olson
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
Originalism: Perspectives from the Bench
Edith H. Jones, John B. Nalbandian, Kevin C. Newsom, Andrew Oldham, Neomi Rao
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
China, Global Companies, and Human Rights
Craig B. Allen, Carlos T. Bea, Kelley Currie, John S. Jenkins, Kori Schake
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
Is Anyone Still Committed to Free Speech?
Mike Davis, Stanley Fish, Joel M. Gora, Nicole Neily, David R. Stras
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
Fireside Chat with Vivek Ramaswamy
Vivek Ramaswamy, Todd J. Zywicki
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
Federalism and Broadband Spending: Finding the Right Approach
Brendan Carr, Eric Allan Koch, Roslyn Layton, Steven J. Menashi
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
"Cancel Culture" Comes to Financial Services
Eric E. Murphy, Christopher L. Peterson, Paul N. Watkins, Todd J. Zywicki
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
Classrooms, Curricula, and the Law
Akhil Reed Amar, Stuart Kyle Duncan, Josh Hammer, Kimberly Hermann, Letitia Todd Kim, Greg Lukianoff
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...
Showcase Panel II: Private Control Over Public Discussion
Jane Bambauer, Randy E. Barnett, Adam Candeub, Barbara Lagoa, Eugene Volokh
2021 National Lawyers Convention
The 2021 National Lawyers Convention took place November 11-13, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in...