Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Neil Eggleston is a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
Neil has a distinguished record of public service, and has held a number of senior government roles. He was White House Counsel to President Obama from 2014 to 2017, and advised the president on all legal and constitutional issues across a broad spectrum of domestic and foreign policy matters. Neil’s practice focuses on enforcement defense including at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and other enforcement agencies.
Earlier in his career, Neil served as Associate Counsel to President Clinton from 1993 to 1994. Heals o served as Deputy Chief Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee Investigating the Iran/Contra Affair (1987-1988); Assistant U.S. Attorney (1981-1987); and Chief Appellate Attorney for the Southern District of New York (1986-1987).
Neil served as a law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (1978-1979) and for Chief Justice Warren E. Burger on the United States Supreme Court (1979-1980).
Neil teaches a seminar in Presidential Power at Harvard Law School in the spring of 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021 and at Yale Law School in the spring of 2018. He also frequently lectures at American Bar Association and similar seminars.
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.
His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.
Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.
Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.
President, Center for Individual Rights
Todd Gaziano is the President of the Center for Individual Rights. Mr. Gaziano received his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University, summa cum laude in 1985. He was selected as a Truman Scholar from West Virginia while an undergraduate.
Mr. Gaziano’s previous legal work includes service as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Houston trial attorney, and as a chief corporate legal officer. He also served a six-year term as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008-2013), where he helped conduct oversight and investigations of civil rights agencies.
For most of the last 25 years, Mr. Gaziano was a legal scholar and public interest law leader, promoting individual liberty in the Supreme Court and Congress. From 1997 to 2013, he was the founding director of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. From 2014 until he joined CIR, he was the Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and Director of the Center for the Separation of Powers, at Pacific Legal Foundation.
David McIntosh is a leader for the principles of limited constitutional government and individual freedom. He is president of the Club for Growth, the leading advocate for economic liberty.
Former Congressman David McIntosh represented Indiana's 2nd Congressional District in the United States Congress from 1995-2001. As a Freshman, David chaired the Subcommittee on Regulatory Relief. He passed the Congressional Review Act and held extensive oversight and field hearings to build a record of public support for regulatory relief initiatives in energy, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, healthcare, transportation and technology sectors. Another issue that he championed was the elimination of the marriage penalty in the Federal Tax Code.
David served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and as special assistant to President Reagan for Domestic Affairs. During the first Bush administration, he served as executive director of the President's Council on Competitiveness and assistant to the Vice President. The Competitiveness Council coordinated the cost/benefit review of major regulations and promoted legal reform measures.
David is a co-founder of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and serves on the Board of Directors. He remains active with several free market and conservative think tanks and grassroots organizations. David has also had stints at the Hudson Institute and as a Professor of Economics at Ball State School of Business.
Prior to the Club for Growth, David was a partner at Mayer Brown, LLP in Washington, DC.
David graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, and Yale University, BA, cum laude, in 1980. He and his wife, Ruthie, are the proud parents of Ellie age 17 and Davey age 13.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
A.B. Chettle Chair in Civil Procedure, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Vladeck teaches civil procedure, federal courts, a practicum on privacy and technology (taught jointly with MIT), and directs the Civil Litigation Clinic, a student clinic that handles trial court litigation focused on public-interest cases. He also serves as Faculty Director of the Law Center’s Center on Privacy and Technology.
From 2002 to 2009, Professor Vladeck served as Director of the Civil Rights section of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation, a student clinic that handles complex trial court and appellate litigation focused on civil rights and other public-interest litigation, while also teaching civil procedure and federal courts. From 2009 to 2012, Professor Vladeck took leave from Georgetown to serve as the Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
At the FTC, he supervised the Bureau’s 450 lawyers, investigators, paralegals and support staff in carrying out the Bureau’s work to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive or fraudulent practices. Before joining the Law Center faculty full-time in 2002, Professor Vladeck spent over 25 years with Public Citizen Litigation Group, a national public interest law firm, serving the last ten years as the Group’s director. He has briefed and argued a number of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and more than sixty cases before federal courts of appeal and state courts of law resort.
He is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Law, Science and Technology, and an elected member of the American Law Institute. He also serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and on the boards of the National Consumers Law Center and the Center for Democracy and Technology. Professor Vladeck frequently testifies before Congress and writes on administrative law, First Amendment, consumer protection, privacy, and access to justice issues.
President, Center for Individual Rights
Todd Gaziano is the President of the Center for Individual Rights. Mr. Gaziano received his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University, summa cum laude in 1985. He was selected as a Truman Scholar from West Virginia while an undergraduate.
Mr. Gaziano’s previous legal work includes service as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Houston trial attorney, and as a chief corporate legal officer. He also served a six-year term as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008-2013), where he helped conduct oversight and investigations of civil rights agencies.
For most of the last 25 years, Mr. Gaziano was a legal scholar and public interest law leader, promoting individual liberty in the Supreme Court and Congress. From 1997 to 2013, he was the founding director of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. From 2014 until he joined CIR, he was the Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and Director of the Center for the Separation of Powers, at Pacific Legal Foundation.
David McIntosh is a leader for the principles of limited constitutional government and individual freedom. He is president of the Club for Growth, the leading advocate for economic liberty.
Former Congressman David McIntosh represented Indiana's 2nd Congressional District in the United States Congress from 1995-2001. As a Freshman, David chaired the Subcommittee on Regulatory Relief. He passed the Congressional Review Act and held extensive oversight and field hearings to build a record of public support for regulatory relief initiatives in energy, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, healthcare, transportation and technology sectors. Another issue that he championed was the elimination of the marriage penalty in the Federal Tax Code.
David served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and as special assistant to President Reagan for Domestic Affairs. During the first Bush administration, he served as executive director of the President's Council on Competitiveness and assistant to the Vice President. The Competitiveness Council coordinated the cost/benefit review of major regulations and promoted legal reform measures.
David is a co-founder of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and serves on the Board of Directors. He remains active with several free market and conservative think tanks and grassroots organizations. David has also had stints at the Hudson Institute and as a Professor of Economics at Ball State School of Business.
Prior to the Club for Growth, David was a partner at Mayer Brown, LLP in Washington, DC.
David graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, and Yale University, BA, cum laude, in 1980. He and his wife, Ruthie, are the proud parents of Ellie age 17 and Davey age 13.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
A.B. Chettle Chair in Civil Procedure, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Vladeck teaches civil procedure, federal courts, a practicum on privacy and technology (taught jointly with MIT), and directs the Civil Litigation Clinic, a student clinic that handles trial court litigation focused on public-interest cases. He also serves as Faculty Director of the Law Center’s Center on Privacy and Technology.
From 2002 to 2009, Professor Vladeck served as Director of the Civil Rights section of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation, a student clinic that handles complex trial court and appellate litigation focused on civil rights and other public-interest litigation, while also teaching civil procedure and federal courts. From 2009 to 2012, Professor Vladeck took leave from Georgetown to serve as the Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
At the FTC, he supervised the Bureau’s 450 lawyers, investigators, paralegals and support staff in carrying out the Bureau’s work to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive or fraudulent practices. Before joining the Law Center faculty full-time in 2002, Professor Vladeck spent over 25 years with Public Citizen Litigation Group, a national public interest law firm, serving the last ten years as the Group’s director. He has briefed and argued a number of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and more than sixty cases before federal courts of appeal and state courts of law resort.
He is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Law, Science and Technology, and an elected member of the American Law Institute. He also serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and on the boards of the National Consumers Law Center and the Center for Democracy and Technology. Professor Vladeck frequently testifies before Congress and writes on administrative law, First Amendment, consumer protection, privacy, and access to justice issues.
United States Senator, Utah
Elected in 2010 as Utah's 16th Senator, Mike Lee has spent his career defending the basic liberties of Americans and Utahns as a tireless advocate for our founding constitutional principles.
Senator Lee acquired a deep respect for the Constitution early on. His father, Rex Lee, who served as the Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, would often discuss varied aspects of judicial and constitutional doctrine around the kitchen table, from Due Process to the uses of Executive Plenary Power. He attended most of his father's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a unique, hands-on experience and understanding of government up close.
Lee graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science, and served as BYU's Student Body President in his senior year. He graduated from BYU's Law School in 1997 and went on to serve as law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and then with future Supreme Court Justice Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Lee spent several years as an attorney with the law firm Sidley & Austin specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Salt Lake City arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Lee served the state of Utah as Governor Jon Huntsman's General Counsel and was later honored to reunite with Justice Alito, now on the Supreme Court, for a one-year clerkship. He returned to private practice in 2007.
Throughout his career, Lee earned a reputation as an outstanding practitioner of the law based on his sound judgment, abilities in the courtroom, and thorough understanding of the Constitution.
Today, Lee fights to preserve America's proud founding document in the United States Senate. He advocates efforts to support constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic prosperity.
Lee is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and serves as Chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee protecting business competition and personal freedom.
He also oversees issues critical to Utah as the Chairman of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He serves on the Commerce Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, as well.
In the 114th Congress, Lee also began his tenure as Chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, where he works with his Republican colleagues in the Senate to introduce bold and innovative solutions to issues facing the American people.
Lee and his wife Sharon live in Alpine, Utah, with their three children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a two-year mission for the Church in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
United States Senator, Utah
Elected in 2010 as Utah's 16th Senator, Mike Lee has spent his career defending the basic liberties of Americans and Utahns as a tireless advocate for our founding constitutional principles.
Senator Lee acquired a deep respect for the Constitution early on. His father, Rex Lee, who served as the Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, would often discuss varied aspects of judicial and constitutional doctrine around the kitchen table, from Due Process to the uses of Executive Plenary Power. He attended most of his father's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a unique, hands-on experience and understanding of government up close.
Lee graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science, and served as BYU's Student Body President in his senior year. He graduated from BYU's Law School in 1997 and went on to serve as law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and then with future Supreme Court Justice Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Lee spent several years as an attorney with the law firm Sidley & Austin specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Salt Lake City arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Lee served the state of Utah as Governor Jon Huntsman's General Counsel and was later honored to reunite with Justice Alito, now on the Supreme Court, for a one-year clerkship. He returned to private practice in 2007.
Throughout his career, Lee earned a reputation as an outstanding practitioner of the law based on his sound judgment, abilities in the courtroom, and thorough understanding of the Constitution.
Today, Lee fights to preserve America's proud founding document in the United States Senate. He advocates efforts to support constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic prosperity.
Lee is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and serves as Chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee protecting business competition and personal freedom.
He also oversees issues critical to Utah as the Chairman of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He serves on the Commerce Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, as well.
In the 114th Congress, Lee also began his tenure as Chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, where he works with his Republican colleagues in the Senate to introduce bold and innovative solutions to issues facing the American people.
Lee and his wife Sharon live in Alpine, Utah, with their three children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a two-year mission for the Church in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
Founder, VCXC - Voice Communication Exchange Committee
Daniel Berninger is a Washington, DC based independent communication architect. Mr. Berninger's work started with the original assessment of VoIP at Bell Laboratories in 1995, technical contributions to the founding of Free World Dialup in 1996, and continued at VocalTec Communications where he led the first VoIP deployments at Verizon, HP, and NASA. He won a VON Pioneer Award as co-founder of the VON Coalition. Daniel also led the founding teams, created the business model, and recruited the CEO's for ITXC (NASDAQ: ITXC/Tom Evslin) and Vonage (NYSE: VG/Jeffrey Citron).
Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice
Brett A. Shumate was sworn in as the Civil Division’s 36th Assistant Attorney General on June 11, 2025. He previously served in the Civil Division from 2017 to 2019 as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Federal Programs Branch. Prior to rejoining the Department, Mr. Shumate was a partner at Jones Day in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Shumate clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He graduated from Wake Forest University School of Law and Furman University.
Joel A. Katz Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee College of Law
Professor Plank joined the UT faculty in 1994 and became the Joel A. Katz Distinguished Professor of Law in 2004. His scholarly interests include the nature of property, the relationship between bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy law, and the historical development and comparison of commercial law and property law systems. He is a nationally recognized expert on mortgage backed and asset backed securities. Before joining the UT faculty, he was a partner with Kutak Rock LLP specializing in real estate finance, commercial finance, bankruptcy, and securities, in particular serving as issuer’s counsel and bankruptcy counsel in securitization transactions. Since joining the UT faculty he has served as an expert witness on securitization and other bankruptcy and commercial law matters, and as a consultant for securitization law firms, providing advice on bankruptcy, commercial law, and real estate issues in connection with securitizations and other transactions. During the 2002-2003 academic year, Professor Plank was a visiting Professor of Law at the Notre Dame Law School.
Professor Plank graduated with honors from Princeton University with a degree in history and a Certificate of Proficiency in Russian Area Studies and then served three years in the United States Marine Corps, including eight months in Vietnam as an infantry platoon commander. He graduated 5th in his class from the University of Maryland School of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Maryland Law Review. He was a law clerk for the Chief Judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, an associate with Piper & Marbury in Baltimore, MD, and an assistant attorney general for the State of Maryland. Initially, his practice included a wide variety of transactions and litigation, including a four month trial on the constitutionality of the Maryland public school finance system and oral arguments in the United States Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts. He then concentrated his practice in real estate, commercial finance, public finance and securities transactions.
Counsel to Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Thaya Brook Knight was associate director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. She is an attorney with extensive experience in securities regulation, small business capital access, and capital markets. Before joining Cato, she co-founded and served as general counsel of CrowdCheck, a company providing due diligence and disclosure services in the online investing market. Following the recent financial crisis, she served as investigative counsel for the congressional oversight panel charged with overseeing the expenditure of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. She also spent several years with the Washington office of the law firm WilmerHale, where her practice focused on securities litigation, securities enforcement defense, and corporate investigations.
She holds a BA from Middlebury College and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School.
Senior Counsel, Schaerr Jaffe LLP
Ken Klukowski is senior counsel at the law firm Schaerr Jaffe, focusing on constitutional, administrative, and election law, and the federal courts. He has served in politically appointed positions in the U.S. government, including senior counsel in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and prior to that in the White House as special counsel in the Office of Management and Budget. He was also the constitutional rights advisor on the Presidential Transition Team of President Donald J. Trump. In the private sector, he has worked as a senior fellow of the American Constitutional Rights Union, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, and a legal journalist. He litigates constitutional cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and contributes to media coverage of the nation’s highest court and legal issues. Earlier in his career, Klukowski served as special deputy attorney general of Indiana, and worked on faculty at Liberty University School of Law. His academic works have been published by journals such as the Federalist Society’s Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and his columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and other national publications. His amicus briefs and nine law review articles have been cited by various federal courts and top legal journals. He has participated in numerous Supreme Court cases, and lectured and debated at 100 law school events nationwide. Klukowski received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, studied history at Arizona State University, earned his law degree from Scalia Law School at George Mason University, and served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Alice Batchelder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Counsel to Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Thaya Brook Knight was associate director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. She is an attorney with extensive experience in securities regulation, small business capital access, and capital markets. Before joining Cato, she co-founded and served as general counsel of CrowdCheck, a company providing due diligence and disclosure services in the online investing market. Following the recent financial crisis, she served as investigative counsel for the congressional oversight panel charged with overseeing the expenditure of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. She also spent several years with the Washington office of the law firm WilmerHale, where her practice focused on securities litigation, securities enforcement defense, and corporate investigations.
She holds a BA from Middlebury College and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School.
Partner, Quinn, Emmanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan LLP
Chris Michel is Co-Chair of the firm’s National Appellate Practice. His practice focuses on complex legal issues at all stages of litigation, with a particular emphasis on appellate and Supreme Court matters. He has handled significant matters in the areas of securities, antitrust, intellectual property and technology, health care, administrative law, the First Amendment, corporate governance, foreign affairs, energy and the environment, and criminal procedure—among others. He practices frequently in the U.S. Supreme Court, federal and state courts of appeals, and trial courts. In 2023, he was named an Appellate MVP by Law360 and one of America’s 500 Leading Litigators by Lawdragon.
Chris joined the firm from the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice. During his time there, he argued 10 cases before the Supreme Court, briefed roughly 200 Supreme Court cases at the certiorari and merits stages, and advised the Solicitor General on all aspects of federal litigation strategy. Among other recognition, he received a Civil Division Special Commendation Award for his work on high-stakes civil litigation.
Chris has a unique perspective on the workings of the federal government and key strategic issues facing business clients. In addition to his experience in the Solicitor General’s Office, he served as a counselor to the Attorney General on civil litigation matters and as a special adviser in the White House Counsel’s Office. He began his legal career as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., at the Supreme Court, and to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was then sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Before attending law school, Chris worked at the White House under President George W. Bush, whom he served as Director of Speechwriting, drafting more than 500 presidential speeches including five State of the Union addresses. He also collaborated on President Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, assisting with the researching, drafting, and editing of the book.
A native of California and a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Chris is a member of the Virginia and District of Columbia bars. He has represented and counseled clients in matters at all levels of the federal judiciary, in state trial and appellate courts, before administrative agencies, and in both civil and criminal investigations. He has also taught constitutional law and separation of powers at Georgetown University Law Center, and he is an appointed member of the D.C. Circuit’s Advisory Committee on Procedures.
The Unitary Executive through Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump
W. Neil Eggleston, Michael B. Mukasey, Benjamin Wittes
Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship...
What is Congress Doing to Reassert its Power Over Agencies?
Todd F. Gaziano, David M. McIntosh, Stuart S. Taylor, David C. Vladeck
Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship...
What is Congress Doing to Reassert its Power Over Agencies?
Todd F. Gaziano, David M. McIntosh, Stuart S. Taylor, David C. Vladeck
Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship...
Opening Address by Senator Mike Lee
Mike S. Lee, Dean Reuter
Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship...
Opening Address by Senator Mike Lee
Mike S. Lee, Dean Reuter
Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship...
Litigation Update: United States Telecom Association v. Federal Communications Commission - Podcast
Adam White, Daniel Berninger, Brett Shumate
Telecommunications Practice Group Podcast
On May 1, the D.C. Circuit denied petitions for en banc review of United States...
Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corporation - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Thomas Eldridge Plank
SCOTUScast 6-2-17 featuring Thomas Plank
On March 22, 2017, the Supreme Court decided Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corporation. Jevic Transportation,...
Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Thaya Brook Knight
SCOTUScast 6-2-17 featuring Thaya Brook Knight
On May 1, 2017, the Supreme Court decided Bank of America Corp. v. City of...
Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College - Podcast
Kenneth A. Klukowski, Anthony Kreis
Religious Liberties Practice Group Podcast
On April 4, 2017, the Seventh Circuit handed down a divided en banc opinion in Hively v. Ivy Tech...
Courthouse Steps: D.C. Circuit En Banc Argument - Podcast
Thaya Brook Knight, Christopher G. Michel
Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group Podcast
The D.C. Circuit heard a rare doubleheader of en banc arguments on major structural separation...