Chief Legal + Administrative Officer, Waystar Health
Matthew R. A. Heiman leads all legal and corporate governance matters for Waystar. Over the last two decades, he has worked in corporate and government sectors, gaining deep experience in the areas of corporate governance, litigation, risk management, security, and compliance.
Most recently, Matthew was Vice President, Corporate Secretary & Associate General Counsel at Johnson Controls where he helped establish a new corporate secretary department and led the integration of legal departments following the company’s merger with Tyco International. Prior to its merger with Johnson Controls, Matthew held a number of positions with Tyco International including Vice President, Chief Compliance & Audit Officer. Before Tyco, Matthew was a lawyer with the National Security Division at the U.S Department of Justice. He was a legal advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq and practiced as a trial lawyer with the law firm of McGuireWoods.
Matthew holds a BA and JD from Indiana University and is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is a Senior Fellow at George Mason University’s National Security Institute.
Partner, Mayer Brown
Prof. Tim Keeler, an attorney in the Government and International Trade Group, joined Mayer Brown in 2009, and brings an in-depth knowledge of international trade law and economic policy matters, and a history of working in the Executive Branch and Congress on major economic, legislative and regulatory issues.
Prior to joining Mayer Brown, Professor Keeler served in a variety of senior positions in the U.S. Government for almost 12 years. Most recently he was the Chief of Staff in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2006 - 2009, where he oversaw implementation of U.S. policy, strategy and negotiations involving all aspects of international trade and investment matters. He worked on a number of key issues including: climate change and trade; US and China relations; WTO negotiations and litigation; free trade agreement negotiations and implementation; and CFIUS decisions.
Before working for USTR, Prof. Keeler spent more than five years at the Treasury Department from 2001 – 2006. He joined the Office of Legislative Affairs in 2001 as a Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for International Issues, where he was responsible for Treasury’s legislative strategy on issues including capital market sanctions, foreign exchange rate policy testimony, appropriations for U.S. agreements to replenish the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks, multilateral debt relief, and U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund. He later managed the Office of Legislative Affairs from 2002 - 2006 and assisted on all policy and personnel issues in the Office. This included leading Treasury nominees through the U.S. Senate confirmation process, legislative strategy on Treasury Intelligence and Terrorist Financing matters, and advising on major economic legislative initiatives such as the 2003 tax cuts and social security reform proposals.
Prof. Keeler also served on the Presidential Transition Team in 2000–2001 as a policy coordinator on export control and trade remedy policy, handling the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration (now called the Bureau of Industry and Security) and the International Trade Commission (ITC).
Earlier in his career, Prof. Keeler served as a professional staff member for international trade on the US Senate Finance Committee under Chairman William V. Roth (R-DE). There he worked on legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) between the U.S. and China, preferential trade programs for Sub-Saharan Africa (the African Growth and Opportunity Act) and the Caribbean basin, the Generalized System of Preferences, legislation to bring the U.S. into compliance with the WTO decision on the Foreign Sales Corporation provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, and the miscellaneous tariff bill.
In recognition of his government service, Prof. Keeler was awarded the USTR Distinguished Service Award, the Treasury Distinguished Service Award, and the Treasury Secretary’s Honor Award twice.
Prof. Keeler is also an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Law, co-teaching a course on U.S. and WTO law, policy, and politics; is a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington International Trade Foundation; and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prof. Keeler has spoken at conferences on international trade and economic issues sponsored by, inter alia, the American Bar Association (Climate Change and Trade, March 2009), the Korea Economic Institute (the U.S. – Korea Free Trade Agreement, October 2010), and the U.S.-China Business Council (Sec. 421 tires safeguard case, July 2009; and the U.S. – China Economic and Political Relationship, January 2010).
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Alvaro Santos is Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Rule of Law in the Americas (CAROLA) at Georgetown University. He teaches and writes in the areas of international trade, economic development, drug policy, transnational labor law and the future of NAFTA.
Professor Santos is co-editor of Law and the New Developmental State: The Brazilian Experience in Latin America (2013) and The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal (2006). He is also the author of a number of articles and book chapters, including “Carving Out Policy Autonomy for Developing Countries in the World Trade Organization: The Experience of Brazil and Mexico” in the Virginia Journal of International Law (2012), and "Three Transnational Discourses of Labor Law in Domestic Reforms" in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (2010). In 2016, he contributed to a research manifesto authored by working group at the Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy, examining the role of law in global value chains. Professor Santos serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Comparative Law, the Journal of International Economic Law, the Law and Development Review, and the Latin American Journal of International Trade Law. He regularly teaches at Georgetown's WTO Academy and Harvard's Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) and has also taught at the University of Texas, Tufts University, Melbourne Law School, and the University of Turin. Santos received a JD with high honors from Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México and an LLM and SJD from Harvard Law School.
Chief Legal + Administrative Officer, Waystar Health
Matthew R. A. Heiman leads all legal and corporate governance matters for Waystar. Over the last two decades, he has worked in corporate and government sectors, gaining deep experience in the areas of corporate governance, litigation, risk management, security, and compliance.
Most recently, Matthew was Vice President, Corporate Secretary & Associate General Counsel at Johnson Controls where he helped establish a new corporate secretary department and led the integration of legal departments following the company’s merger with Tyco International. Prior to its merger with Johnson Controls, Matthew held a number of positions with Tyco International including Vice President, Chief Compliance & Audit Officer. Before Tyco, Matthew was a lawyer with the National Security Division at the U.S Department of Justice. He was a legal advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq and practiced as a trial lawyer with the law firm of McGuireWoods.
Matthew holds a BA and JD from Indiana University and is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is a Senior Fellow at George Mason University’s National Security Institute.
Partner, Mayer Brown
Prof. Tim Keeler, an attorney in the Government and International Trade Group, joined Mayer Brown in 2009, and brings an in-depth knowledge of international trade law and economic policy matters, and a history of working in the Executive Branch and Congress on major economic, legislative and regulatory issues.
Prior to joining Mayer Brown, Professor Keeler served in a variety of senior positions in the U.S. Government for almost 12 years. Most recently he was the Chief of Staff in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2006 - 2009, where he oversaw implementation of U.S. policy, strategy and negotiations involving all aspects of international trade and investment matters. He worked on a number of key issues including: climate change and trade; US and China relations; WTO negotiations and litigation; free trade agreement negotiations and implementation; and CFIUS decisions.
Before working for USTR, Prof. Keeler spent more than five years at the Treasury Department from 2001 – 2006. He joined the Office of Legislative Affairs in 2001 as a Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for International Issues, where he was responsible for Treasury’s legislative strategy on issues including capital market sanctions, foreign exchange rate policy testimony, appropriations for U.S. agreements to replenish the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks, multilateral debt relief, and U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund. He later managed the Office of Legislative Affairs from 2002 - 2006 and assisted on all policy and personnel issues in the Office. This included leading Treasury nominees through the U.S. Senate confirmation process, legislative strategy on Treasury Intelligence and Terrorist Financing matters, and advising on major economic legislative initiatives such as the 2003 tax cuts and social security reform proposals.
Prof. Keeler also served on the Presidential Transition Team in 2000–2001 as a policy coordinator on export control and trade remedy policy, handling the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration (now called the Bureau of Industry and Security) and the International Trade Commission (ITC).
Earlier in his career, Prof. Keeler served as a professional staff member for international trade on the US Senate Finance Committee under Chairman William V. Roth (R-DE). There he worked on legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) between the U.S. and China, preferential trade programs for Sub-Saharan Africa (the African Growth and Opportunity Act) and the Caribbean basin, the Generalized System of Preferences, legislation to bring the U.S. into compliance with the WTO decision on the Foreign Sales Corporation provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, and the miscellaneous tariff bill.
In recognition of his government service, Prof. Keeler was awarded the USTR Distinguished Service Award, the Treasury Distinguished Service Award, and the Treasury Secretary’s Honor Award twice.
Prof. Keeler is also an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Law, co-teaching a course on U.S. and WTO law, policy, and politics; is a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington International Trade Foundation; and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prof. Keeler has spoken at conferences on international trade and economic issues sponsored by, inter alia, the American Bar Association (Climate Change and Trade, March 2009), the Korea Economic Institute (the U.S. – Korea Free Trade Agreement, October 2010), and the U.S.-China Business Council (Sec. 421 tires safeguard case, July 2009; and the U.S. – China Economic and Political Relationship, January 2010).
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Alvaro Santos is Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Rule of Law in the Americas (CAROLA) at Georgetown University. He teaches and writes in the areas of international trade, economic development, drug policy, transnational labor law and the future of NAFTA.
Professor Santos is co-editor of Law and the New Developmental State: The Brazilian Experience in Latin America (2013) and The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal (2006). He is also the author of a number of articles and book chapters, including “Carving Out Policy Autonomy for Developing Countries in the World Trade Organization: The Experience of Brazil and Mexico” in the Virginia Journal of International Law (2012), and "Three Transnational Discourses of Labor Law in Domestic Reforms" in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (2010). In 2016, he contributed to a research manifesto authored by working group at the Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy, examining the role of law in global value chains. Professor Santos serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Comparative Law, the Journal of International Economic Law, the Law and Development Review, and the Latin American Journal of International Trade Law. He regularly teaches at Georgetown's WTO Academy and Harvard's Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) and has also taught at the University of Texas, Tufts University, Melbourne Law School, and the University of Turin. Santos received a JD with high honors from Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México and an LLM and SJD from Harvard Law School.
Senior Fellow & Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society, Center for a New American Security
Phillip Carter is Senior Fellow and Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security. His research focuses on issues facing veterans and military personnel, force structure and readiness issues, and civil-military relations.
Mr. Carter began his career as an Army officer, serving for several years in the active and reserve components as a military police and civil affairs officer. He deployed to Iraq in 2005-06, where he served as an embedded adviser with the Iraqi police in the Diyala province, and worked closely with the State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Team. After coming home, Mr. Carter became increasingly involved in veterans and national security policy issues. In 2007, Mr. Carter helped stand up the Obama campaign’s veterans policy committee; in 2008, he joined the campaign as its national veterans director, responsible for policy and political engagement with the veterans and military community. In 2009, Mr. Carter served as a political appointee in the Obama administration, responsible for detainee policy issues.
In addition to his military and government experience, Mr. Carter has worked in the private sector as an attorney and business leader. From 2011 to 2013, Mr. Carter served as chief operating officer and counsel for Caerus Associates, a private-sector strategy and design firm. Prior to that, Mr. Carter practiced law with a major international law firm, where his work focused on government contracts, export controls, and national security law. Mr. Carter authored briefs in the landmark national security cases Hamdan v. Rumsfeld(relating to military commissions at Guantanamo Bay), FAIR vs. Rumsfeld (relating to military recruiting on university campuses) and Al-Aulaqi v. Obama (a challenge to U.S. targeting of al Qaeda personnel in Yemen). Mr. Carter continues to practice law as counsel with the law firm Fluet Huber + Hoang PLLC, focusing on government contracts and national security law.
Mr. Carter currently serves on the Reserve Forces Policy Board, teaches as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal for National Security Law & Policy. He writes extensively on legal and national security issues, and comments on national security issues as @Carter_PE on Twitter.
A native of Southern California, Mr. Carter attended college and law school at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Deputy Secretary of Transportation, US Department of Transportation
Steven G. Bradbury was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation on March 13, 2025, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on March 11, 2025. In this role, he oversees the Department’s operating administrations and spearheads initiatives to ensure a safe, efficient, and modern transportation system that strengthens economic productivity and global competitiveness. Deputy Secretary Bradbury also assists Secretary Duffy in managing the Department’s activities, including its workforce of over 58,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $109 billion.
Bradbury previously served as the 23rd General Counsel of the Department of Transportation from 2017 to 2021, as the Acting Deputy Secretary from 2019, and as Acting Secretary of Transportation in 2021. As General Counsel, he was the chief legal officer, advising on all legal matters and ensuring the integrity and compliance of the Department’s policies and programs.
Before rejoining DOT, Bradbury was a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation from December 2022 to March 2025. He has extensive experience in the public and private sector, having served as Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dechert LLP. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge James L. Buckley.
Bradbury holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. in English from Stanford University.
Senior Lecturer; Director, The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, The University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Adam Klein is Director of the Strauss Center and Director of Strauss’ Program on Technology, Security, and Global Affairs. Adam also serves as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law. Before joining the Strauss Center, Adam served as Chairman of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the independent, bipartisan federal agency responsible for overseeing counterterrorism programs at the NSA, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies. As the Board’s Senate-confirmed Chairman, he oversaw its oversight and advice engagements with other federal agencies, while also serving as the Board’s chief executive officer.
Before entering government, Adam was the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan national-security research institution in Washington, DC. There, his research focused on government surveillance, intelligence powers, and national security law. Previously, Adam practiced law at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, LLP and served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also worked on national-security policy at the RAND Corporation, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (the non-profit successor to the 9/11 Commission), and in the U.S. Congress. He received his BA from Northwestern University and his JD from Columbia Law School.
Adam is a former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Berlin. He speaks German and French.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School
Professor Pierce is author of over twenty books and 130 articles on administrative law, government regulation, and the effects of various forms of government intervention on the performance of markets. His books and articles have been cited in hundreds of judicial opinions, including over a dozen opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School
Professor Pierce is author of over twenty books and 130 articles on administrative law, government regulation, and the effects of various forms of government intervention on the performance of markets. His books and articles have been cited in hundreds of judicial opinions, including over a dozen opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
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.
Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Professor and D’Alemberte Chair in Constitutional Law, Florida State University College of Law
Alexander Tsesis is the D’Alemberte chair in constitutional law at the Florida State University College of Law. He is also the general editor of the Cambridge Studies on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Oxford Theoretical Foundations in Law. Tsesis’ scholarship and teaching focus on a breadth of subjects, including constitutional law, civil rights, constitutional reconstruction, interpretive methodology, free speech theory, and legal history.
Tsesis’ most recent book is Free Speech in the Balance (Cambridge University Press 2020). His previous books include Constitutional Ethos: Liberal Equality for the Common Good (Oxford University Press 2017) and For Liberty and Equality: The Life and Times of the Declaration of Independence (Oxford University Press 2012), We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law (Yale University Press 2008), The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom (New York University Press 2004), and Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paved the Way for Harmful Social Movements (New York University Press 2002). He also edited a collection of essays in Promises of Liberty (Columbia University Press 2010). The subjects of his articles range from cyber speech, constitutional interpretation, civil rights law, and human rights. They have appeared or will appear in a variety of law reviews across the country, including the Boston University Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review.
Associate Professor of Law,, St. Thomas University College of Law
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.
Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Professor and D’Alemberte Chair in Constitutional Law, Florida State University College of Law
Alexander Tsesis is the D’Alemberte chair in constitutional law at the Florida State University College of Law. He is also the general editor of the Cambridge Studies on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Oxford Theoretical Foundations in Law. Tsesis’ scholarship and teaching focus on a breadth of subjects, including constitutional law, civil rights, constitutional reconstruction, interpretive methodology, free speech theory, and legal history.
Tsesis’ most recent book is Free Speech in the Balance (Cambridge University Press 2020). His previous books include Constitutional Ethos: Liberal Equality for the Common Good (Oxford University Press 2017) and For Liberty and Equality: The Life and Times of the Declaration of Independence (Oxford University Press 2012), We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law (Yale University Press 2008), The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom (New York University Press 2004), and Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paved the Way for Harmful Social Movements (New York University Press 2002). He also edited a collection of essays in Promises of Liberty (Columbia University Press 2010). The subjects of his articles range from cyber speech, constitutional interpretation, civil rights law, and human rights. They have appeared or will appear in a variety of law reviews across the country, including the Boston University Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review.
Associate Professor of Law,, St. Thomas University College of Law
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
The Honorable Amy Coney Barrett is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Donald Trump and was confirmed on October 27, 2020. She is the fifth woman to serve on the Court.
Justice Barrett earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Notre Dame, where she was a Kiley Fellow, earned the Hoynes Prize, the Law School’s highest honor, and served as executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. She clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. As an associate at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C., she litigated constitutional, criminal, and commercial cases in both trial and appellate courts.
In 2002, Justice Barrett joined the faculty of Notre Dame Law School. She continued to teach following her appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in November 2017. Justice Barrett also served by appointment of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure from 2010 to 2016.
Justice Barrett has published widely in the areas of federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation. Her scholarship in these fields has been published in leading journals, including the Columbia, Virginia, and Texas Law Reviews.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Daniel Hemel’s research focuses on taxation, nonprofit organizations, administrative law, and federal courts. His academic work has appeared in the California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Journal of Legal Analysis, National Tax Journal, NYU Law Review, Supreme Court Review, Tax Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, and has been cited by the US Supreme Court as well as the Ninth Circuit and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals. His op-eds and other writing have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, Politico, Slate, TIME Magazine, and Vox. He also has provided on-air legal analysis for CNN, MSNBC, and NPR.
Daniel graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received an MPhil with distinction from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He then earned his JD from Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. Before joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty, he was a law clerk to Associate Justice Elena Kagan on the US Supreme Court. He also clerked for Judge Michael Boudin on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Judge Sri Srinivasan on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and served as visiting counsel at the Joint Committee on Taxation. He has held visiting professorships at Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School.
U.S. Court of Federal Claims and Jurist-In-Residence Professor of Law, The University of Akron School of Law
Judge Ryan T. Holte was sworn in as a judge on the United States Court of Federal Claims in July 2019. Prior to confirmation he served as the David L. Brennan Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Technology at The University of Akron School of Law (2017-2019) and an assistant professor of law at Southern Illinois University School of Law (2013-2017). Judge Holte has written and presented widely on patent law subjects and empirical legal studies of Federal Circuit and district court patent law cases. His most recent articles were published in the Iowa Law Review (2019), George Mason Law Review (2018), and Washington Law Review (2017).
In practice, Judge Holte served for six years as general counsel and partner of an electrical engineering technology company and is co-inventor of multiple patents related to Systems and Methods for Countering Satellite-Navigated Munitions. Prior to entering academia, Judge Holte practiced as a litigation attorney at the Federal Trade Commission and an associate in the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Jones Day. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk to Judge Stanley F. Birch, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and as a law clerk to Judge Loren A. Smith on the United States Court of Federal Claims.
Judge Holte received his JD from the University of California Davis School of Law and his BS, magna cum laude, in engineering from the California Maritime Academy where he was a First Class graduate of the Corps of Cadets Third Engineering Division and sailed as a U.S. Merchant Marine oiler.
Charles I. Francis Professorship in Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Professor Aaron Nielson lectures and writes in the areas of administrative law, civil procedure, and federal courts. Before joining the faculty, he served as Solicitor General of Texas and represented Texas before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court, as well as overseeing all appellate litigation for the State. Earlier in his career, he was a professor at Brigham Young University and an appellate and antitrust partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He also clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
As Solicitor General, Professor Nielson successfully defended against a First Amendment challenge Texas’s law requiring online pornographers to institute age verification. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court appointed him to defend the constitutionality of a federal agency. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States after completing a six-year term as an appointed public member and chair of the Conference’s Administration & Management Committee.
Nielson’s research focuses on administrative law, federal litigation, and the separation of powers. He has published (or soon will publish) in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Northwestern University Law Review, among others. Nielson has been recognized for teaching for teaching and scholarship and in 2021 received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic for excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, and a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society. He is also an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Professor Nielson received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and an LL.M from the University of Cambridge, where he focused his studies on the institutions that regulate global competition and commerce. He received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in economics and political science.
Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Stephen E. Sachs is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches civil procedure, conflict of laws, and seminars on constitutional law. His research focuses on the law and theory of constitutional interpretation, the jurisdiction of state and federal courts, the history of procedure and private law, and the role of the general common law in the U.S. legal system.
Sachs has authored numerous articles, essays, and book chapters. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an adviser to the ALI’s project on the Restatement of the Law (Third), Conflict of Laws, a former member of the Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance.
In 2020, Sachs received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic who has demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society.
Sachs previously taught at Duke University School of Law and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering academia, he practiced in the Washington, D.C., litigation group of Mayer Brown LLP, and he clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as well as for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Sachs received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and served both as executive editor and articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Oxford University with a first-class BA (Hons) degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in history from Harvard University, earning the Sophia Freund Prize.
Sachs is a licensed attorney in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and he is authorized to practice before the D.C. Circuit, the Second Circuit, the Seventh Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Associate Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Christopher B. Seaman joined the Washington and Lee law faculty in 2012. His research and teaching interests include intellectual property, property, and civil procedure, with a particular focus on intellectual property litigation and remedies for the violation of intellectual property rights.
Professor Seaman’s intellectual property-related scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of law reviews and journals, including the Virginia Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, and the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. His empirical study of willful patent infringement and enhanced damages was selected as a winner of the Samsung-Stanford Patent Prize competition for outstanding new scholarship related to patent remedies.
In addition, Professor Seaman has an interest in voting rights and election law, having written several works on the history, constitutionality, and potential future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Professor Seaman was selected by the Student Bar Association as Faculty Member of the Year for 2013-2014. He received the John W. Elrod Law Alumni Faculty Fellowship for Teaching in 2014 and was named an Ethan Allen Faculty Fellow for scholarship in 2015.
Professor Seaman received his B.A. in 2000 from Swarthmore College and his J.D. in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was an Executive Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and a recipient of the Edwin R. Keedy Award. After a judicial clerkship with the Honorable R. Barclay Surrick of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, he practiced intellectual property law at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago from 2005-2009, where he represented clients in patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret litigation in federal and state courts. Prior to joining Washington and Lee’s faculty, Professor Seaman was a Visiting Assistant Professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of a casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2024). He is also the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). His next book, The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction, is also forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
The Honorable Amy Coney Barrett is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Donald Trump and was confirmed on October 27, 2020. She is the fifth woman to serve on the Court.
Justice Barrett earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Notre Dame, where she was a Kiley Fellow, earned the Hoynes Prize, the Law School’s highest honor, and served as executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. She clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. As an associate at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C., she litigated constitutional, criminal, and commercial cases in both trial and appellate courts.
In 2002, Justice Barrett joined the faculty of Notre Dame Law School. She continued to teach following her appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in November 2017. Justice Barrett also served by appointment of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure from 2010 to 2016.
Justice Barrett has published widely in the areas of federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation. Her scholarship in these fields has been published in leading journals, including the Columbia, Virginia, and Texas Law Reviews.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Daniel Hemel’s research focuses on taxation, nonprofit organizations, administrative law, and federal courts. His academic work has appeared in the California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Journal of Legal Analysis, National Tax Journal, NYU Law Review, Supreme Court Review, Tax Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, and has been cited by the US Supreme Court as well as the Ninth Circuit and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals. His op-eds and other writing have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, Politico, Slate, TIME Magazine, and Vox. He also has provided on-air legal analysis for CNN, MSNBC, and NPR.
Daniel graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received an MPhil with distinction from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He then earned his JD from Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. Before joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty, he was a law clerk to Associate Justice Elena Kagan on the US Supreme Court. He also clerked for Judge Michael Boudin on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Judge Sri Srinivasan on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and served as visiting counsel at the Joint Committee on Taxation. He has held visiting professorships at Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School.
U.S. Court of Federal Claims and Jurist-In-Residence Professor of Law, The University of Akron School of Law
Judge Ryan T. Holte was sworn in as a judge on the United States Court of Federal Claims in July 2019. Prior to confirmation he served as the David L. Brennan Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Technology at The University of Akron School of Law (2017-2019) and an assistant professor of law at Southern Illinois University School of Law (2013-2017). Judge Holte has written and presented widely on patent law subjects and empirical legal studies of Federal Circuit and district court patent law cases. His most recent articles were published in the Iowa Law Review (2019), George Mason Law Review (2018), and Washington Law Review (2017).
In practice, Judge Holte served for six years as general counsel and partner of an electrical engineering technology company and is co-inventor of multiple patents related to Systems and Methods for Countering Satellite-Navigated Munitions. Prior to entering academia, Judge Holte practiced as a litigation attorney at the Federal Trade Commission and an associate in the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Jones Day. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk to Judge Stanley F. Birch, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and as a law clerk to Judge Loren A. Smith on the United States Court of Federal Claims.
Judge Holte received his JD from the University of California Davis School of Law and his BS, magna cum laude, in engineering from the California Maritime Academy where he was a First Class graduate of the Corps of Cadets Third Engineering Division and sailed as a U.S. Merchant Marine oiler.
Charles I. Francis Professorship in Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Professor Aaron Nielson lectures and writes in the areas of administrative law, civil procedure, and federal courts. Before joining the faculty, he served as Solicitor General of Texas and represented Texas before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court, as well as overseeing all appellate litigation for the State. Earlier in his career, he was a professor at Brigham Young University and an appellate and antitrust partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He also clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
As Solicitor General, Professor Nielson successfully defended against a First Amendment challenge Texas’s law requiring online pornographers to institute age verification. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court appointed him to defend the constitutionality of a federal agency. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States after completing a six-year term as an appointed public member and chair of the Conference’s Administration & Management Committee.
Nielson’s research focuses on administrative law, federal litigation, and the separation of powers. He has published (or soon will publish) in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Northwestern University Law Review, among others. Nielson has been recognized for teaching for teaching and scholarship and in 2021 received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic for excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, and a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society. He is also an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Professor Nielson received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and an LL.M from the University of Cambridge, where he focused his studies on the institutions that regulate global competition and commerce. He received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in economics and political science.
Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Stephen E. Sachs is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches civil procedure, conflict of laws, and seminars on constitutional law. His research focuses on the law and theory of constitutional interpretation, the jurisdiction of state and federal courts, the history of procedure and private law, and the role of the general common law in the U.S. legal system.
Sachs has authored numerous articles, essays, and book chapters. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an adviser to the ALI’s project on the Restatement of the Law (Third), Conflict of Laws, a former member of the Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance.
In 2020, Sachs received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic who has demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society.
Sachs previously taught at Duke University School of Law and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering academia, he practiced in the Washington, D.C., litigation group of Mayer Brown LLP, and he clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as well as for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Sachs received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and served both as executive editor and articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Oxford University with a first-class BA (Hons) degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in history from Harvard University, earning the Sophia Freund Prize.
Sachs is a licensed attorney in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and he is authorized to practice before the D.C. Circuit, the Second Circuit, the Seventh Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Associate Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Christopher B. Seaman joined the Washington and Lee law faculty in 2012. His research and teaching interests include intellectual property, property, and civil procedure, with a particular focus on intellectual property litigation and remedies for the violation of intellectual property rights.
Professor Seaman’s intellectual property-related scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of law reviews and journals, including the Virginia Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, and the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. His empirical study of willful patent infringement and enhanced damages was selected as a winner of the Samsung-Stanford Patent Prize competition for outstanding new scholarship related to patent remedies.
In addition, Professor Seaman has an interest in voting rights and election law, having written several works on the history, constitutionality, and potential future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Professor Seaman was selected by the Student Bar Association as Faculty Member of the Year for 2013-2014. He received the John W. Elrod Law Alumni Faculty Fellowship for Teaching in 2014 and was named an Ethan Allen Faculty Fellow for scholarship in 2015.
Professor Seaman received his B.A. in 2000 from Swarthmore College and his J.D. in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was an Executive Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and a recipient of the Edwin R. Keedy Award. After a judicial clerkship with the Honorable R. Barclay Surrick of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, he practiced intellectual property law at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago from 2005-2009, where he represented clients in patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret litigation in federal and state courts. Prior to joining Washington and Lee’s faculty, Professor Seaman was a Visiting Assistant Professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of a casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2024). He is also the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). His next book, The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction, is also forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Suja A. Thomas's research interests include the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendment jury provisions, civil procedure, employment law, theories of constitutional interpretation, and consumer issues. She is currently working on two books, one entitled The Missing American Jury: Restoring Its Fundamental Constitutional Role, which Cambridge University Press will publish, and the other, co-authored with Sandra Sperino, entitled Unequal Justice: Why Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Lose, which Oxford University Press will publish. Her article "Why Summary Judgment is Unconstitutional," published by the Virginia Law Review, has been the basis of arguments in the federal courts and was featured in a piece in The New York Times where her argument was referred to as "perfectly plausible." A panel of the 6th Circuit referred to her historical analysis in that article as "interesting," and her article was the impetus for a symposium of the Iowa Law Review. Professor Thomas's other work has also been influential. Her article on remittitur was the basis of a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, and a federal judge has commented that "her caution [regarding the effective elimination of the jury trial right through remittitur] merits evaluation by the federal courts." Also, recently, theWall Street Journal ran an article based on her co-authored article "Employer Costs and Conflicts Under the Affordable Care Act," published by the Cornell Law Review Online.
Professor Thomas earned her bachelor of arts from Northwestern University in mathematics and received her law degree from New York University School of Law. At N.Y.U., she served as an articles editor on the N.Y.U. Law Review, and she received several awards including the Leonard M. Henkin Prize for her note on equal rights under the 14th Amendment, the Mendes Hershman Prize for excellence in writing in the field of property law and the William Miller Memorial Award for outstanding scholarship in the field of municipal law. After graduating from law school and a federal clerkship in Chicago, Professor Thomas practiced law in New York City with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C. and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP.
Professor Thomas began her academic career as a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 2000 and was a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in the spring of 2008. She joined the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in the fall of 2008.
Back in the day, Professor Thomas ran several marathons, including Boston, with a personal best of 3:02. She lives in Urbana with her husband Scott and dog Javi.
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What is the Future of Trade Law?
Matthew R. A. Heiman, Timothy J. Keeler, John O. McGinnis, Alvaro Santos
International Law in the Trump Era: Expectations, Hopes, and Fears
The Federalist Society's Practice Group and Student Divisions and the American Branch of the International Law...
The Second Annual Mike Lewis Memorial Podcast
Phillip Carter, Steven Gill Bradbury, Adam I. Klein
International & National Security Law Practice Group Podcast
In the summer of 2015, the Federalist Society lost a great friend with the passing...
“Dear Colleague”/Guidance Letters, Consent Decrees, and other administrative law innovations
Richard A. Epstein, Gail L. Heriot, Michael W. McConnell, Richard J. Pierce, Aaron Saiger
19th Annual Faculty Conference
This panel will discuss administrative agencies’ increasing use of devices such as guidance letters, consent...
“Dear Colleague”/Guidance Letters, Consent Decrees, and other administrative law innovations
Richard A. Epstein, Gail L. Heriot, Michael W. McConnell, Richard J. Pierce, Aaron Saiger
19th Annual Faculty Conference
This panel will discuss administrative agencies’ increasing use of devices such as guidance letters, consent...
The Thirteenth Amendment 150 Years Later
Randy E. Barnett, Jennifer Mason McAward, Alexander Tsesis, David Upham
19th Annual Faculty Conference
December 2015 marked 150 years since the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment—an occasion of singular...
The Thirteenth Amendment 150 Years Later
Randy E. Barnett, Jennifer Mason McAward, Alexander Tsesis, David Upham
19th Annual Faculty Conference
December 2015 marked 150 years since the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment—an occasion of singular...
Young Legal Scholars Paper Presentations
Amy Coney Barrett, Richard A. Epstein, Daniel Hemel, Ryan T. Holte, Aaron Nielson, Stephen E. Sachs, Christopher Seaman, Christopher J. Walker, Ilan Wurman
19th Annual Faculty Conference
This panel was held on January 5, 2017 during the 19th Annual Faculty Conference in...
Young Legal Scholars Paper Presentations
Amy Coney Barrett, Richard A. Epstein, Daniel Hemel, Ryan T. Holte, Aaron Nielson, Stephen E. Sachs, Christopher Seaman, Christopher J. Walker, Ilan Wurman
19th Annual Faculty Conference
This panel was held on January 5, 2017 during the 19th Annual Faculty Conference in...
The Past and Future of the Criminal and Civil Jury
Joshua Kleinfeld, Renée Lettow Lerner, Suja Thomas
19th Annual Faculty Conference
This debate will discuss the proper role of the criminal and civil jury in modern...