John W. Wade Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law
Richard L. Cupp, Jr. serves as the John W. Wade Professor of Law at Pepperdine Law School. He loves teaching and working with students. He is widely recognized as a leading scholar and commentator in the fields of torts and products liability law. He has authored more than 20 significant scholarly articles and numerous shorter articles. Professor Cupp is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and he has served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Torts and Compensation Systems.
In addition to his work in torts and products liability, Professor Cupp writes and speaks extensively about the legal and moral status of animals. He has advised many organizations on these subjects, including the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Technology and Law, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Neuroscience, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the National Association for Biomedical Research, the Animal Health Institute, and the American Animal Hospital Association.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit
Judge Randolph was confirmed by the Senate and appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in July 1990.
Judge Randolph received his B.S. degree in 1966 from Drexel University, majoring in economics and basic engineering. At Drexel, he was president of the debate society, vice president of the Student Senate, and a member of the varsity wrestling squad. In 1969, he received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude. Judge Randolph ranked first in his law school class all three years and was managing editor of the Law Review.
After graduation, Judge Randolph served as a law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
Admitted to the California Bar in 1970 (and to the District of Columbia bar in 1973), Judge Randolph worked as Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C., 1970-1973.
After two years in private practice, Judge Randolph was named Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, a position he held from 1975-1977.
In 1979, Judge Randolph was appointed Special Counsel to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the Ethics Committee) of the United States House of Representatives, remaining in this position until 1980.
In the 1980s, Judge Randolph held a number of positions while in private practice, including Special Assistant Attorney General for the states of New Mexico (1985 90), Utah (1986-1990) and Montana (1983-1990). He also served as a Member of the Advisory Panel of the Federal Courts Study Committee.
From 1971-1990, Judge Randolph argued 23 times in the United States Supreme Court, winning 20 of his cases.
As an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center from 1974-1978 he taught courses in civil procedure and injunctions. In 1992 he taught a course in constitutional law. He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason School of Law and for the past ten years has been teaching First Amendment law. He also serves on the Judicial Advisory Board of the George Mason University Law and Economics Center.
From 1993 through 1995 Judge Randolph was a member of the Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and from 1995 to 1998 served as the Committee's chairman. He also served as the judicial liaison to the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law Section.
Judge Randolph is a member of the Board of Visitors at Drexel University Law School and was named to the “Drexel One Hundred” as a leading alumnus. In 2002 he was presented the James Wilson Award by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In November 2005 he delivered the Fifth Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Annual Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society. He has published numerous articles, the most recent of which is in the June 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Judge Randolph is married to the Honorable Eileen J. O’Connor, formerly Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. His son John Trevor Randolph is an investment banker in New York. His daughter Cynthia Lee Randolph is an artist living in San Francisco.
President, Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc.
Steven M. Wise is President of the Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. He holds a J.D. from Boston University Law School and a B.S. in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary. He has practiced animal protection law for 30 years throughout the United States and is admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. Steve teaches “Animal Rights Jurisprudence” at the Vermont, Lewis and Clark, University of Miami, and St. Thomas Law Schools, and has taught “Animal Rights Law” at the Harvard Law School and John Marshall Law School.
Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Mr. Guynn is head of Davis Polk’s Financial Institutions Group. He has been recognized as a thought-leader on financial regulatory reform and as one of the most widely consulted U.S. legal advisers during the financial crisis. See “In the Red Zone,”The American Lawyer, January 2009 and “For Davis Polk, Dodd-Frank Pays,” The American Lawyer, December 2010.
He has advised the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the principal trade organization for U.S. banks, securities firms and asset managers, all of the U.S.’s six-largest banks and several foreign banks on the Dodd-Frank Act and its regulatory implementation.
His practice focuses on providing strategic bank and regulatory and enforcement advice and advising on M&A and capital markets transactions when the target or issuer is a banking organization or other financial institution. He also advises on bank failures and recapitalizations, corporate governance and internal controls, cross-border collateral transactions, credit risk management, securities settlement systems and payment systems.
S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
David Skeel is the Caryl Louise Boies Visiting Professor of Law at New York University, and the S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act and its (Unintended) Consequences (Wiley, 2011); Icarus in the Boardroom: The Fundamental Flaws in Corporate America and Where They Came From (Oxford University Press, 2005); Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America (Princeton University Press, 2001); and numerous articles on bankruptcy, corporate law, financial regulation, Christianity and law, and other topics. Professor Skeel has also written commentaries for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Books & Culture, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.
Partner, Millstein & Co.
James Wigand is a Partner at Millstein & Co.
From January 2011 to November 2013, Mr. Wigand served as the first Director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of Complex Financial Institutions (OCFI) and as a Senior Advisor to the Chairman, FDIC. The OCFI was created to better position the FDIC to carry out its new resolution responsibilities for systemically important financial institutions under the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Prior to assuming this position, Mr. Wigand served as the Deputy Director for Franchise and Asset Marketing, Division of Resolutions and Receiverships, FDIC, and oversaw the resolution of failing insured financial institutions and the sale of their assets from 1997 to 2010. From 1995 to 1997, he was the Assistant Director for Capital Markets, Division of Depositor and Asset Services, FDIC, overseeing the issuance and servicing of residential and commercial mortgage backed securities.
Mr. Wigand served in various executive positions at the Resolution Trust Corporation from December 1989 until its closing in December 1995. During this period, he supervised the Asset Management and Sales Division's loan and owned real estate management, seller financing, equity partnership and loan workout programs. He also had responsibility for receivership operations and the conclusion of RTC's conservatorship program.
Before RTC, Mr. Wigand worked in the Division of Liquidation, FDIC, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation's Operations and Liquidation Division, and Ferris & Company.
During his career, Mr. Wigand has been involved with the management, sale or resolution of $1 trillion of financial institution assets.
Born in New York City, Mr. Wigand received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maryland and a Master of Business Administration degree with a specialization in finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Former Comptroller of Public Accounts, State of Texas
The Hon. Susan Combs served as the Comptroller of Public Accounts for the State of Texas from 2007 to 2015.
Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Professor Justin Pidot graduated with high honors from Wesleyan University before attending Stanford Law School, where he graduated with distinction and was editor in chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. Professor Pidot clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to joining the University of Denver faculty, he was an appellate litigator at the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he presented argument in more than a dozen federal appellate cases and acted as the staff attorney on two cases before the United States Supreme Court. Professor Pidot also completed a fellowship at the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute.
Professor Pidot’s scholarship and teaching focus on environmental law, natural resources law, and federal courts.
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
William Yeatman is CEI's senior fellow specializing in environmental policy and energy markets.
His commentary has been widely featured in newspapers from coast to coast and also on nationwide television and radio.Yeatman has twice testified before congress and numerous times before state legislatures.
Prior to joining CEI, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic, where he taught entrepreneurship and small business management to rural women. Before that, he ran a homeless shelter in Denver, Colorado.
He holds a Masters in International Administration from the Denver University Graduate School of International Studies and a Bachelor's in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Justin R. Walker is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump on May 4, 2020, and confirmed by the United States Senate on June 18, 2020. He is a former United States District Judge of the Western District of Kentucky.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Partner, Wiley Rein, LLP
Megan L. Brown is a partner at Wiley Rein LLP. She has significant litigation, appellate and regulatory experience before state and federal courts and agencies.
Ms. Brown helps businesses respond to federal, state and local regulation and investigations raising administrative law, statutory interpretation, and constitutional issues, including the First Amendment.
Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft
David Howard is Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel with Microsoft. He joined Microsoft in 2010, after nearly 20 years at Dechert LLP. Howard joined Dechert in 1985, upon completion of a clerkship with the Honorable Marvin Katz of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He left the firm in 1987 to take a special assignment with the White House Counsel’s Task Force on the Iran/Contra Matter. In October 1987, Howard became an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and served in that position through 1994. He returned to Dechert in 1995. A graduate of Princeton University (A.B., cum laude) and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D., cum laude), Howard is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar and admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Second and Third Circuits.
Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
James Garland is a partner in Covington’s Litigation and White Collar Defense & Investigations practice groups. His practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, internal investigations, white collar criminal defense, and national security.
Mr. Garland has substantial experience litigating high-stakes, multidimensional business disputes for clients across a range of industries, including companies in the high-tech, financial services, defense, transportation, media and entertainment, and pharmaceutical sectors. Many of his civil representations have involved parallel enforcement proceedings in multiple forums, often with significant public relations and policy implications.
In the white collar area, Mr. Garland has represented both corporate and individual clients in large-scale, multi-party criminal investigations and related regulatory enforcement actions. Mr. Garland also regularly advises clients concerning national security-related matters, including with respect to issues involving electronic surveillance, cyber-security, and data privacy.
Mr. Garland returned Covington in 2010 after serving as Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to Attorney General Eric Holder at the U.S. Department of Justice. In that role, Mr. Garland advised the Attorney General on a range of enforcement issues, with an emphasis on criminal, antitrust, intellectual property, and cyber-security matters. He worked closely with senior officials at the White House, Main Justice, U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, FBI, SEC, and other federal, state, and local enforcement agencies.
Co-Founder, Able Lending
Evan Baehr is the cofounder of Able, an online lender to small businesses. It launched June 2014 with the Wall Street Journal'sWeekend Interview and on TechCrunch. His passion at Able is to serve the Fortune 5 Million – the 5.8 million small businesses that represent the backbone of the American economy. His previous startup was Outbox, a consumer internet company aiming to takeover the US Postal Service and backed by venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Mike Maples, featured on Fox News, CNN, TechCrunch, FastCompany, Wall Street Journal, INC, the New York Times, and on Jay Leno.
He has worked on the Facebook platform under Sheryl Sandberg, helping shape a vision to make life better by making it social, and for Peter Thiel building a political data company. He’s an honors graduate of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, Yale Divinity School, and Harvard Business School.
He has worked for the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, served as a legislative aid on the House Appropriations Committee under Rep. Frank Wolf, was Chief of Staff on the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, under which he wrote the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, and was the failed candidate for Princeton’s City Council, despite receiving more votes than George W. Bush.
He has served on the board of the Manhattan Institute’s Adam Smith Society, the New Canaan Society, the Rivendell Institute, and Harvard Business School's FIELD Program, and is a mentor with First Round Capital's Dorm Room Fund. He cofounded the Hoover Institute’s Rising Fellows Program, Harvard Business School’s Ideas@Work, Princetonians in the Nation’s Service, and the Yale Forum on Faith and Politics. He is the recipient of the Lily Endowment Thesis Prize, the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, and Princeton’s James Madison Fellowship. He lives in Austin, TX, with his wife, Kristina Scurry Baehr, a patent litigator, and children Cooper and Madeleine.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Chief Legal Officer, Paradigm
Principal, DeGroot Legal
Mr. DeGroot represents businesses in complex litigation, focusing on licensing, insurance, intellectual property, contract disputes, and toxic torts. He has experience in cases involving fraud, breach of contract, unfair competition, patents, business torts, mergers and acquisitions, creditors’ rights, and bankruptcy. He has extensive experience in all aspects of civil litigation, both in federal and state courts, including prejudgment remedies, discovery, trial, appeals, arbitration and mediation.
Mr. DeGroot works with clients in a variety of industries, including financial institutions, insurance, software, construction, semiconductors, and real estate.
Policy Counsel, Lyft
Associate Professor, University of Idaho College of Law
Stephen R. Miller joined the faculty of the University of Idaho College of Law in 2011. Prof. Miller received his undergraduate degree from Brown University, a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. While in law school, Prof. Miller was senior articles editor of the Constitutional Law Quarterly. Prof. Miller also worked for a land use and environmental law firm in San Francisco, California prior to joining the faculty. His research interests include economic development, sustainable development, land use, environmental law, and local government law.
His academic works have been published by or are forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, Harvard Environmental Law Review, and a number of other law reviews and professional journals. In 2013, he was named Faculty Advisor of the Year by the Idaho Law Review and also received the Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. In addition to his academic writings, Prof. Miller also blogs at Land Use Prof Blog, and writes an occasional column for the Idaho Statesman Business Insider.
Prof. Miller also runs the College of Law's Economic Development Clinic, which maintains the student-written blog Idaho NEXT. In 2013, the Clinic received the Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice from the Idaho chapter of the American Planning Association for Area of City Impact Agreements in Idaho. In 2014, the Clinic released Agritourism at the Rural-Urban Interface: A National Overview of Legal Issues with 20 Proposals for Idaho. In addition, the Clinic has been credited by state officials with popularizing the use of New Markets Tax Credits financing in Idaho, a financing tool that has already helped fund $50 million in investment in low income communities throughout the state.
Prof. Miller is also active in the community. He presently serves as a commissioner on the Boise City Planning and Zoning Commission and as a board member of the Joyce Ivy Foundation, which provides educational opportunities for talented high school students.
Executive in Residence, Wake Forest University School of Business
John Allison is an Executive in Residence at the Wake Forest School of Business. He is a member of the Cato Institute’s Board of Directors and Chairman of the Executive Advisory Council of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. Allison was president and CEO of the Cato Institute from October 2012 to April 2015. Prior to joining Cato, Allison was chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th-largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. During his tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets. He was recognized by theHarvard Business Reviewas one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over the last decade.
Allison has received the Corning Award for Distinguished Leadership, been inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from theAmerican Banker. He is the author of The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy’s Only Hope and The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In addition, he is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University School of Business, and serves on the Board of Visitors at the business schools at Wake Forest, Duke, and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Allison is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He received his master’s degree in management from Duke University and is also a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking. Allison is the recipient of six honorary doctorate degrees.
Osborn Maledon
Andrew G. Pappas is an Assistant Solicitor General in the Office of the Attorney General of Arizona. Mr. Pappas is a member of the California Bar, and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. District Courts for the Central District of California, Southern District of California, and Northern District of Illinois. Before joining the Attorney General's Office, Mr. Pappas was an associate attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in Los Angeles. He graduated from Occidental College in 2004, and from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law in 2009.
Senior Fellow, Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Peter J. Wallison holds the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Financial Policy Studies and is co-director of AEI’s program on Financial Policy Studies. Prior to joining AEI, he practiced banking, corporate and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. Mr. Wallison has held a number of government positions. From June 1981 to January 1985, he was General Counsel of the United States Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan Administration's proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan, and between 1972 and 1976, he served first as Special Assistant to New York's Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller as vice president of the United States.
Mr. Wallison was admitted to practice before the courts of New York and the District of Columbia, and is retired from practice in New York. He continues to be a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1963 and law degree from Harvard Law School in 1966.
Mr. Wallison is the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, published in December 2002 by Westview Press. On campaign finance, he is the author (with Joel Gora) of Better Parties, Better Government, (AEI Press 2009). On financial or regulatory matters, he is the author of Back From the Brink, a proposal for a private deposit insurance system, and co-author of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Internet Age; Competitive Equity: A Better Way to Organize Mutual Funds; Bad History, Worse Policy: How a False Narrative about the Financial Crisis Led to the Dodd-Frank Act (AEI Press 2013); and Hidden In Plain Sight: What Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why it Could Happen Again (Encounter Books 2015). His most recent book is Judicial Fortitude: The Last Chance to Rein in the Administrative State, published by Encounter Books in October 2018.
He testifies frequently before committees of Congress, and is a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and other print and online journals. He has also been a speaker at many conferences on financial services, housing, the causes of the financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act, accounting, and corporate governance, and was a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee between 1995 and 2015. He was a member of the SEC Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (2008), co-Chair of the Pew Financial Reform Task Force (2009), and a member of the congressionally- appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2009-2011). In May 2011, for his work in financial policy, Mr. Wallison received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Colorado.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Animal Personhood: A Debate
Richard L. Cupp, A. Raymond Randolph, Steven Wise
Sponsored by the Federalist Society's Practice Groups
The Federalist Society does not authorize the use or transcription of these recordings, in part...
Single Point of Entry – A Response to Paul Kupiec and Peter Wallison - Podcast
Randall D. Guynn, David Skeel, James Wigand
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“Sue-and-Settle” and the Endangered Species Act - Podcast
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Endangered Species Act listing settlements between the Environmental Protection Agency and private parties have not...
Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Carter - Post-Argument SCOTUScast
Justin Reed Walker
SCOTUScast 2-13-15 featuring Justin Walker
On January 13, 2015, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Kellogg Brown & Root...
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Update - February 2015 - Podcast
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T-Mobile v. City of Roswell - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Megan L. Brown
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The Reach of Federal Warrants - The Microsoft Case - Podcast
David Howard, James M. Garland
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In December of 2014, Microsoft filed a brief with the Federal Court of Appeals for...
Government Regulation in the Sharing Economy
Evan Baehr, Carlos T. Bea, Katie Biber, David DeGroot, Andrea Ambrose Lobato, Stephen R. Miller
2015 Annual Western Chapters Conference
In the innovation economy, entrants often confront increased regulatory hurdles, particularly on a state level, as...
Luncheon Address by John Allison
John A. Allison, Andrew G. Pappas
2015 Annual Western Chapters Conference
John Allison, President and CEO of the Cato Institute, delivered the Keynote Address at the...
Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again - Podcast
Peter J. Wallison, Todd J. Zywicki
Financial Services & E-Commerce Practice Group Podcast
The 2008 financial crisis—like the Great Depression—was a world-historical event. What caused it will be...