Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (ret.)
The Honorable Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8, 2005. She retired from the court in 2017. From 1996 to 2005, she was an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Prior to this, she served as associate justice of the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento and as legal affairs secretary to California Governor Pete Wilson. Earlier in her career, she served as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency after having worked in the criminal appellate and civil trial divisions of the California Attorney General’s Office. She currently chairs the Advisory Board of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and serves on the Board of the Coolidge Foundation and the Association of College Trustees and Alumni. She is the Darling Foundation Jurist-in-Residence and visiting professor of Law at the University of California Boalt School of Law. Brown has been honored with the Jurisprudence Award of Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, the Baroness Thatcher Award of the Pacific Research Institute, the Edwin Meese III, Originalism and Religious Liberty Award from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the James Wilson Institute Leadership and the Law Award, and the 2019 Bradley Award. She earned her law degree from the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, and a Master of Laws in judicial process from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Former President & CEO, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Eugene B. Meyer, former President and CEO of the Federalist Society, has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for more than 40 years. He is responsible for shepherding the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law. The Society now includes a Student Chapter at nearly every ABA-accredited law school in the country and Lawyers Chapters in 220 major cities across the nation. Gene earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Gene currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society. He holds the title of International Chess Master.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (ret.)
The Honorable Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8, 2005. She retired from the court in 2017. From 1996 to 2005, she was an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Prior to this, she served as associate justice of the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento and as legal affairs secretary to California Governor Pete Wilson. Earlier in her career, she served as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency after having worked in the criminal appellate and civil trial divisions of the California Attorney General’s Office. She currently chairs the Advisory Board of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and serves on the Board of the Coolidge Foundation and the Association of College Trustees and Alumni. She is the Darling Foundation Jurist-in-Residence and visiting professor of Law at the University of California Boalt School of Law. Brown has been honored with the Jurisprudence Award of Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, the Baroness Thatcher Award of the Pacific Research Institute, the Edwin Meese III, Originalism and Religious Liberty Award from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the James Wilson Institute Leadership and the Law Award, and the 2019 Bradley Award. She earned her law degree from the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, and a Master of Laws in judicial process from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Former President & CEO, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Eugene B. Meyer, former President and CEO of the Federalist Society, has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for more than 40 years. He is responsible for shepherding the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law. The Society now includes a Student Chapter at nearly every ABA-accredited law school in the country and Lawyers Chapters in 220 major cities across the nation. Gene earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Gene currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society. He holds the title of International Chess Master.
James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor Saikrishna Prakash’s scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and Presidential Powers at the Law School.
Prakash’s most recent book, “The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers,” was published by Harvard Belknap Press in 2020. He also authored “Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive” (Yale University Press, 2015). The former book focuses on the modern presidency while the latter considers the presidency of the Founders.
Prakash has authored over 75 law review articles. Among them are “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” in the Harvard Law Review, “The Indefensible Duty to Defend” in the Columbia Law Review, and “50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend” and “The Executive Power Over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal.
Prakash has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. At the request of Democrats and Republicans, he has testified before Congress on matters of presidential removal, the Mueller Report and how Congress might better check the presidency. He is currently a Miller Center Senior Fellow. In 2015, he received the Roger Traynor award for faculty scholarship. In the same year, he received an honorable mention from the American Society of Legal Writers for his book “Imperial from the Beginning.” He has given named lectures at William & Mary Law School, Princeton University and Toledo Law School, and keynote addresses at several conferences.
Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He subsequently clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War & Peace at Stanford University.
James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor Saikrishna Prakash’s scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and Presidential Powers at the Law School.
Prakash’s most recent book, “The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers,” was published by Harvard Belknap Press in 2020. He also authored “Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive” (Yale University Press, 2015). The former book focuses on the modern presidency while the latter considers the presidency of the Founders.
Prakash has authored over 75 law review articles. Among them are “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” in the Harvard Law Review, “The Indefensible Duty to Defend” in the Columbia Law Review, and “50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend” and “The Executive Power Over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal.
Prakash has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. At the request of Democrats and Republicans, he has testified before Congress on matters of presidential removal, the Mueller Report and how Congress might better check the presidency. He is currently a Miller Center Senior Fellow. In 2015, he received the Roger Traynor award for faculty scholarship. In the same year, he received an honorable mention from the American Society of Legal Writers for his book “Imperial from the Beginning.” He has given named lectures at William & Mary Law School, Princeton University and Toledo Law School, and keynote addresses at several conferences.
Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He subsequently clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War & Peace at Stanford University.
Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale Law School
Degrees from Davidson College, B.A. summa cum laude, 1973; Harvard University, M.A., 1974; Yale Law School, J.D, 1978. Clerked for Edward Weinfeld, 1978-79; Attorney at Shea & Gardner, 1979-82; Law Professor since 1982, tenured at Georgetown and Yale, visiting professor at Stanford, NYU, Toronto, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Fordham, Vanderbilt. Author of casebooks on legislation and sexuality, gender and law, as well as monographs on statutory interpretation and the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Author of dozens of articles, by one empirical count a top ten most cited law professors.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Reva Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale University. Professor Siegel’s writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality, and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. She is currently writing on the role of social movement conflict in guiding constitutional change, addressing this question in recent articles on the enforcement of Brown, originalism and the Second Amendment, the "de facto ERA," and reproductive rights. Her publications include Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling, (with Linda Greenhouse, 2nd ed. 2012); The Constitution in 2020 (edited with Jack Balkin, 2009);Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (with Brest, Levinson, Balkin & Amar, 2006) and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon, 2004). Professor Siegel received her B.A., M.Phil, and J.D. from Yale University, clerked for Judge Spottswood Robinson on the D.C. Circuit, and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is active in the American Society for Legal History, the American Association of Law Schools, and the American Constitution Society, serving on the board of the national organization and as faculty advisor of Yale’s chapter.
David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale Law School
Degrees from Davidson College, B.A. summa cum laude, 1973; Harvard University, M.A., 1974; Yale Law School, J.D, 1978. Clerked for Edward Weinfeld, 1978-79; Attorney at Shea & Gardner, 1979-82; Law Professor since 1982, tenured at Georgetown and Yale, visiting professor at Stanford, NYU, Toronto, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Fordham, Vanderbilt. Author of casebooks on legislation and sexuality, gender and law, as well as monographs on statutory interpretation and the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Author of dozens of articles, by one empirical count a top ten most cited law professors.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Reva Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale University. Professor Siegel’s writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality, and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. She is currently writing on the role of social movement conflict in guiding constitutional change, addressing this question in recent articles on the enforcement of Brown, originalism and the Second Amendment, the "de facto ERA," and reproductive rights. Her publications include Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling, (with Linda Greenhouse, 2nd ed. 2012); The Constitution in 2020 (edited with Jack Balkin, 2009);Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (with Brest, Levinson, Balkin & Amar, 2006) and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon, 2004). Professor Siegel received her B.A., M.Phil, and J.D. from Yale University, clerked for Judge Spottswood Robinson on the D.C. Circuit, and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is active in the American Society for Legal History, the American Association of Law Schools, and the American Constitution Society, serving on the board of the national organization and as faculty advisor of Yale’s chapter.
David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School
US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
Stephen Markman was appointed Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court on October 1, 1999. He served as the Chief Justice from 2017-2019. Before his appointment, he served as Judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals from 1995-1999. Prior to this, he practiced law with the firm of Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone in Detroit.
From 1989-1993, Justice Markman served as United States Attorney, or federal prosecutor, in Michigan, after having been nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate. From 1985-1989, he served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States, after having been nominated by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the United States Senate. In that position, he headed the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, which served as the principal policy development office within the Department, and which coordinated the federal judicial selection process. Prior to this, he served for seven years as Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, and as Deputy Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Justice Markman has authored articles for such publications as the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, the Detroit College of Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the American Criminal Justice Law Review, the Barrister’s Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the American University Law Review. He has also served as a contributing editor of National Review magazine, and has authored chapters in such books as “In the Name of Justice: The Aims of the Criminal Law,” “Still the Law of the Land,” and “Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate.”
Justice Markman has taught constitutional law at Hillsdale College since 1993. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He traveled to Ukraine on two occasions on behalf of the State Department, to provide assistance in the development of that nation’s post-Soviet constitution. He is a Fellow of the Michigan Bar Foundation, a Master of the Bench of the Inns of Court, and a member of the One Hundred Club. He has spoken before hundreds of youth, civic, charitable, and legal groups throughout Michigan and nationally, and has coached Little League baseball and basketball. He lives with his wife Mary Kathleen in Mason, and has two sons, James and Charles.
Justice Markman was re-elected to the Supreme Court in 2000, 2004, and 2012. His present term expires January 1, 2021.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Prof. Richard Primus teaches the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution. In 2008, he won the first-ever Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for his work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation. His scholarship has been cited in opinions of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Prof. Primus works with constitutional law on the state level as well as the federal. He has helped state governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses solve practical problems involving state-level constitutional law, both in Michigan and in other states.
The students of Michigan Law School have given Prof. Primus the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching on four separate occasions: in 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2011.
Prof. Primus graduated from Harvard College in 1992 with an AB, summa cum laude, in social studies. He then earned a DPhil in politics at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and the Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. After studying law at Yale, Prof. Primus clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the Second Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He then practiced law at the Washington, D.C., office of Jenner & Block before joining the Michigan faculty in 2001.
NBC News Justice Correspondent
Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He has been covering the Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court since March 1993. Williams was also a key reporter on the Microsoft anti-trust trial and Judge Jackson's decision.
Prior to joining NBC, Williams served as a press official on Capitol Hill for many years. In 1986 he joined the Washington, DC staff of then Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and a legislative assistant. In 1989, when Cheney was named Assistant Secretary of Defense, Williams was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. While in that position, Williams was named Government Communicator of the Year in 1991 by the National Association of Government Communicators.
A native of Casper, Wyo. and a 1974 graduate of Stanford University, Williams was a reporter and news director at KTWO-TV and Radio in Casper from 1974 to 1985. Working with the Radio-Television News Directors Association, for which he served as a member of its board of directors, he successfully lobbied the Wyoming Supreme Court to permit broadcast coverage of its proceedings and twice sued Wyoming judges over pre-trial exclusion of reporters from the courtroom. For these efforts, he received a First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
Stephen Markman was appointed Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court on October 1, 1999. He served as the Chief Justice from 2017-2019. Before his appointment, he served as Judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals from 1995-1999. Prior to this, he practiced law with the firm of Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone in Detroit.
From 1989-1993, Justice Markman served as United States Attorney, or federal prosecutor, in Michigan, after having been nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate. From 1985-1989, he served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States, after having been nominated by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the United States Senate. In that position, he headed the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, which served as the principal policy development office within the Department, and which coordinated the federal judicial selection process. Prior to this, he served for seven years as Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, and as Deputy Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Justice Markman has authored articles for such publications as the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, the Detroit College of Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the American Criminal Justice Law Review, the Barrister’s Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the American University Law Review. He has also served as a contributing editor of National Review magazine, and has authored chapters in such books as “In the Name of Justice: The Aims of the Criminal Law,” “Still the Law of the Land,” and “Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate.”
Justice Markman has taught constitutional law at Hillsdale College since 1993. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He traveled to Ukraine on two occasions on behalf of the State Department, to provide assistance in the development of that nation’s post-Soviet constitution. He is a Fellow of the Michigan Bar Foundation, a Master of the Bench of the Inns of Court, and a member of the One Hundred Club. He has spoken before hundreds of youth, civic, charitable, and legal groups throughout Michigan and nationally, and has coached Little League baseball and basketball. He lives with his wife Mary Kathleen in Mason, and has two sons, James and Charles.
Justice Markman was re-elected to the Supreme Court in 2000, 2004, and 2012. His present term expires January 1, 2021.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Prof. Richard Primus teaches the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution. In 2008, he won the first-ever Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for his work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation. His scholarship has been cited in opinions of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Prof. Primus works with constitutional law on the state level as well as the federal. He has helped state governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses solve practical problems involving state-level constitutional law, both in Michigan and in other states.
The students of Michigan Law School have given Prof. Primus the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching on four separate occasions: in 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2011.
Prof. Primus graduated from Harvard College in 1992 with an AB, summa cum laude, in social studies. He then earned a DPhil in politics at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and the Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. After studying law at Yale, Prof. Primus clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the Second Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He then practiced law at the Washington, D.C., office of Jenner & Block before joining the Michigan faculty in 2001.
NBC News Justice Correspondent
Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He has been covering the Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court since March 1993. Williams was also a key reporter on the Microsoft anti-trust trial and Judge Jackson's decision.
Prior to joining NBC, Williams served as a press official on Capitol Hill for many years. In 1986 he joined the Washington, DC staff of then Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and a legislative assistant. In 1989, when Cheney was named Assistant Secretary of Defense, Williams was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. While in that position, Williams was named Government Communicator of the Year in 1991 by the National Association of Government Communicators.
A native of Casper, Wyo. and a 1974 graduate of Stanford University, Williams was a reporter and news director at KTWO-TV and Radio in Casper from 1974 to 1985. Working with the Radio-Television News Directors Association, for which he served as a member of its board of directors, he successfully lobbied the Wyoming Supreme Court to permit broadcast coverage of its proceedings and twice sued Wyoming judges over pre-trial exclusion of reporters from the courtroom. For these efforts, he received a First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Walter E. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Property and Urban Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School
Robert C. Ellickson was appointed Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School in 1988. He has published numerous articles in legal and public policy journals on topics such as land use and housing policy, land tenure systems, social norms, homelessness, and the organization of households, community associations, and cities. Professor Ellickson’s books include Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes (1991) (awarded the Order of the Coif Triennial Book Award in 1996), The Household: Informal Order Around the Hearth (2008), Land Use Controls: Cases and Materials (4th edition 2013, with Vicki Been, Roderick M. Hills, Jr. and Christopher Serkin), and Perspectives on Property Law (4th edition 2014, with Carol M. Rose and Henry E. Smith). He has written about ancient systems of land tenure and also periodically teaches a seminar on the history of development of the City of New Haven. Robert Ellickson was a member of the USC Law Faculty in 1970–1981, and the Stanford Law Faculty in 1981–88. He also has been a visiting professor at the Harvard and University of Chicago Law Schools. He was a founding member and later a director of the American Law and Economics Association, and served as its President in 2000–01. In 2016, the Association awarded him the Ronald H. Coase Medal in recognition of his scholarly contributions. Professor Ellickson served as an adviser during the American Law Institute’s preparation of the Restatement, Third, Property—Servitudes, and currently serves in the same capacity for the Restatement (Fourth) of Property. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, in 2008, received the William & Mary Law School’s Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize for Property Scholarship. At Yale Law School he has served as Deputy Dean (1991–92) and, during the reconstruction of the Sterling Law buildings, as chairman of the Building Committee. Prior to entering teaching in 1970, he worked for a Presidential commission on housing policy and then for Levitt & Sons, the homebuilding firm. Professor Ellickson is married to Lynn Hammer and has two children. For many decades he competed in competitive Scrabble tournaments and, during intervals when fortune smiled, was ranked as one of the top 20 players in the United States.
Frances and George Skestos Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Adam C. Pritchard, the Frances and George Skestos Professor of Law, teaches corporate and securities law. He is the author, with Stephen J. Choi, of Securities Regulation: Cases and Analysis, currently in its fifth edition. His research focuses on securities class actions, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement, and the history of securities law in the U.S. Supreme Court. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Law and Economics, American Law and Economics Review, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, and various law reviews. Professor Pritchard holds BA and JD degrees from the University of Virginia, as well as an MPP from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. While at Virginia, he was an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics and served as articles development editor of the Virginia Law Review. After graduation, he clerked for the Hon. J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice. After working in private practice, Professor Pritchard served as senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel of the SEC, where he wrote appellate briefs and studied the effect of recent reforms in the areas of securities fraud litigation. He received the SEC's Law and Policy Award for his work in United States v. O'Hagan, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the misappropriation theory of insider trading. Professor Pritchard has been a visiting professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Iowa School of Law. He also has been a visiting scholar at the SEC and a visiting fellow in capital market studies at the Cato Institute. He was previously a member of the FINRA National Adjudicatory Council and the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel.
Fessenden Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Henry E. Smith is the Fessenden Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he directs the Project on the Foundations of Private Law. Previously, he taught at the Northwestern University School of Law and was the Fred A. Johnston Professor of Property and Environmental Law at Yale Law School. He holds an A.B. from Harvard, a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford, and a J.D. from Yale. After law school he clerked for the Hon. Ralph K. Winter, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Smith has written primarily on the law and economics of property, intellectual property, and remedies, with a focus on how property-related institutions lower information costs and constrain strategic behavior. He teaches primarily in the areas of property, intellectual property, equity, restitution, and remedies. His books include The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Property (2010, coauthored with Thomas W. Merrill), Property: Principles and Policies (3th ed., 2022, coauthored with Thomas W. Merrill & Maureen E. Brady), and Principles of Patent Law (7th ed., 2018, co-authored with John M. Golden, F. Scott Kieff, and Pauline Newman). He is the co-editor of The Research Handbook on the Economics of Property Law (2011, with Kenneth Ayotte), Philosophical Foundations of Property Law (2013, with James Penner), Perspectives on Property Law (4th ed., 2014, with Robert C. Ellickson and Carol M. Rose), Equity and Law: Fusion and Fission (2019, with John C.P. Goldberg & P.G. Turner), Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Equity (2020, with Dennis Klimcuk & Irit Samet), and The Oxford Handbook of the New Private Law (2020, with Andrew S. Gold, John C.P. Goldberg, Daniel B. Kelly & Emily Sherwin). In 2015-2016, Smith served as the President of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics, and in 2014, the American Law Institute named him Reporter for a Fourth Restatement of Property.
Debating the Role of the Chief Justice in Judicial Selection
Woody Cozad, Samuel J. Hais, William J. Placke, Randy Scherr, Tom Walsh
St. Louis Lawyers Chapter
The Federalist Society's St. Louis Lawyers Chapter presented this debate on March 11, 2008. Speakers...
Banquet Keynote Address by Judge Janice Rogers Brown
Janice Rogers Brown, Eugene B. Meyer
2008 National Student Symposium
Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of...
Banquet Keynote Address by Judge Janice Rogers Brown
Janice Rogers Brown, Eugene B. Meyer
2008 National Student Symposium
Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of...
Banquet: 2008 Bator Award Presentation
Carina Cilluffo, Saikrishna Prakash
2008 National Student Symposium
The 2008 Paul M. Bator Award was awarded to Prof. Saikrishna Prakash of the University...
Banquet: 2008 Bator Award Presentation
Carina Cilluffo, Saikrishna Prakash
2008 National Student Symposium
The 2008 Paul M. Bator Award was awarded to Prof. Saikrishna Prakash of the University...
Panel IV: Tradition and the People's Constitution
William N. Eskridge, Joan Larsen, Thomas W. Merrill, Reva Siegel, Keith E. Whittington
2008 Annual Student Symposium
The Federalist Society's Student Division presented this panel at the 2008 Annual Student Symposium on...
Panel IV: Tradition and the People's Constitution
William N. Eskridge, Joan Larsen, Thomas W. Merrill, Reva Siegel, Keith E. Whittington
2008 Annual Student Symposium
The Federalist Society's Student Division presented this panel at the 2008 Annual Student Symposium on...
Speech and Commentary: An Originalist Judge and the Media
Sean Cox, Steve J. Markman, Richard Primus, Pete Williams
2008 National Student Symposium
The Federalist Society's Student Division presented this speech and commentary at the 2008 Annual Student...
Speech and Commentary: An Originalist Judge and the Media
Sean Cox, Steve J. Markman, Richard Primus, Pete Williams
2008 National Student Symposium
The Federalist Society's Student Division presented this speech and commentary at the 2008 Annual Student...
Panel III: The People's Common Law: Is Law & Economics Anti-Democratic?
Robert C. Ellickson, Adam Christopher Pritchard, Brian Simpson, Henry Smith
2008 National Student Symposium
The Federalist Society's Student Division presented this panel at the 2008 Annual Student Symposium on...