Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota
Dr. Juan Del Toro is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He also holds a Research Associate affiliation with the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Del Toro received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with a concentration in Advanced Quantitative Analyses from New York University.
As a developmental psychologist, Dr. Del Toro examines how specific perpetrators of ethnic-racial discrimination (e.g., peers, school adults, and law enforcement) shape children’s life course trajectories. The goal of specifying perpetrators is to inform setting-specific policies and interventions working to improve the well-being of all youth.
His research includes a series of first authored publications in Child Development, American Psychologist, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and has been featured in the Huffington Post, Forbes, and the New York Times. Dr. Del Toro serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Research on Adolescence, the journal for Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, and the Journal of Educational Psychology.
Vice President for Public Policy and Engagement, Child Trends
Kristen Harper brings to Child Trends a wealth of expertise in utilizing research to drive policy decision making and promote better outcomes for youth. She serves as a strategic advisor working to continuously improve the policy relevance of Child Trends’ portfolio and connect researchers with local, state, and federal officials. Kristen is also a nationally recognized expert on education policy, racial and ethnic disparities in education, school discipline policy, and school health and climate, and has been cited and quoted by The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, Politico, Education Week, U.S. News & World Report, and The 74, among other publications. Kristen is a proud member of the 2019-2021 class of the Annie E. Casey Foundations’ Child and Family Fellowship.
Currently, Kristen is the principal investigator of a study to examine how shifts in Medicaid policy have influenced reimbursements for school-based health services and school capacity to promote health equity. She serves as a senior advisor for multiple projects—funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—dedicated to improving school health, school safety, and adolescent health. Kristen previously led a project to build a framework to assess how states support children and youth with special health care needs.
Kristen came to Child Trends after serving for seven years in the U.S. Department of Education, where she was a chief architect of the agency’s efforts to improve conditions for learning. As a senior policy advisor for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), she authored federal regulations to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the identification, placement, and discipline of children with disabilities. In this role, Kristen also directed the Department’s efforts to promote alternatives to suspension under the Supportive School Discipline Initiative, a partnership launched in 2011 between the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice to address exclusionary and punitive discipline. Her leadership in addressing school discipline continued under the federal My Brother’s Keeper initiative, a taskforce launched in 2014 to improve outcomes for young men and boys of color. Prior to OSERS, Kristen served in the Department’s elementary and secondary education offices advancing policy initiatives to improve school climate and conditions for learning. With her guidance, the Department established, in 2010, the first federal grant to support the use of survey measurement to improve school climate programming.
Executive Director & Secretary, American Civil Rights Project
Dan Morenoff is the executive director at the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
His work focuses on protecting and, where necessary, restoring the primacy of all Americans' shared civil rights against the identitarian alternative.
Before practicing law, Morenoff served on the legislative staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). Morenoff holds a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He has also served as an officer or director of several community organizations in Dallas, Texas.
Legal Fellow, Center for the Separation of Powers, Pacific Legal Foundation
Alison Somin joined Pacific Legal Foundation in May 2020 as a legal fellow in the Center for the Separation of Powers and part of the equality before the law practice group.
Before joining the Pacific Legal Foundation team, Alison was a special assistant and counsel for over a decade to Gail Heriot, a member of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also has deep roots in the liberty movement. Alison was a Koch Associate at the National Federation for Independent Business Legal Foundation and, during law school, completed summer clerkships at the Institute for Justice and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. She holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in history from Dartmouth College.
Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Journal, Texas Journal of Law and Politics, and The Federalist Society’s Engage magazine and blog.
She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Ilya; two children; and golden retriever Willow. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking and cooking, children’s art projects, and training and exercising Willow.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota
Dr. Juan Del Toro is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He also holds a Research Associate affiliation with the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Del Toro received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with a concentration in Advanced Quantitative Analyses from New York University.
As a developmental psychologist, Dr. Del Toro examines how specific perpetrators of ethnic-racial discrimination (e.g., peers, school adults, and law enforcement) shape children’s life course trajectories. The goal of specifying perpetrators is to inform setting-specific policies and interventions working to improve the well-being of all youth.
His research includes a series of first authored publications in Child Development, American Psychologist, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and has been featured in the Huffington Post, Forbes, and the New York Times. Dr. Del Toro serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Research on Adolescence, the journal for Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, and the Journal of Educational Psychology.
Vice President for Public Policy and Engagement, Child Trends
Kristen Harper brings to Child Trends a wealth of expertise in utilizing research to drive policy decision making and promote better outcomes for youth. She serves as a strategic advisor working to continuously improve the policy relevance of Child Trends’ portfolio and connect researchers with local, state, and federal officials. Kristen is also a nationally recognized expert on education policy, racial and ethnic disparities in education, school discipline policy, and school health and climate, and has been cited and quoted by The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, Politico, Education Week, U.S. News & World Report, and The 74, among other publications. Kristen is a proud member of the 2019-2021 class of the Annie E. Casey Foundations’ Child and Family Fellowship.
Currently, Kristen is the principal investigator of a study to examine how shifts in Medicaid policy have influenced reimbursements for school-based health services and school capacity to promote health equity. She serves as a senior advisor for multiple projects—funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—dedicated to improving school health, school safety, and adolescent health. Kristen previously led a project to build a framework to assess how states support children and youth with special health care needs.
Kristen came to Child Trends after serving for seven years in the U.S. Department of Education, where she was a chief architect of the agency’s efforts to improve conditions for learning. As a senior policy advisor for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), she authored federal regulations to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the identification, placement, and discipline of children with disabilities. In this role, Kristen also directed the Department’s efforts to promote alternatives to suspension under the Supportive School Discipline Initiative, a partnership launched in 2011 between the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice to address exclusionary and punitive discipline. Her leadership in addressing school discipline continued under the federal My Brother’s Keeper initiative, a taskforce launched in 2014 to improve outcomes for young men and boys of color. Prior to OSERS, Kristen served in the Department’s elementary and secondary education offices advancing policy initiatives to improve school climate and conditions for learning. With her guidance, the Department established, in 2010, the first federal grant to support the use of survey measurement to improve school climate programming.
Executive Director & Secretary, American Civil Rights Project
Dan Morenoff is the executive director at the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
His work focuses on protecting and, where necessary, restoring the primacy of all Americans' shared civil rights against the identitarian alternative.
Before practicing law, Morenoff served on the legislative staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). Morenoff holds a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He has also served as an officer or director of several community organizations in Dallas, Texas.
Legal Fellow, Center for the Separation of Powers, Pacific Legal Foundation
Alison Somin joined Pacific Legal Foundation in May 2020 as a legal fellow in the Center for the Separation of Powers and part of the equality before the law practice group.
Before joining the Pacific Legal Foundation team, Alison was a special assistant and counsel for over a decade to Gail Heriot, a member of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also has deep roots in the liberty movement. Alison was a Koch Associate at the National Federation for Independent Business Legal Foundation and, during law school, completed summer clerkships at the Institute for Justice and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. She holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in history from Dartmouth College.
Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Journal, Texas Journal of Law and Politics, and The Federalist Society’s Engage magazine and blog.
She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Ilya; two children; and golden retriever Willow. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking and cooking, children’s art projects, and training and exercising Willow.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Erin Wilcox joined PLF in 2018 and works primarily from Austin, Texas. She litigates cases around the country to secure the inalienable rights of all Americans to live responsibly and productively in their pursuit of happiness.
After graduating from law school, Erin defended the individual rights of employees as a litigator for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, was an attorney-advisor for the D.C. Public Employee Relations Board, and most recently fought for liberty in the Lone Star State as an attorney with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. During law school, Erin clerked at the Institute for Justice and was a Charles Koch Summer Fellow.
A native Texan, Erin ventured east after high school to earn a B.A. in history and political science from Wake Forest University and a J.D. from the Wake Forest University School of Law. In addition to liberty, Erin’s loves include college football, Texas barbecue, and a well-made Old Fashioned.
General Counsel, xAI and X
Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jonathan Kanter was confirmed on November 16, 2021, as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. Throughout his career, Mr. Kanter has been a leading advocate for strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy.
Mr. Kanter has been a partner in the Washington, D.C. offices of two national law firms and was the founder of a boutique antitrust law firm dedicated to promoting antitrust enforcement. Mr. Kanter began his career as an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition. He earned his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and his B.A. from State University of New York at Albany.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice
On January 14, 2022, Doha Mekki was appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. As Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Mekki supervises more than 350 attorneys who investigate and prosecute civil and criminal violations of federal antitrust and other competition laws. She is responsible for overseeing the Division’s civil enforcement, criminal enforcement, litigation, domestic and international policy, advocacy, and economic analysis programs, as well as the Division’s operations.
Ms. Mekki joined the Antitrust Division in 2015 as a Trial Attorney. In that capacity, she led investigations and litigated merger challenges in the rail, commercial vehicle, aviation, and healthcare industries, among others. She later served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. In that role, she focused on civil antitrust enforcement in healthcare, sports, and digital markets, as well as criminal enforcement in labor markets. From 2020 until 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief in the Antitrust Division’s Defense, Industrials, and Aerospace Section, where she provided legal and policy guidance to attorneys and paralegals working on the section’s merger and anticompetitive conduct investigations and enforcement. Beginning in 2021, she served concurrently as the Antitrust Division’s Special Counsel for Labor. In that capacity, she helped advance the Division’s civil and criminal enforcement in labor markets. She is a two-time recipient of the Assistant Attorney General’s Award of Distinction and she has testified before Congress about competition in labor markets.
She was previously an associate in the antitrust and financial services groups of an international law firm in New York, NY, where her antitrust practice focused on federal antitrust litigation, government investigations, and counseling.
Ms. Mekki holds a B.A. from Duke University, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an M.B.E. in Bioethics from the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
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.
Chief Legal Officer, Coinbase
Paul Grewal is the Chief Legal Officer of Coinbase Global, Inc., where he is responsible for Coinbase’s legal, compliance, global intelligence and government relations groups. Before joining Coinbase, Paul was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Facebook and served as United States Magistrate Judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Paul was previously a partner at Howrey LLP . He received his JD from the University of Chicago Law School and his SB from MIT.
Partner, Brown Rudnick LLP
Stephen Palley is a litigation partner and co-chair of Brown Rudnick’s Digital Commerce group. Stephen is a seasoned litigator with over 20 years of extensive courtroom experience litigating and trying complex commercial matters. He has deep technical and U.S. regulatory knowledge, particularly in the digital asset space, and assists clients working on the frontiers of technology, including on deal work for blockchain and other technology enterprises. He is also a fellow of the American College of Coverage Lawyers, and uses his insurance knowledge and experience to advise clients on insurance coverage matters related to technology and other risks. Stephen has written extensively and been quoted widely on legal issues arising from the use of Blockchain technology, with appearances in both print and television media. He is an editor of the International Journal of Blockchain Law (IJBL), a law journal launched in November 2021 to help non-legal communities better understand Blockchain applications and digital assets. Before joining Brown Rudnick, Stephen founded his prior law firm’s Technology, Media and Distributed Systems Practice Group in 2017, which he also chaired. He serves as an outside general counsel to technology and media startups and as a trusted advisor to established businesses across a range of industries, with a focus on securities and financial regulatory law.
Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law J.W. Verret joined the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University faculty in 2008. In 2013, he took leave for two years to serve as the Chief Economist and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. He received his JD and MA in Public Policy from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, respectively, in 2006. While in law school, Professor Verret served an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance under the guidance of Prof. Lucian Bebchuk.
Professor Verret then served as a law clerk for Vice-Chancellor John W. Noble of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Prior to joining the faculty at Scalia Law, Professor Verret was an associate in the SEC Enforcement Defense Practice Group at Skadden, Arps in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on corporate law topics, including Delaware's Guidance, co-written with Chief Justice Myron T. Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court. His academic work has been featured in the Yale Journal on Regulation, The Business Lawyer, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and the Virginia Law and Business Review. Professor Verret was selected by the Northwestern Law School Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth for a 2009-2010 Searle-Kaufmann Research Fellowship.
Professor Verret is also a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Working Group on Financial Markets, where he regularly briefs Congressional staff, members of Congress, SEC Commissioners and other financial regulatory agencies on financial regulation topics. He also directs the Corporate Federalism Initiative, where he obtains research grants for a network of students and faculty scholars who study the division between states and the federal government as sources of corporate law. Professor Verret has been invited to testify before various House and Senate Committees four times during the financial crisis of 2009 regarding all of the central provisions of the Obama Administration's 2009 financial regulatory reform proposals. For a full list of Professor Verret's C-Span appearances, including testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jwverret.
Professor Verret has been an invited panelist for various television appearances, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Professor Verret has been quoted in various media on financial regulation and corporate law topics, including the New York Times, CNN Money, the CNN Political Ticker, CNBC, ABC News, Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, The American Banker, The American Lawyer, The Huffington Post, CBS.com, and AP News. Professor Verret's op-eds have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Orange County Register, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Verret is also a regular guest contributor to three of the most noted corporate law and financial regulation law blogs: the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation Forum, Deallawyers.com, and The Conglomerate.
Deputy Attorney General, Civil Litigation, Texas Attorney General
James Lloyd is the Deputy Attorney General for Civil Litigation for the Texas Attorney General. He serves alongside over 600 lawyers and staff across eleven practice groups handling more than 35,000 cases involving the State of Texas. James also serves as Chief of the Antitrust Division, leading the enforcement of state and federal antitrust laws and representing the interests of Texas in national antitrust matters alongside federal enforcers.
James previously practiced at global law firms Sidley Austin LLP and Mayer Brown LLP, managing a range of high-profile matters for public and private companies. He began his legal career as a law clerk to Justice David Medina on the Texas Supreme Court.
James has served in a variety of roles in public service. He is currently an Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, assigned to the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. James served on the Presidential Transition Team for President Donald Trump, where he advised on financial regulatory policy and led the transition of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. James previously served at the White House as Senior Writer to President George W. Bush. He was also a member of the national security staff, coordinating policymaking and oversight with senior officials among the Cabinet departments and agencies.
James received his J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law, where he was Articles Editor for the Texas Law Review and a teaching assistant to Admiral Bobby Inman. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Rice University, where he was student body president and received the Joseph Cooper Prize in Public Policy.
A seventh-generation Texan, James comes from a family of litigators, including his mother, his sister, and his father who has served over 18 years on the Texas judiciary. James is Chair of the State Bar of Texas Antitrust and Business Litigation Section and serves on the Executive Committee of The Federalist Society’s Corporations, Securities, and Antitrust Practice Group.
James has spent over a decade as a volunteer attorney for veterans legal clinics in Houston and Austin. He is also a member of the Legal Affairs Roundtable for the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) and is also a longtime supporter of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, serving on the Mutton Bustin' Committee.
Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Lynn M. LoPucki comes to UF in August 2022 from the UCLA School of Law where he taught Secured Transactions and Business Associations for twenty-two years. His Stakeholder Takeover Project is an effort to provide corporate stakeholders with the information they need to control corporations through markets. For example, the Project website ranks the S&P 500 companies by their greenhouse gas emissions. The UC Davis Law Review published the first Project article, Repurposing the Corporation Through Stakeholder Markets, in February 2022 and will publish the second, Corporate Greenhouse Gas Disclosures, in November.
Professor LoPucki has published more than seventy-five articles in highly regarded law reviews, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Michigan Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and Northwestern University Law Review. He co-authors three Aspen Casebooks: Business Associations: A Systems Approach (2020) (with Andrew Verstein); Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach (9th edition with Elizabeth Warren and Robert M. Lawless), and Commercial Transactions: A Systems Approach (7th edition with Elizabeth Warren, Daniel L. Keating, Ronald Mann, and Robert M. Lawless).
Since 1994, the Florida-UCLA-LoPucki Bankruptcy Research Database has collected large, public company bankruptcy data and disseminated it to the public and to bankruptcy researchers throughout the world. Those data provided the foundation for Professor LoPucki’s books, Courting Failure: How Competition for Big Cases is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts (University of Michigan Press 2005) and Professional Fees in Corporate Bankruptcies: Data, Analysis, and Evaluation (Oxford University Press, 2011) (with Joseph Doherty).
Partner, Fusion Law, PLLC
Paul is the founding partner of Fusion Law, PLLC. He has extensive experience with state, federal, and global regulators building coalitions and implementing policies to promote innovation in financial services. He is responsible for designing and implementing the first state (Arizona) and federal (CFPB) FinTech sandboxes in the United States. He also designed the CFPB no-action letter and trial disclosure policies. He helped found the first global regulatory innovation coalition (Global Financial Innovation Network) and led the founding of the first U.S. regulatory innovation coalition (American Consumer Financial Innovation Network). He served on the Financial Stability Oversight Council subcommittee on digital assets. He also has drafted state-level laws on blockchain and utility tokens.
Paul also has significant enforcement and litigation experience. He led many multi-state consumer protection enforcement matters as Civil Litigation Division Chief at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
Prior to his government service, Paul practiced law in the areas of securities litigation and transactional work for approximately six years at two well-known law firms. He also clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Head of Corporate Governance, Strive Asset Management
Justin Danhof is the Head of Corporate Governance at Strive Asset Management. Previously, he served as General Counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, as well as Director of the Center’s Free Enterprise Project. He also worked in the Miami-Dade State’s Attorney’s Office in the Economic Crimes and Cybercrimes Division, for the Massachusetts Alliance for Economic Development and at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Mr. Danhof’s work has been widely published and quoted in major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Politico, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Washington Post. He has also appeared on the Fox News Channel, One America News Network, and the Fox Business Channel, among others.
Mr. Danhof is a member of the Federalist Society and Christian Legal Society.
Mr. Danhof is a graduate of Bentley University (Waltham, MA), where he received a Bachelor of Science in economics and finance and pitched for three seasons on the school’s NCAA Division II baseball team. Mr. Danhof completed his graduate studies at the University of Miami School of Law where he received his Juris Doctor and Master of Laws in Taxation.
Mr. Danhof is licensed to practice law in New York and Washington, D.C.
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Institute for Progress
Caleb Watney is the co-founder and co-CEO of the Institute for Progress.
Caleb manages the metascience and immigration policy teams at IFP. His research focuses on policy levers the U.S. could use to rebuild state capacity and increase long-term rates of innovation.
Previously, Caleb worked as the director of innovation policy at the Progressive Policy Insitute, a technology policy fellow at the R Street Institute, and a graduate research fellow at the Mercatus Center. His commentary has been published in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, Lawfare, and the National Review. He has also been cited in the New York Times, The Economist, Vox, Ars Technica, and the National Journal. He received his master’s in economics from George Mason University and a bachelor of business administration from Sterling College.
Deep Dive Episode 276 - Race & School Discipline
Juan Del Toro, Kristen Harper, Dan Morenoff, Alison E. Somin
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
During President Obama’s second term, the U.S. Education Department began sharing studies indicating that black...
Race & School Discipline
Juan Del Toro, Kristen Harper, Dan Morenoff, Alison E. Somin
During President Obama’s second term, the U.S. Education Department began sharing studies indicating that black...
Conservatives Talk Presidential Power: The Hunter Biden Investigations
John G. Malcolm, John C. Yoo
John Malcolm and John Yoo continue their discussion of presidential power with a focus on...
Conservatives Talk Presidential Power: Trump's Indictment in Georgia
John G. Malcolm, John C. Yoo
John Malcolm and John Yoo examine the indictment of former President Donald Trump in the...
Searching for the Fourth Amendment |Katz on the Internet: Privacy in the Digital Age
In this episode of the FedSoc Films Podcast, we spoke with Professor Jeffrey Bellin, a...
Litigation Update: Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board
Erin Wilcox
Fairfax County, Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology – commonly known as...
Competition Policy, Corporate Concentration & Freedom of Thought: Approaching the Draft Merger Guidelines
James M. Burnham, Jonathan S. Kanter, Doha Mekki, Todd J. Zywicki
Freedom of Thought Project
The Department of Justice has just released new Draft Merger Guidelines. What are the implications...
Examining the SEC's Approach Towards Crypto
Paul Grewal, Stephen Palley, J.W. Verret
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
Join us for an in-depth exploration into the SEC's recent lawsuit against Coinbase – a...
How Reliable are Corporate ESG Ratings?
James R. Lloyd, Lynn M. LoPucki, Paul N. Watkins, Justin Danhof
Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) investing has grown in popularity in recent years. As...
Tech Roundup Episode 21 – The CHIPS Act, Immigration, and the Innovation Economy
Adam Thierer, Caleb Watney
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
What does it take to attract the world's most brilliant minds? In this Tech Roundup...