United States Attorney, Eastern District of California
Mr. Grant was appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi to serve as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California beginning on August 11, 2025. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), he was further appointed by the district court effective December 9, 2025.
Mr. Grant is a veteran of the Department of Justice, having served twice in Washington, D.C.: from 1991 to 1993 as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel, and from 2017 to 2021 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). During his tenure at ENRD, he supervised more than a hundred Department litigators advancing the interests of the United States and its agencies in both enforcement and defensive matters, both civil and criminal.
In addition to his service in the Department, Mr. Grant has decades of experience in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. That experience includes arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous other federal and state courts.
Mr. Grant served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (retired) and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during the Supreme Court’s October 1994 Term. Earlier he served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Mr. Grant grew up in Modesto, California and raised his family in Sacramento County. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics (1986) and a law degree (1990).
Solicitor General of Kentucky
Matt Kuhn serves as the Solicitor General of Kentucky. As Solicitor General, he oversees the office's civil and criminal appellate litigation and supervises the office's filing of amicus briefs. Since joining the Attorney General's office, he has argued in the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Before joining the Attorney General's office, he served as Chief Deputy General Counsel to the Governor of Kentucky. He also worked in private practice at Jones Day in Washington, D.C. and Stoll Keenon Ogden in Louisville, and served as a law clerk for Judge Raymond Gruender of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He is a graduate of Furman University and Columbia Law School.
Emmett Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law in Environmental Law, Harvard Law School
Andrew Mergen is a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic. Prior to joining the Harvard Law School faculty, Andrew Mergen served in the Appellate Section of the Environment & Natural Resources Division (ENRD) at the United States Department of Justice. Professor Mergen began his career at the Justice Department in the Honors Program and concluded his career as Chief of ENRD’s Appellate Section. He has presented oral arguments in all 13 federal courts of appeals, including two en banc courts, and before several state intermediate and supreme courts. He has also worked on over a dozen merits cases in the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition, in 2009, Professor Mergen assisted the Office of White House Counsel on the confirmation of the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. During his career at the Justice Department, Professor Mergen received the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service three times. He also received ENRD’s Muskee-Chafee Award, honoring his work’s significant contribution to protecting the environment.
Before entering clinical teaching, Professor Mergen taught at several law schools including, Harvard Law School (Advanced Environmental Law), the University of Michigan Law School (Natural Resources Law) and the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii-Manoa (Administrative Law). Professor Mergen has written about federal water rights in “A Misplaced Sensitivity: The Draft Opinions in Wyoming v. United States” (68 Colo. L. Rev. 683 (1997), with Sylvia F. Liu); energy development on public lands in “Surface Tension: The Problem of Federal Private Split Estates” (33 Land & Water L. Rev. 419 (1998)); climate change and the Endangered Species Act in “The Role of Climate Change in ESA Listing Decisions” (53 Rocky Mt. Min. L. Fdn. 67 (2016), with Murray Feldman) and the accommodation of Native American sacred sites on federal land in “Finding the Path Forward for Indigenous Sacred and Cultural Spaces on Federal Public Land,” 68 Nat. Resources & Energy L. Inst. 32-1 (2022). Professor Mergen is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin—Madison and the George Washington University Law School.
Partner, Vinson & Elkins
Corinne principally practices in environmental law, with an emphasis on litigation, regulatory compliance, internal investigations, and defense against government investigations and enforcement actions.
Corinne draws on wide experience at the U.S. Department of Justice, including serving as Senior Counsel in the Office of the Associate Attorney General, which oversees all civil litigation on behalf of the United States, and as Counselor in the Office of the Attorney General.
Corinne most recently served as Counsel and Chief of Staff in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she assisted in managing a 600-person division that included 400 lawyers. In this role she helped manage the Division’s civil and criminal litigation arising under more than 150 environmental and natural resources laws.
She also worked closely with the General Counsel’s Offices for multiple federal agencies, including the EPA, Departments of Interior, Defense, Energy, Commerce, and Agriculture, as well as the White House and Counsel on Environmental Quality to advise high-ranking officials on policy and litigation risks associated with the environmental and natural resource laws.
She has personally argued cases in three U.S. Courts of Appeals, and multiple district courts, and served as the lead or co-lead counsel in district court litigation defending agency regulations, approvals, and permits related to oil and gas operations and other energy extraction projects.
Her roles in government have given her a unique perspective into the decision-making processes in the federal government.
In the private sector, Corinne counsels clients on environmental compliance across a variety of industries, including energy, chemical, manufacturing, and mining sectors. In the transactional context, she assists in the drafting and negotiating of the environmental terms in purchase and sale agreements, lease agreements, credit agreements, and disclosures for debt and equity offerings and public filings. She has also drafted comments on behalf of clients to agencies on proposed rules with significant implications for the oil and gas industry.
Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Paul S. Atkins was sworn into office as the 34th Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 21, 2025, after being nominated by President Donald J. Trump on January 20, 2025, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 9, 2025.
Prior to returning to the SEC, Chairman Atkins was most recently chief executive of Patomak Global Partners, a company he founded in 2009. Chairman Atkins helped lead efforts to develop best practices for the digital asset sector. He served as an independent director and non-executive chairman of the board of BATS Global Markets, Inc. from 2012 to 2015.
Chairman Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a Commissioner of the SEC from 2002 to 2008. During his tenure, he advocated for transparency, consistency, and the use of cost-benefit analysis at the agency. Chairman Atkins also represented the SEC at meetings of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets and the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Economic Council. From 2009 to 2010, he was appointed a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Before serving as an SEC Commissioner, Chairman Atkins was a consultant on securities and investment management industry matters, especially regarding issues of strategy, regulatory compliance, risk management, new product development, and organizational control.
From 1990 to 1994, Chairman Atkins served on the staff of two chairmen of the SEC, Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt, ultimately as chief of staff and counselor, respectively. He received the SEC’s 1992 Law and Policy Award for work regarding corporate governance matters.
Chairman Atkins began his career as a lawyer in New York, focusing on a wide range of corporate transactions for U.S. and foreign clients, including public and private securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He was resident for 2½ years in his firm's Paris office and admitted as conseil juridique in France.
A member of the New York and Florida bars, Chairman Atkins received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1983 and was Senior Student Writing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Wofford College in 1980.
Originally from Lillington, North Carolina, Chairman Atkins grew up in Tampa, Florida. He and his wife Sarah have three sons.
Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP
Jeffrey T. Dinwoodie is a member of the Financial Institutions Group at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. Mr. Dinwoodie previously served as Chief Counsel to the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and as Head of the Office of Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Mr. Dinwoodie has broad experience advising financial institutions, companies and investors, as well as government officials, across multiple disciplines. His practice focuses on advising clients on financial regulation and compliance, enforcement and examinations, and M&A and other corporate transactions. Mr. Dinwoodie’s practice also covers policy and regulatory strategy matters. Mr. Dinwoodie’s clients include established institutions, emerging companies and entrepreneurs—and his work spans both traditional finance and innovation‑related and crypto asset issues.
Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Robert J. Jackson, Jr. is Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Institute for Corporate Governance and Finance, and Director of the Program on Corporate Law and Policy at the New York University School of Law. He was nominated and unanimously confirmed by the Senate to be Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2017 and served in that role until February 2020. Commissioner Jackson was an outspoken advocate for protecting investors, consistently calling for more transparency in capital markets and championing evidence-driven policymaking.
Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
Timothy Massad is currently a Research Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and a consultant on financial regulatory and fintech issues.
Mr. Massad served as Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2014-2017. Under his leadership, the agency implemented the Dodd Frank reforms of the over-the-counter swaps market and harmonized many aspects of cross-border regulation, including reaching a landmark agreement with the European Union on clearinghouse oversight. The agency also declared virtual currencies to be commodities, introduced reforms to address automated trading and strengthened cybersecurity protections.
Previously, Mr. Massad served as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the principal U.S. governmental response to the 2008 financial crisis. During his tenure, Treasury recovered more on all the crisis investments than was disbursed. Mr. Massad was with the Treasury from 2009 to 2014 and also served as a counselor to the Treasury Secretary.
Prior to his government service, Mr. Massad was a partner in the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP. His practice included corporate finance, derivatives and advising boards of directors. He managed the firm’s Hong Kong office from 1998 to 2002 and represented governments and corporations on transactions throughout Asia. Mr. Massad was also one of a small group of lawyers who drafted the original ISDA standard agreements for swaps.
Chair of the Derivatives Practice Group, Patomak Global Partners LLC
Ms. Sommers brings almost three decades of experience in the derivatives industry and has a deep expertise in listed derivatives and swaps regulations under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act.
Based on her experience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Ms. Sommers advises companies on compliance issues and how to work with regulators to promote a more efficient and workable regulatory regime.
Ms. Sommers served two consecutive terms as a CFTC Commissioner from 2007 to 2013. She served as Chairman and Designated Federal Official of the Global Markets Advisory Committee, which discussed the regulatory challenges of a global marketplace. She had the opportunity to represent the United States internationally, working with regulators from over 100 countries as a Commission Representative to the Technical Committee meetings of the International Organization of Securities Commissions.
She has served on the boards of both the Securities and Exchange Commission and CFTC regulated exchanges and as an independent director for the National Futures Association. She has held a variety of roles within the industry, including as Policy Director and Head of Government Affairs for the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and Managing Director of Regulatory Affairs for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
A native of Kansas, Ms. Sommers graduated from the University of Kansas and started her career working for Senator Robert J. Dole (R-KS). She has continued her engagement with members of Congress and federal regulators on a variety of financial and commodity industry issues. She currently serves on the boards of Everybody Wins! D.C., and the Ethics & Compliance Initiative.
Former Attorney General, State of Arizona
Mark Brnovich served as Arizona's 26th Attorney General from 2015 to 2023. He was first inaugurated in 2015, and again in 2019 after winning re-election. Mark has spent most of his professional life serving as a prosecutor at the local, state, and federal levels. Mark met his wife Susan while they both worked as prosecutors for the Maricopa County Attorney's office. Mark worked in the Gang/Repeat Offender Unit and prosecuted many difficult and high profile cases from 1992 to 1998. He then went on to work as an Assistant Attorney General with the Arizona Attorney General's Office from 1998 to 2003, where he developed an expertise in gambling law. Brnovich later went on to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Arizona where he prosecuted public integrity crimes, as well as crimes occurring in Indian Country.
Brnovich has also been a Judge Pro Tem of Maricopa County Superior Court, a Command Staff Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army National Guard, the Director for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, and the Director of the Arizona Department of Gaming, a law enforcement agency that investigates illegal gambling activity, as well as working with tribal regulators to ensure the integrity of tribal gaming.
Brnovich is known for restoring public confidence in the office of "Arizona's Top Cop" and for assembling some of the nation's most talented public servants for his administration. Mark argued at the United States Supreme Court in defense of the "one-person, one-vote" principle, was featured on 60 Minutes in defense of capital punishment, and has initiated national public education efforts to combat human sex trafficking.
Brnovich has been recognized by the National Federation of Independent Business as a "Champion of Small Business." and was elected by his bi-partisan colleagues to serve as the Chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General.
Mark's wife Susan was recently appointed by the United States Senate to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Arizona. He has two teenage daughters and lives in Phoenix.
Dr. Dasgupta served as Assistant Secretary for Trade and Economic Security, responsible for a comprehensive national security portfolio. His duties included oversight of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Team Telecom, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), Information and Communications Technology and Services (ICTS), Arctic security initiatives, the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact, and related trade matters. Sohan Dasgupta also served as political head of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), supporting U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives. Previously, he had served as Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Dr. Dasgupta holds a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif; a PhD in international trade and arbitration from the University of Cambridge; MSc from the University of Oxford; and BA in Economics–Operations Research and History from Columbia University. He commenced his legal career with clerkships on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
Dr. Dasgupta has addressed the Hungarian, Romanian, and Guatemalan parliaments, and has spoken at the invitation of Members of the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament, the European Union Parliament, the Congress of the Philippines, and the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Board Member, U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Beth A. Williams is a Board Member of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an agency whose mission is to ensure that the federal government's efforts to prevent terrorism are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.
Prior to her Board service, Ms. Williams was the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice from August 2017 to December 2020. In that role, she served as the primary policy advisor to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, and as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department. Ms. Williams also led the judicial nomination process for the Department, assisting in the selection and confirmation of more than 230 Article III judges to the bench.
Prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Williams was a litigation and appellate partner at a national law firm, where her practice focused on complex commercial, securities, appellate, and First Amendment litigation. From 2005-2006, Ms. Williams served as Special Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she assisted with the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Ms. Williams clerked for the Hon. Richard C. Wesley on the United State Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude, with a degree in History and Literature, and she earned her law degree from Harvard Law School, where she served as Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Senior Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Julie Marie Blake serves as senior counsel for regulatory litigation at Alliance Defending Freedom. Over the last decade, she has been on the front lines of high-profile, precedent-setting cases challenging federal overreach in courts across the country.
Blake served as deputy solicitor general for the state of Missouri from 2017 to 2020 and as assistant solicitor general for the state of West Virginia from 2013 to 2017. In these roles, she argued 26 federal and state appeals, including before the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. She received the Best Brief Award from National Association of Attorneys General for her U.S. Supreme Court advocacy.
Before entering government service in 2013, Blake was a litigation associate at Baker Botts L.L.P., where she served as volunteer amicus counsel in several ADF cases, including Town of Greece v. Galloway.
Following law school, she served as a law clerk for Judge Paul J. Kelly, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She received her J.D. magna cum laude from Notre Dame Law School in 2009. She received her B.A. in Politics and Theology & Religious Studies phi beta kappa from the Catholic University of America in 2006. She is a 2007 Blackstone Fellow.
Blake is admitted to practice in multiple states, the Supreme Court, and in many federal district and appellate courts.
Professor from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center
Director, The Conscience Project
Andrea Picciotti-Bayer is Director of the Conscience Project.
Andrea got her start as a trial and appellate attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to leading the Conscience Project, she served as the legal advisor for the Catholic Association, filing amicus briefs with federal courts of appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court in key religious freedom and free speech cases.
Andrea appears frequently in the media to discuss religious freedom controversies and legal victories, and in 2021 she received First Place for Best Coverage — Religious Liberty Issues from the Catholic Media Association. Andrea is a legal analyst for EWTN News and a regular columnist for the National Catholic Register. Her writing has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Fox News, Newsweek, CNN en Español and other well-regarded publications. She has also joined Fox News, Newsmax and a variety of other shows to share expert commentary.
Andrea lived in Colombia for more than a decade. She has ten children and lives in the Washington, DC area.
Vice President, Practice Groups, The Federalist Society
Vice President of Litigation, Southeastern Legal Foundation
Braden H. Boucek serves as Director of Litigation at the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF). His cases at SLF focus on restoring constitutional balance, equal protection, the First Amendment, and property rights. He is an avid defender of America's Founding and a constitutional law professor. He has also actively litigated school choice cases.
Prior to joining SLF, he served as Vice President of Legal Affairs at the Beacon Center of Tennessee, where he worked on economic liberty, dedicated himself to Tennessee's unique constitutional rights, and protecting the free speech rights of professionals.
Braden has been a litigator since 2001. Previously, Braden was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in both Nashville and Memphis for over nine years. During that time, he handled hundreds of cases ranging from Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, Fraud, Counterfeiting, Terrorism and Immigration offenses. Braden has been recognized by his office for performance, winning both the Special Achievement award and Distinguished Service award. Two of his investigations were recognized as the district’s “Case of the Year” by the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. For nearly five years before joining the Department of Justice, Braden served as a prosecutor for the State of Tennessee, first as an Assistant Attorney General and later as an Assistant District Attorney. He has been lead counsel in many jury trials at both the state and federal level. He has also argued dozens of cases before state and federal appellate courts, including the Tennessee Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Braden also served as an extern for the Florida Supreme Court. He obtained his J.D. at Florida State University College of Law, and his B.A. at the University of Richmond.
Principal, Clark Hill Public Strategies & Attorney, Clark Hill PLC
Anthony P. Campau is Principal at Clark Hill Public Strategies and an Attorney at Clark Hill PLC, two related Clark Hill firm entities. Mr. Campau previously served as chief of staff and counselor at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which oversees the development of most new federal regulations and guidance, sets and enforces federal privacy and statistical policy, and plays a leading role in new initiatives like the regulation of artificial intelligence and the development of bilateral regulatory cooperation agreements. He clerked for the Hon. Neomi Rao, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was in-house counsel and assistant secretary of the board for a large university, and served as a regulatory fellow at a major think tank in Washington, D.C.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Senior Fellow, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
David S. Mitchell is a senior fellow for tax and regulatory policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He previously served as Equitable Growth’s director of government and external relations. Prior to joining Equitable Growth, Mitchell was the associate director for policy and market solutions at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, where he led a growing team responsible for amplifying research and spurring action to address the short- and long-term financial challenges facing low- and moderate-income Americans, including income volatility, retirement insecurity, and consumer debt. He previously worked as a legislative aide to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), handling healthcare and Social Security issues and working on the landmark health reform law that passed in 2010. He also has held positions with the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, the White House National Economic Council, the law firm Hogan Lovells, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Citizens for Tax Justice, and the National Association of Community Health Centers. Mitchell holds a B.A. in political science from Tufts University, an M.P.A. from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Public Interest Law Scholar.
Of Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP
The Honorable Paul J. Ray is currently Of Counsel at Covington & Burling LLP where he advises clients on regulatory opportunities and challenges and helps them formulate and execute advocacy strategies for their regulatory policy priorities before the executive branch and Congress.
During the first Trump Administration, Paul held various senior positions at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, including as acting, and then Senate-confirmed, head of the office. As OIRA Administrator (the "regulations czar"), Paul supervised the review of hundreds of regulations from across the government, drafted numerous executive orders governing the regulatory process, and led the Administration’s regulatory reform effort. As a result of this experience, Paul is well-positioned to help clients understand and achieve regulatory policy priorities in the context of the government’s regulatory agenda and ongoing reform efforts.
Most recently, Paul was also the Director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. In that role, he supervised the formulation of the Foundation’s economic and regulatory policy recommendations and provided technical assistance to congressional committees and staff regarding legislative changes to the regulatory process. In addition to his role at The Heritage Foundation, Paul also served as a Senior Advisor at a strategic advisory firm. Before his time in government, Paul practiced law at a law firm in Washington, specializing in administrative law matters.
Prior to his role at the White House, Paul was Counselor to the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor. There he led departmental efforts in high-profile rulemakings and helped formulate the Department’s legal positions and strategy.
Paul served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and as a law clerk to the Honorable Debra Livingston of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Paul is a thought leader in the conservative legal movement and is a frequent commentator and speaker on regulatory policy and reform matters, including at law schools, professional gatherings, and other venues. He is the Chairman of Innovations in Peacebuilding International and the Regulatory Process Working Group of the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project and a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. Paul is also an adjunct lecturer at the Hillsdale College School of Government.
Attorney General of Tennessee
Jonathan Skrmetti was sworn in to an eight-year term as Tennessee’s Attorney General and Reporter on September 1, 2022.
Prior to his current role, General Skrmetti served as Chief Counsel to Governor Bill Lee and as Chief Deputy Attorney General to his predecessor, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery.
Before working for the State of Tennessee, General Skrmetti was a partner at Butler Snow LLP in Memphis. His legal career began with nearly a decade as a federal prosecutor. He worked at the Civil Rights Division at Main Justice and then at the Memphis U.S. Attorney’s Office and prosecuted sex traffickers, corrupt government officials, and violent white supremacists. In addition, General Skrmetti taught cyberlaw as an adjunct professor at the University of Memphis.
General Skrmetti earned honors degrees from George Washington University, the University of Oxford, and Harvard Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Following law school, Jonathan clerked for Judge Steven Colloton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He lives in Franklin, Tennessee, with his wife and four children.
Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio
Justice Joseph T. Deters is the 163rd justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio. He took office in January 2023, following appointment by Governor Mike DeWine.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Deters served as the longest-tenured prosecutor in Hamilton County. He held the position twice from 1992-1999 and 2005-2023.
During his time as prosecutor, Justice Deters established the first drug court in Ohio, in partnership with Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. The Hamilton County Drug Treatment and Recovery Court handles more cases than any other specialized docket in the state.
Justice Deters established the county’s first victim/witness advocate program and helped develop several diversion programs for first time non-violent offenders. He started a sex offender unit within the prosecutor’s office to monitor offender registration and compliance. He formed a unit focused on violent crimes against women and children.
Justice Deters was elected statewide as Ohio Treasurer for two terms, in 1998 and 2002. As treasurer, he was responsible for collecting, managing, and investing more than $11 billion in assets for the state.
He served as Hamilton County Clerk of Courts from 1988-1992. The justice spent the first six years of his legal career as an assistant Hamilton County prosecutor.
Justice Deters received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Cincinnati, where he was recognized as a distinguished alumnus. He is a member of the Cincinnati Bar Association and various civic organizations. He previously served on the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees, Ohio Organized Crime Commission, and the Southern Ohio Leukemia Foundation.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court
Michael P. Donnelly is a judge on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas General Division in Cleveland, Ohio. He first joined the court on January 3, 2005. Donnelly won re-election to a third consecutive term in the general election on November 8, 2016. His current term expires January 2, 2023.
Donnelly received his undergraduate degree from John Carroll University and his J.D. from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1992 and began working as an assistant prosecutor for Cuyahoga County. In 1997, he left that role to become an attorney at the firm of Davis & Young, where he worked until 1999. He then joined the firm of Climaco, Lefkowitz, Peca, Wilcox & Garofoli, working as a private practice attorney until his election to the common pleas bench in 2004.
In 2011, Donnelly participated in a program with the National Judicial College called "Innovative Leadership/Management Skills for Future Court Leaders". In 2012, Donnelly served as the Chair of Commission on Professionalism.
Judge, 8th District Court of Appeals, State of Ohio
Judge Lisa Forbes was elected to the Eighth District Court of Appeals on November 3, 2020. Prior to joining the bench, Judge Forbes was a partner in the Cleveland office of the law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP where she practiced in the area of complex litigation. As a litigator, Judge Forbes represented clients in state and federal trial and appellate courts throughout Ohio for 27 years.
Throughout her career, Judge Forbes has been an active and engaged member of the Northeast Ohio community including serving on the boards of the Centers for Families and Children and Circle Health for over a decade. She is currently the chair of both boards. In addition, while practicing, she regularly wrote and presented on developments in and application of the law.
Judge Forbes graduated summa cum laude from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in 1992. She served first as an associate editor on the law review and then as Executive Notes Editor. Judge Forbes majored in public policy at Cornell University, graduating in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science degree.
Judge Forbes is excited to bring her passion for and love of the law to the Eighth District Court of Appeals.
Judge, Franklin County Court
Hon. Daniel R. Hawkins is a judge for the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas (General Division) in Ohio. He was elected to the seat on November 6, 2018.
Prior to his election, Hawkins presided as a judge in the Environmental Division of the Franklin County Municipal Court, a position he had held since 2013.
He received a B.S. in criminal justice from Bowling Green State University in 1998. Hawkins went on to complete a J.D. at Ohio State University, Michael E. Moritz College of Law in 2001.
After graduating from law school, he began his legal career as an assistant prosecuting attorney with the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office. During his tenure there, Hawkins was promoted to director of the Special Victims Unit in 2003. In that role, he prosecuted violent crimes involving women and children as victims, including homicides, sexual assaults, child abuse, human trafficking, and internet child exploitation. In addition, Hawkins was tasked with managing fellow prosecutors in the SVU and was credited with conducting several jury trials including six death penalty cases. He remained in that capacity until joining the Municipal Court bench in 2013.
His memberships have included the American Judges Association, the Ohio Judicial Conference, the Association of Municipal County Judges of Ohio, the Ohio State Bar Association, and the Columbus Bar Association.
Hawkins is a married father of three.
Judge, Hamilton County Courts
Hon. Megan E. Shanahan is a judge for the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas (General Division) in Ohio. She was appointed to the bench by former Governor John Kasich on March 6, 2015 to fill the vacancy created by the Hon. Ralph E. Winkler after his election to the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Probate Division.
Prior to her appointment, Shanahan had presided as a judge for the Hamilton County Municipal Court, a position to which she was elected in 2011.
She received a B.A. in political science from Kent State University in 1995. SHanahan went on to complete a J.D. at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 2000.
After graduating from law school, she began her legal career as an assistant prosecutor with the Butler county Prosecutor’s Office, where she served in the appellate, municipal, and trial divisions and prosecuted cases involving the violation of the obscenity law as well as child pornography cases. In 2005, Shanahan moved to the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office. During her tenure in that position, she prosecuted child predators and served in the Felony Trial Division.
Her legal career also included acting as a prosecutor for the Mt. Healthy Mayor’s Court.
Shanahan received the Peggy Caldwell Award ini 20009.
From a civic standpoint, she has been a supporter of the Cincinnati Living Hope organization which provides transitional housing or homeless women and children.
She was born and raised in western Pennsylvania, the youngest of eight children. At the time of her appointment, Shanahan and her family resided in Cincinnati.
Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals
Elected to the Ohio Court of Appeals – Eighth Appellate District in 2006 and twice reelected, Judge Melody Stewart has over 30 years of combined administrative, legal, and academic experience in a number of private and public settings. She has been an administrator for a healthcare management company, a music teacher, a civil defense litigator, and a law school administrator and professor. She served as the Administrative Judge for the Court of Appeals in 2013.
Judge Stewart earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati; her law degree as a Patricia Roberts Harris Fellow from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University; and her Ph.D. as a Mandel Leadership Fellow at Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.
After practicing law as an assistant law director for the cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland, Judge Stewart worked as a lecturer, an adjunct instructor, and an assistant dean at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law before joining the faculty. Her primary teaching areas were ethics and professional responsibility, criminal law, criminal procedure, and legal research, writing, and advocacy. Additionally, she taught at the University of Toledo College of Law, at Ursuline College, and was Director of Student Services at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law.
Judge Stewart has served on many boards of trustees and been a member of various professional, educational, civic, and community organizations. She also served as a commissioner and chair of the Board of Planning and Zoning for the city of Euclid. Recently Judge Stewart served as a member of the Ohio Criminal Justice Recodification Committee. She is currently a member of the board of the Ohio Supreme Court’s Judicial College and is chair of the Ohio Capital Case Attorney Fee Council. Judge Stewart is admitted to practice in the state and federal courts in Ohio, the District of Columbia, and the United States Supreme Court.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Class of 1965 Associate Professor of Financial Regulation, Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Peter Conti-Brown is an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. A financial historian and a legal scholar, Professor Conti-Brown studies central banking, financial regulation, and public finance, with a particular focus on the history and policies of the US Federal Reserve System. He is author of the book The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve (Princeton University Press 2016), the editor of two other books, and author or co-author of a dozen articles on central banking, financial regulation, and bank corporate governance. He has been widely quoted in print and online media on central banking and has testified before the US Senate Banking Committee on reforming the Federal Reserve. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Stanford Law School, and Princeton University’s Department of History. He is currently at work on a single-volume, comprehensive history of the US Federal Reserve.
Professor Conti-Brown is married and the father of two children.
Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Trent McCotter is a partner with Boyden Gray PLLC. He previously served as Deputy Associate Attorney General of the United States and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Mr. McCotter maintains an extensive appellate practice. He has considerable experience identifying and briefing cases that draw the Supreme Court’s attention, having persuaded the Court to grant certiorari in numerous cases raising issues of sovereignty, constitutional rights, due process, and criminal law. He has authored and submitted over 60 briefs at the Court.
He has also personally argued more than fifteen federal appeals across the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, Federal, and D.C. Circuits—including once arguing three separate appeals in just four days. He has also twice argued before the 17-judge en banc Fifth Circuit. He has been counsel in over 50 other appeals raising matters from FOIA and the APA to constitutional rights and statutory construction.
As Deputy Associate Attorney General, Mr. McCotter oversaw DOJ’s Civil Appellate and Federal Programs branches, which are responsible for defending nearly all major litigation against the federal government. During his three years as a federal trial attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia’s “Rocket Docket,” Mr. McCotter won the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.
During his DOJ tenures, Mr. McCotter also assisted with the confirmations of two Supreme Court justices and over a dozen lower-court judges.
Mr. McCotter served as an inaugural clerk to the Hon. Steven J. Menashi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and also clerked for the Hon. R. Lanier Anderson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Senior Fellow, Bank Policy Institute
Jeremy Newell is a senior fellow at the Bank Policy Institute and recognized expert in banking law and financial services regulatory policy matters. As a former partner at Covington & Burling, Federal Reserve attorney and supervisor, and general counsel at both the Bank Policy Institute and The Clearing House Association, Jeremy has spent his career helping banks and other financial institutions to understand and navigate a rapidly-evolving regulatory environment and address complex and high-stakes legal and policy challenges. He is also a frequent speaker, writer, and teacher on U.S. bank regulation and the international framework for financial institutions.
Chairman & Co-Founder, Cynosure Group
Randal Quarles is Chairman and co-founder of The Cynosure Group. Before founding Cynosure, Mr. Quarles was a long-time partner of the Carlyle Group, where he began the firm’s program of investments in the financial services industry during the 2008 financial crisis.
From October 2017 through October 2021, Mr. Quarles was Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, serving as the system’s first Vice Chairman for Supervision, charged specifically with ensuring stability of the financial sector. He also served as the Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (“FSB”) from December 2018 until December 2021; a global body established after the Great Financial Crisis to coordinate international efforts to enhance financial stability. In both positions, he played a key role in crafting the US and international response to the economic and financial dislocations of COVID-19, successfully preventing widespread global disruption of the financial system. As FSB Chairman, he was a regular delegate to the finance ministers’ meetings of the G-7 and G20 Groups of nations and to the Summit meetings of the G20. As Fed Vice Chair, he was a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that sets monetary policy for the United States.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Quarles was Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, where he led the Department’s activities in financial sector and capital markets policy, including coordination of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
Before serving as Under Secretary, Mr. Quarles was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, where he had a key role in response to several international crises. Mr. Quarles was also the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, a member of the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, and board representative for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. In earlier public service, he was an integral member of the Treasury team in the George H. W. Bush Administration that developed the governmental response to the savings and loan crisis.
Between his tours of duty in public service, Mr. Quarles was a partner with the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, working at various times in both the New York and London offices, where he was co-head of the firm’s financial institutions practice and advised on transactions that included a number of the largest financial sector mergers ever completed.
Mr. Quarles received an A.B. summa cum laude in philosophy and economics from Columbia in 1981 and a J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1984.
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Former United States Secretary of Labor
Eugene Scalia is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, co-chair of the firm’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Group, and a senior member of the firm’s Labor and Employment Practice Group and Financial Institutions Practice Group. He returned to the firm after serving as U.S. Secretary of Labor from September 2019 to January 2021.
Mr. Scalia has a nationally-prominent practice in two areas: Labor and employment law, and advice and litigation regarding the regulatory obligations of federal administrative agencies. He also has extensive appellate experience. Federal regulatory actions he has challenged include the SEC’s “proxy access” rule; the CFTC’s “position limits’” rule; MetLife’s designation as “too big to fail” by the Financial Services Oversight Council; the Labor Department’s “fiduciary” rule; and OSHA’s “cooperative compliance program.”
As Labor Secretary, Mr. Scalia engaged at the highest level with national employment policy and matters affecting the financial services industry and international trade, overseeing the enforcement and administration of more than 180 federal employment laws covering more than 150 million workers and 10 million workplaces. He also served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. He was closely involved in the drafting and implementation of the CARES Act and other coronavirus-related legislation. Laws administered by the Labor Department also include the workplace safety requirements of OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, federal minimum wage and overtime protections, the anti-discrimination requirements applicable to federal contractors, and ERISA’s protection of the more than $11 trillion held in employee retirement plans and health plans.
Mr. Scalia served from 2002 to 2003 as Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Labor, with responsibility for all Labor Department litigation and legal advice on rulemakings and administrative law. He is the only person to have served as both Solicitor and Secretary of Labor.
He also served at the U.S. Department of Justice as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General, receiving the Department’s Edmund J. Randolph Award in 1993.
In private practice, Mr. Scalia has represented employers in high-profile matters under the National Labor Relations Act and in class actions and collective actions under Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, ERISA, and federal and state wage hour laws. He has extensive experience in federal district court, the courts of appeals, and in the arbitration of employment disputes. He has been a leading authority on “whistleblower” investigations and litigation since the 2002 enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Mr. Scalia also counsels employers on reductions-in-force and the proper conduct of harassment and discrimination investigations. He has provided pro bono representation to workers in discrimination matters, wrongful separation disputes, and other matters.
Mr. Scalia is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a federal agency that makes recommendations to Congress and the Executive Branch on ways to improve the administrative process. He is the author of more than 30 articles and papers on labor and employment law, administrative law, and other subjects. Among other accolades, he has been named an “Employment MVP,” a “Securities MVP,” and an “Appellate MVP” by Law360. The National Law Journal recognized Mr. Scalia as a “Visionary” for his litigation against financial regulatory agencies, and the Nation magazine has called him a “fearsome litigator.” He has been a Lecturer in labor and employment law at the University of Chicago Law School.
Mr. Scalia graduated cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. He graduated With Distinction from the University of Virginia in 1985 and was a speechwriter for Education Secretary William J. Bennett before attending law school. Mr. Scalia and his wife Trish have seven children.
Executive Director, Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, The Ohio State University
Professor Lee J. Strang serves as the inaugural executive director of the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at The Ohio State University.
Initiated in 2023 by the state of Ohio, the Chase Center will be an academic home at Ohio State for teaching, research, and programing on the foundations of the American constitutional order and its impact on society. As executive director, Professor Strang is responsible for organizing the center, overseeing the hiring and appointment of the center’s faculty, developing curriculum, and delivering student and academic programming. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State.
Professor Strang is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has published dozens of articles in leading journals in the fields of constitutional law and interpretation, property law, and religion and the First Amendment. He co-edits the textbook Federal Constitutional Law, and his most recent book, Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution is the first book-length, natural law justification for originalism. He currently is writing on civic thought and leadership, and he is finalizing a book on the history of American Catholic legal education (with John M. Breen).
Before joining Ohio State, Professor Strang served as the inaugural director of the University of Toledo’s Institute of American Constitutional Thought & Leadership. He joined the Toledo College of Law faculty in 2008, was granted tenure in 2010, and was named John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values in 2015. The University of Toledo awarded Professor Strang its Outstanding Faculty Research and Scholarship Award in 2017. Before that, he was a visiting professor at Michigan State University College of Law. A graduate of the University of Iowa, where he was articles editor of the Iowa Law Review and Order of the Coif, Professor Strang holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School.
Professor Strang has been a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. In 2016, he was appointed to the Ohio Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and reappointed as chair in 2023.
Prior to teaching, Professor Strang served as a judicial clerk for Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was also an associate for Jenner & Block LLP in Chicago, where he practiced in general and appellate litigation.
Professor Strang is a frequent presenter at scholarly conferences. He is the president of the Board of Trustees of Northwest Ohio Classical Academy, Ohio’s first classical charter school. He is also a regular participant in debates at law schools across the country, a contributor to the media, and a speaker to political, civic, and religious groups.
Vice President for Litigation, Institute for Free Speech
Alan joined the Institute for Free Speech as Vice President for Litigation in February 2021. In this role, Alan directs the Institute’s litigation and legal advocacy, leads our in-house legal team, and manages and works to expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
Prior to joining the Institute, Alan litigated complex federal matters for twenty years, in his own practice and as a partner in various Washington-area firms. He argued and won landmark constitutional cases in the United States Supreme Court and has appeared before numerous appellate and district courts throughout the country. Alan often speaks at law schools and continuing legal education seminars. He also teaches strategic/public interest litigation as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Alan began his career clerking for the Hon. Terrence W. Boyle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley Austin, and as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Alan earned his J.D. at Georgetown (1995) and his B.A. at Cornell University (1992). He is an active member in good standing of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and California bars, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and various federal appellate and district court bars.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
Director of Research, American Economic Liberties Project
Matt Stoller is a public intellectual who writes about the American anti-monopoly
tradition. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book Goliath: The Hundred Year
War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Stoller is the Director of Research at
the American Economic Liberties Project. He publishes an email newsletter called BIG.
Stoller is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, and worked in the House of Representatives on the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
He has lectured on competition policy and media at Columbia University, Harvard Law, Duke Law, Bertelsmann Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, West Point and the National Communications Commission of Taiwan. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler.
He has also produced for MSNBC and starred in a short-lived television show on FX called Brand X with Russell Brand.
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.
Senior Policy Analyst, Independent Women’s Forum
Inez Feltscher Stepman is a senior policy analyst at IWF and host of High Noon with Inez Stepman, a podcast that hosts conversations with heterodox thinkers on a variety of important cultural and political subjects. She has over a decade of experience in education policy, and also handles issues related to institutional capture and the definition of sex in law and culture.
She is a Lincoln Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Her work has additionally appeared in outlets such as USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, and she has made appearances on Fox News, PBS, CSPAN, and NPR.
Inez has a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego, and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. She lives in New York City with her husband.
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.
Breakout Panel 5 - Environmental Law and the Constitution: Exceeding the Limits
Eric Grant, Matthew Kuhn, Andrew Mergen, Corinne Virginia Snow
ERBXII
In his Sackett v. EPA concurrence, Justice Thomas suggested that "many environmental regulatory schemes” appear...
Luncheon Panel - U.S. Financial Regulation: Principles, Opportunities, and Challenges
Paul S. Atkins, Jeffrey T. Dinwoodie, Robert J. Jackson, Timothy G. Massad, Jill Sommers
EBRXII
This panel will bring together four former senior policymakers from the SEC or CFTC to...
Breakout Panel 2 - Law and Order on the Border?
Mark Brnovich, Sohan Dasgupta, Ilya Somin, Beth A. Williams
EBRXII
In 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 3.2 million encounters with illegal...
Breakout Panel 1 - Testing the Tension: How Do Nondiscrimination Regulations Interact with Religious Freedom?
Julie Marie Blake, Martin S. Lederman, Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, Elizabeth Slattery
EBRXII
This session will discuss the Biden administration’s efforts to expand sex nondiscrimination protections to cover...
Welcome: Opening Address & Is the Whole of Government Greater Than the Sum of its Parts?
Braden H. Boucek, Anthony Philip Campau, Gail L. Heriot, David S. Mitchell, Paul J. Ray, Jonathan Skrmetti
EBRXII
During its first hours, the Biden Administration promised a Whole of Government approach to implementing...
Panel 1: State Supreme Court Candidate Forum
Joseph T. Deters, Michael P. Donnelly, Lisa Forbes, Hon. Daniel R. Hawkins, Megan E. Shanahan, Melody Stewart, Christopher J. Walker
2024 Ohio Conference
Featuring: Hon. Joseph Deters, Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio Hon. Michael Donnelly, Justice, Supreme Court of...
Navigating the Capital Adequacy Rule: Legal and Policy Perspectives
Peter Conti-Brown, Trent McCotter, Jeremy Newell, Randal K. Quarles, Eugene Scalia
Registration to attend this event in person is now closed. Join us on April 10, 2024,...
Challenges to Originalism X: Living Constitutionalism is Superior to Originalism
Lee J. Strang
The Federalist Society's Student Division & University of Virginia School of Law Student Chapterpresent Challenges...
NetChoice and Murthy: Speech and Coercion in the Digital Age
Alan Gura, Julia D. Mahoney, Matt Stoller, Todd J. Zywicki
What can state actors do to protect or interfere with online public discourse? The recent...
When Mozilla Fired Its Founder: On the 10 Year Anniversary of Brendan Eich Leaving His Company
Inez Stepman, Todd J. Zywicki
Co-founder of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript, Brendan Eich had made remarkable contributions to the...