President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Partner, Earth and Water Law; retired Yale Law School professor (1981-2025), Yangtze River Distinguished Professor, Guangzhou Law School, ChinaDistinguished Adjunct Professor at Antonin Scalia Law School
E. Donald Elliott is a Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a leading academic scholar, as well as practitioner, in the fields of administrative and environmental law. He is “one of the most well-known, well-regarded environmental law professors in the nation,” according to John Cruden, former President of the Environmental Law Institute and Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration. Elliott has been on the Yale Law faculty since 1981 and currently teaches courses in environmental law, energy law, administrative law and civil procedure. He is also senior of counsel in the Washington D.C. office of Covington & Burling LLP, and co-chair of the firm's Environmental Practice Group. From 2003 until he joined Covington in 2013, he was a partner in Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, chairing the firm’s worldwide Environment, Health and Safety Department.
From 1989 to 1991, Elliott served as Assistant Administrator and General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 1993, he was named to the first endowed chair in environmental law and policy at any major American law school, the Julien and Virginia Cornell Chair in Environmental Law and Litigation at Yale Law School. From 2003-2009, he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, which advises the federal government on environmental issues. Elliott also testifies frequently in Congress on environmental issues.
He has served as a consultant on improving the relationship of law and science to the Federal Courts Study Committee, which was chartered by Congress to make recommendations for improving the federal courts, and to the Carnegie Commission for Law, Science and Government. He co-chaired the National Environmental Policy Institute’s Committee on Improving Science at EPA.
Elliott is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) and an elected member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers and the American Law Institute. He serves on the Board of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and as chair of its legal committee, as well on the Advisory Board for NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity. He is a former member of the boards of the Environmental Law Institute, and the Center for Clean Air Policy. He is the author or coauthor of seven books and has published more than 70 articles in professional journals. He was named one of the top 25 environmental attorneys in the United States by the National Law Journal and is highly ranked in Chambers USA: Leading Lawyers for Business; Best Lawyers in America; D.C. Super Lawyers; Who’s Who in American Law; and Who’s Who in the World.
He earned both his B.A., summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and his J.D. from Yale. Following graduation, he was a law clerk for Gerhard Gesell in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and for Chief Judge David Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence; Co-Director of the Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic, New York University School of Law
Sally Katzen served in the Clinton administration as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as deputy assistant to the president for economic policy and deputy director of the National Economic Council in the White House, and then as the deputy director for management at OMB. She served as the head of the Agency Review Group for the Obama/Biden transition with responsibility for the Executive Office of the President and all government-wide agencies. She has taught both undergraduates and at various law schools. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the National Academy of Public Administration, has served on multiple panels for the National Academy of Sciences, testified frequently before Congress, and is on the board of several non-profit organizations. Before joining the Clinton administration, Katzen was a partner in the Washington, DC, law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, specializing in regulatory and legislative matters, while serving in leadership roles in the American Bar Association (including chair of the Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice and as DC delegate to the ABA’s House of Delegates), as president of the Federal Communications Bar Association and as president of the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. She graduated from Smith College and the University of Michigan Law School, where she was the first woman editor-in-chief of the Law Review. She clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and served in the Carter administration as the general counsel of the Council on Wage and Price Stability in the Executive Office of the President.
Professor of Practice in Administrative Law, American University Washington College of Law
Jeffrey Lubbers is a Professor of Practice in Administrative Law and is also active in WCL's Law and Government Program. He holds expertise in administrative law; government structure and procedures; and regulatory policy and procedures. In addition to teaching Administrative Law, he also teaches the Washington Lawyer Seminar, the one required course in the LLM in Law and Government Program. He also serves as WCL's liaison to Japanese Law Schools, having taught at WCL's "sister school," Ritsumeikan University School of Law in Kyoto, for five summers. From 1982-1995, Professor Lubbers was the research director of the Administrative Conference of the United States. He has published two books: A Guide to Federal Agency Rulemaking (4th ed., ABA Press, 2006) andFederal Administrative Procedure Sourcebook (4th ed., ABA Press, 2008). He is also the editor of the ABA's Developments in Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice (10 vols., 1998-2008).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit
Judge Randolph was confirmed by the Senate and appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in July 1990.
Judge Randolph received his B.S. degree in 1966 from Drexel University, majoring in economics and basic engineering. At Drexel, he was president of the debate society, vice president of the Student Senate, and a member of the varsity wrestling squad. In 1969, he received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude. Judge Randolph ranked first in his law school class all three years and was managing editor of the Law Review.
After graduation, Judge Randolph served as a law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
Admitted to the California Bar in 1970 (and to the District of Columbia bar in 1973), Judge Randolph worked as Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C., 1970-1973.
After two years in private practice, Judge Randolph was named Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, a position he held from 1975-1977.
In 1979, Judge Randolph was appointed Special Counsel to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the Ethics Committee) of the United States House of Representatives, remaining in this position until 1980.
In the 1980s, Judge Randolph held a number of positions while in private practice, including Special Assistant Attorney General for the states of New Mexico (1985 90), Utah (1986-1990) and Montana (1983-1990). He also served as a Member of the Advisory Panel of the Federal Courts Study Committee.
From 1971-1990, Judge Randolph argued 23 times in the United States Supreme Court, winning 20 of his cases.
As an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center from 1974-1978 he taught courses in civil procedure and injunctions. In 1992 he taught a course in constitutional law. He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason School of Law and for the past ten years has been teaching First Amendment law. He also serves on the Judicial Advisory Board of the George Mason University Law and Economics Center.
From 1993 through 1995 Judge Randolph was a member of the Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and from 1995 to 1998 served as the Committee's chairman. He also served as the judicial liaison to the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law Section.
Judge Randolph is a member of the Board of Visitors at Drexel University Law School and was named to the “Drexel One Hundred” as a leading alumnus. In 2002 he was presented the James Wilson Award by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In November 2005 he delivered the Fifth Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Annual Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society. He has published numerous articles, the most recent of which is in the June 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Judge Randolph is married to the Honorable Eileen J. O’Connor, formerly Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. His son John Trevor Randolph is an investment banker in New York. His daughter Cynthia Lee Randolph is an artist living in San Francisco.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher
Jason C. Schwartz is a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson Dunn, co-chair of the Labor & Employment Practice Group, General Counsel of the law firm and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. Jason was recognized as an MVP in employment law five times, awarded by Law360 to “attorneys whose achievements in major litigation or transactions have set a new standard for accomplishment in corporate law.” Law360 referred to Jason as “an expert dismantler of worker class actions.”
Jason is ranked in Band 1 in Labor & Employment by Chambers USA, which stated, “He is a whip-smart, results-oriented and zealous advocate who is really committed to the client. His judgment is impeccable.” According to Chambers USA, “[c]lients note: He’s an excellent litigator with a good sense of the client’s needs in a business environment. He’s just a pleasure to work with. He’s disciplined, a great writer and gets great results.” Jason has been recognized as a Top 20 Labor & Employment Litigator in the U.S. by Benchmark Litigation; on the Top 100 list of the Nation’s Most Powerful Employment Attorneys by Human Resource Executive magazine; as a Top Lawyer in Employment Defense by Washingtonian Magazine; as a Leading Lawyer in Labor & Employment Disputes by The Legal 500 US; by Lawdragon 500 Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers for Labor & Employment (Litigation); in The Best Lawyers in America in the Employment Law-Management category; as a Super Lawyer by Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers; and as an Am Law Litigation Daily “Litigator of the Week” for his win in an independent contractor misclassification/wage-and-hour class action. He is a Fellow of the College of Labor & Employment Lawyers.
The practice group Jason co-leads was named by The American Lawyer as the Labor & Employment Litigation Department of the Year in its most recent competition. The American Lawyer noted, “with novel labor and employment issues swirling, Gibson Dunn’s litigators set standards and settle the law,” and that a case “typical for Gibson Dunn’s labor and employment team” is “high-profile,” “cutting-edge,” and “a victory.” The group was also recognized ten times as a Law360 Employment Practice Group of the Year and won The National Law Journal’s D.C. Labor & Employment Litigation Department of the Year competition for the last seven years in a row.
Jason’s practice includes sensitive workplace investigations, high-profile trade secret and non-compete matters, wage-hour and discrimination class actions, Sarbanes-Oxley and other whistleblower protection claims, executive and other significant employment disputes, labor union controversies, and workplace safety litigation.
Recent representative matters include:
Jason has also successfully tried several sensitive whistleblower matters for major national employers, and he prevailed in a precedent-setting Labor Department appeal of one of the first Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower cases to proceed to trial. He prevailed for Enterprise Rent-A-Car in a case of first impression in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit created a new joint employer test (the Enterprise test) and affirmed summary judgment for a parent corporation in a series of wage-hour class actions, defeating the plaintiffs’ effort to form a nationwide class (In re Enterprise Rent-A-Car Wage & Hour Employment Practices Litig. (3rd Cir. 2012)). In another case of first impression, he successfully argued in the Utah Supreme Court against the recognition of a tort for spoliation of evidence. In addition, he served as lead trial counsel for a retailer in a highly-publicized OSHA enforcement action relating to crowd control at a day-after-Thanksgiving sale.
Jason also has significant experience in administrative law and rulemakings. He served as counsel to the Fair Labor Standards Reform Coalition, and he played a leading role in preparing comments on behalf of the business community relating to the U.S. Department of Labor’s overtime exemption regulations.
Jason served for many years as the Secretary of the Retail Litigation Center, and he testified before Congress regarding OSHA enforcement programs on behalf of the U.S. Chamber. He frequently speaks and writes on employment law and trade secret related topics. He is the co-author of the treatise Whistleblower Law: A Practitioner’s Guide, published by American Lawyer Media/Law Journal Press, and he previously authored the annual “Trade Secrets Litigation Round-Up” published by Bloomberg BNA.
Jason earned his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and received the George Brent Mickum III Prize and the Charles A. Keigwin Award for the best academic record in first year courses. From 1995 to 1996, he worked as a Legislative Assistant to Congressman Jon D. Fox. Jason received a B.A. degree in international affairs cum laude in 1994 from The George Washington University.
Jason is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland, as well as in numerous federal courts. He served for many years as an officer and board member of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, currently serves as a member of the Washington Lawyers Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and provides pro bono employment counsel to numerous community organizations.
Deputy Associate Administrator, Office of Policy, Economics, and, EPA
Robert Verchick is Deputy Associate Administrator of the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He is currently on leave from Loyola University New Orleans, where he holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Chair in Environmental Law. He is a graduate of Stanford University and of Harvard Law School. Verchick began his teaching career at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and has been a visiting professor at Peking University (China), Aarhus University (Denmark), Lewis & Clark College (Portland, OR), and Seattle University. Before entering academia he practiced environmental law at Riddell Williams in Seattle. Verchick served for five years on the board of the Center for Progressive Reform. He is author or co-author of three books, including "Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World" (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2010).
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher
Jason C. Schwartz is a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson Dunn, co-chair of the Labor & Employment Practice Group, General Counsel of the law firm and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. Jason was recognized as an MVP in employment law five times, awarded by Law360 to “attorneys whose achievements in major litigation or transactions have set a new standard for accomplishment in corporate law.” Law360 referred to Jason as “an expert dismantler of worker class actions.”
Jason is ranked in Band 1 in Labor & Employment by Chambers USA, which stated, “He is a whip-smart, results-oriented and zealous advocate who is really committed to the client. His judgment is impeccable.” According to Chambers USA, “[c]lients note: He’s an excellent litigator with a good sense of the client’s needs in a business environment. He’s just a pleasure to work with. He’s disciplined, a great writer and gets great results.” Jason has been recognized as a Top 20 Labor & Employment Litigator in the U.S. by Benchmark Litigation; on the Top 100 list of the Nation’s Most Powerful Employment Attorneys by Human Resource Executive magazine; as a Top Lawyer in Employment Defense by Washingtonian Magazine; as a Leading Lawyer in Labor & Employment Disputes by The Legal 500 US; by Lawdragon 500 Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers for Labor & Employment (Litigation); in The Best Lawyers in America in the Employment Law-Management category; as a Super Lawyer by Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers; and as an Am Law Litigation Daily “Litigator of the Week” for his win in an independent contractor misclassification/wage-and-hour class action. He is a Fellow of the College of Labor & Employment Lawyers.
The practice group Jason co-leads was named by The American Lawyer as the Labor & Employment Litigation Department of the Year in its most recent competition. The American Lawyer noted, “with novel labor and employment issues swirling, Gibson Dunn’s litigators set standards and settle the law,” and that a case “typical for Gibson Dunn’s labor and employment team” is “high-profile,” “cutting-edge,” and “a victory.” The group was also recognized ten times as a Law360 Employment Practice Group of the Year and won The National Law Journal’s D.C. Labor & Employment Litigation Department of the Year competition for the last seven years in a row.
Jason’s practice includes sensitive workplace investigations, high-profile trade secret and non-compete matters, wage-hour and discrimination class actions, Sarbanes-Oxley and other whistleblower protection claims, executive and other significant employment disputes, labor union controversies, and workplace safety litigation.
Recent representative matters include:
Jason has also successfully tried several sensitive whistleblower matters for major national employers, and he prevailed in a precedent-setting Labor Department appeal of one of the first Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower cases to proceed to trial. He prevailed for Enterprise Rent-A-Car in a case of first impression in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit created a new joint employer test (the Enterprise test) and affirmed summary judgment for a parent corporation in a series of wage-hour class actions, defeating the plaintiffs’ effort to form a nationwide class (In re Enterprise Rent-A-Car Wage & Hour Employment Practices Litig. (3rd Cir. 2012)). In another case of first impression, he successfully argued in the Utah Supreme Court against the recognition of a tort for spoliation of evidence. In addition, he served as lead trial counsel for a retailer in a highly-publicized OSHA enforcement action relating to crowd control at a day-after-Thanksgiving sale.
Jason also has significant experience in administrative law and rulemakings. He served as counsel to the Fair Labor Standards Reform Coalition, and he played a leading role in preparing comments on behalf of the business community relating to the U.S. Department of Labor’s overtime exemption regulations.
Jason served for many years as the Secretary of the Retail Litigation Center, and he testified before Congress regarding OSHA enforcement programs on behalf of the U.S. Chamber. He frequently speaks and writes on employment law and trade secret related topics. He is the co-author of the treatise Whistleblower Law: A Practitioner’s Guide, published by American Lawyer Media/Law Journal Press, and he previously authored the annual “Trade Secrets Litigation Round-Up” published by Bloomberg BNA.
Jason earned his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and received the George Brent Mickum III Prize and the Charles A. Keigwin Award for the best academic record in first year courses. From 1995 to 1996, he worked as a Legislative Assistant to Congressman Jon D. Fox. Jason received a B.A. degree in international affairs cum laude in 1994 from The George Washington University.
Jason is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland, as well as in numerous federal courts. He served for many years as an officer and board member of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, currently serves as a member of the Washington Lawyers Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and provides pro bono employment counsel to numerous community organizations.
Deputy Associate Administrator, Office of Policy, Economics, and, EPA
Robert Verchick is Deputy Associate Administrator of the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He is currently on leave from Loyola University New Orleans, where he holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Chair in Environmental Law. He is a graduate of Stanford University and of Harvard Law School. Verchick began his teaching career at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and has been a visiting professor at Peking University (China), Aarhus University (Denmark), Lewis & Clark College (Portland, OR), and Seattle University. Before entering academia he practiced environmental law at Riddell Williams in Seattle. Verchick served for five years on the board of the Center for Progressive Reform. He is author or co-author of three books, including "Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World" (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2010).
Chief Program Officer, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
David Berenbaum serves as The National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s Chief Program Officer. David is responsible for implementing NCRC’s legislative, research, compliance, community lending, minority business and civil rights programs. He testified in 2007 before the House Financial Services Committee on solutions to the current foreclosure crisis in America and before the Senate Banking Committee hearing on solutions to the current sub-prime mortgage melt-down. His current national public policy and regulatory focus includes initiatives to expand CRA to reach all financial service providers, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act analysis, RESPA reform, enactment of a meaningful national responsible lending bill and related consumer protections. Mr. Berenbaum has achieved a national reputation as a civil rights expert and advocate. He attained national recognition for fair housing and related consumer protection advocacy and has appeared as an expert on numerous national news magazine shows – including Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, The CBS Evening News, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN and others. Recently, his work documenting fair lending compliance issues by mortgage brokers through mystery shopping in six cities and concerning about appraisal valuation practices was reported on by syndicated real estate columnist Ken Harney in two articles.
Mr. Berenbaum is responsible for coordinating NCRC’s fair housing and fair lending compliance initiatives, which in 2008 will be relaunched under the historic name “National Neighbors" and the establishment of NCRC’s new CDFI, which is a component of it’s National Homeownership Sustainability Fund. David is also one of the founders of NCRC’s Center for Responsible Appraisals and Valuations (CRAV). The CRAV celebrates appraisal best practices in cooperation with it’s stake holders, who include lenders, securitizers, appraisers, real estate professionals and other public and private sector leaders.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
General Counsel and Group Vice President, Ford Motor Company
Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics, The Wharton School, The University of Pennsylvania
David Zaring’s scholarship addresses administrative and regulatory law from an international perspective. Professor Zaring comes to the business school from the Washington & Lee University School of Law. At Washington & Lee, he was an assistant professor and Alumni Faculty Fellow from 2005 to 2007. He had previously served as Acting Assistant Professor in the Lawyering Program at New York University School of Law from 2002 to 2005, and as a visiting professor at Vanderbilt Law School in the fall of 2007. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, Professor Zaring clerked for Chief Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and then for Judge Judith Rogers on the US. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He served as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division and as a special assistant to the General Counsel in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development before entering the academy.
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.
Chief Program Officer, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
David Berenbaum serves as The National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s Chief Program Officer. David is responsible for implementing NCRC’s legislative, research, compliance, community lending, minority business and civil rights programs. He testified in 2007 before the House Financial Services Committee on solutions to the current foreclosure crisis in America and before the Senate Banking Committee hearing on solutions to the current sub-prime mortgage melt-down. His current national public policy and regulatory focus includes initiatives to expand CRA to reach all financial service providers, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act analysis, RESPA reform, enactment of a meaningful national responsible lending bill and related consumer protections. Mr. Berenbaum has achieved a national reputation as a civil rights expert and advocate. He attained national recognition for fair housing and related consumer protection advocacy and has appeared as an expert on numerous national news magazine shows – including Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, The CBS Evening News, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN and others. Recently, his work documenting fair lending compliance issues by mortgage brokers through mystery shopping in six cities and concerning about appraisal valuation practices was reported on by syndicated real estate columnist Ken Harney in two articles.
Mr. Berenbaum is responsible for coordinating NCRC’s fair housing and fair lending compliance initiatives, which in 2008 will be relaunched under the historic name “National Neighbors" and the establishment of NCRC’s new CDFI, which is a component of it’s National Homeownership Sustainability Fund. David is also one of the founders of NCRC’s Center for Responsible Appraisals and Valuations (CRAV). The CRAV celebrates appraisal best practices in cooperation with it’s stake holders, who include lenders, securitizers, appraisers, real estate professionals and other public and private sector leaders.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
General Counsel and Group Vice President, Ford Motor Company
Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics, The Wharton School, The University of Pennsylvania
David Zaring’s scholarship addresses administrative and regulatory law from an international perspective. Professor Zaring comes to the business school from the Washington & Lee University School of Law. At Washington & Lee, he was an assistant professor and Alumni Faculty Fellow from 2005 to 2007. He had previously served as Acting Assistant Professor in the Lawyering Program at New York University School of Law from 2002 to 2005, and as a visiting professor at Vanderbilt Law School in the fall of 2007. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, Professor Zaring clerked for Chief Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and then for Judge Judith Rogers on the US. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He served as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division and as a special assistant to the General Counsel in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development before entering the academy.
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.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Chief Program Officer, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
David Berenbaum serves as The National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s Chief Program Officer. David is responsible for implementing NCRC’s legislative, research, compliance, community lending, minority business and civil rights programs. He testified in 2007 before the House Financial Services Committee on solutions to the current foreclosure crisis in America and before the Senate Banking Committee hearing on solutions to the current sub-prime mortgage melt-down. His current national public policy and regulatory focus includes initiatives to expand CRA to reach all financial service providers, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act analysis, RESPA reform, enactment of a meaningful national responsible lending bill and related consumer protections. Mr. Berenbaum has achieved a national reputation as a civil rights expert and advocate. He attained national recognition for fair housing and related consumer protection advocacy and has appeared as an expert on numerous national news magazine shows – including Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, The CBS Evening News, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN and others. Recently, his work documenting fair lending compliance issues by mortgage brokers through mystery shopping in six cities and concerning about appraisal valuation practices was reported on by syndicated real estate columnist Ken Harney in two articles.
Mr. Berenbaum is responsible for coordinating NCRC’s fair housing and fair lending compliance initiatives, which in 2008 will be relaunched under the historic name “National Neighbors" and the establishment of NCRC’s new CDFI, which is a component of it’s National Homeownership Sustainability Fund. David is also one of the founders of NCRC’s Center for Responsible Appraisals and Valuations (CRAV). The CRAV celebrates appraisal best practices in cooperation with it’s stake holders, who include lenders, securitizers, appraisers, real estate professionals and other public and private sector leaders.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale Law School
Degrees from Davidson College, B.A. summa cum laude, 1973; Harvard University, M.A., 1974; Yale Law School, J.D, 1978. Clerked for Edward Weinfeld, 1978-79; Attorney at Shea & Gardner, 1979-82; Law Professor since 1982, tenured at Georgetown and Yale, visiting professor at Stanford, NYU, Toronto, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Fordham, Vanderbilt. Author of casebooks on legislation and sexuality, gender and law, as well as monographs on statutory interpretation and the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Author of dozens of articles, by one empirical count a top ten most cited law professors.
Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life, McKnight Presidential Professor in Law, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law, Associate Director, Corporate Institute, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor Kristin E. Hickman is the McKnight Presidential Professor in Law, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She also has taught at Harvard Law School and Northwestern University School of Law. Professor Hickman teaches and writes primarily in the areas of administrative law, tax administration, and statutory interpretation. Her articles on these topics have appeared in the Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and other publications. She also co-authors the Administrative Law Treatise with Richard J. Pierce, Jr., and a casebook on federal administrative law with Pierce and Christopher J. Walker. Her scholarly work has been cited several times in opinions of the United States Supreme Court as well as regularly in lower court judicial opinions and court briefs.
In 2018-19, Professor Hickman served as Special Adviser to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in Washington, D.C. She presently serves as a Senior Fellow, and previously served as a public member and chair of the judicial review committee, for the Administrative Conference of the United States. She also is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.
Professor Hickman received her B.S. degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting and a secondary major in history from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. After practicing for several years as a certified public accountant, Professor Hickman earned her J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Northwestern University School of Law, where she was awarded the Raoul Berger Prize and the Lowden Wigmore Prize for her scholarly writings. Following law school, Professor Hickman clerked for The Honorable David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and practiced law as an associate with the Chicago office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, concentrating on corporate and international tax transactions and matters.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Founder, Law Office of Eileen J. O'Connor PLLC
After nearly 30 years as a national tax specialist with the IRS and major accounting firms, Eileen J. O’Connor, now an attorney in private practice, was Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division for six years during the administration of President George W. Bush and a member of then-President-elect Trump’s Treasury Department Transition Team. She focuses on federal administrative and tax law.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Former United States National Security Advisor
John R. Bolton served as Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor from April 2018 to September 2019.
Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Bolton served as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI); of counsel at Kirkland & Ellis; a contributor to FOX News Channel and FOX Business Network; and his op-ed articles were regularly featured in major media publications.
Ambassador Bolton was appointed as United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations on August 1, 2005 and served until his resignation in December 2006. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Bolton served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from May 2001 to May 2005.
Other positions he has previously held include Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs at the Department of State, 1989-1993; Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, 1985-1989; Assistant Administrator for Program and Policy Coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1982-1983 and General Counsel, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1981-1982.
Ambassador Bolton is the author of Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the U.N. and Abroad, published by Simon and Shuster (November 2007) and How Barack Obama is Endangering our National Sovereignty, published by Encounter Books (April 2010).
Ambassador Bolton was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale College in 1970, and received his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1974. He currently resides in Maryland with his wife, Gretchen. They have one daughter, Jennifer Sarah, who also graduated from Yale College, and received her MBA and SM degrees from MIT in 2014 and is currently a senior manager at Nissan’s facility in Nashville.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Co-Chairman, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Leonard is Co-Chairman and former Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, joining the organization over 25 years ago. Since that time he has been instrumental in helping the organization top 70,000, focusing on the growth of lawyers membership, operations and activities advancing limited, constitutional government. In addition to his work at the Society, Leonard has advised President Trump on judicial selection, assisted with the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh Supreme Court selection and confirmation process, and served as a member of the transition team. He also organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito U.S. Supreme Court confirmations. Leonard was appointed by President George W. Bush to three terms to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom as chairman. He was also a U.S. Delegate to the UN Council and UN Commission on Human Rights during the Bush Administration. Leonard was the recipient of the 2009 Bradley Prize, along with the other founders and directors of the Federalist Society, for his work in advancing freedom and the rule of law. He is the coeditor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, as well as the author of opinion editorials in the New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Leonard holds degrees from Cornell University and Cornell Law School. He presently resides in Northern Virginia, where he and his wife Sally have raised their seven children.
Distinguished Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Danielle Pletka is a distinguished senior fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on US foreign policy generally and the Middle East specifically. Until January 2020, Ms. Pletka was the senior vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Concurrently, she also teaches US Middle East policy at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Before joining AEI, Ms. Pletka was a senior professional staff member for the Middle East and South Asia for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Ms. Pletka has authored, coauthored, and coedited a variety of studies, monographs, and book chapters, including the introduction to “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East” (AEI Press, 2019); the report “Tehran Stands atop the Syria-Iran Alliance” (Atlantic Council, 2017); the chapter “America in Decline” in “Debating the Obama Presidency” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); “America vs. Iran: The Competition for the Future of the Middle East” (AEI, 2014); “Iranian Influence in the Levant, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan” (AEI, 2012); “Containing and Deterring a Nuclear Iran” (AEI, 2011); and “Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Empowering Democrats” (AEI Press, 2008).
A regular guest on television, Ms. Pletka appears frequently on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” Her broadcast appearances also include CBS News, CNN, C-SPAN, and MSNBC. She has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Hill, and Politico, among other outlets. Ms. Pletka is also the cohost, with AEI’s Marc Thiessen, of the podcast “What the Hell Is Going On? (Making Sense of the World).”
She has an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Smith College.
Former General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, Former United States Ambassador to East Timor
Grover Joseph Rees, a native and resident of Louisiana, served as the first United States Ambassador to East Timor from 2002 to 2006.
From October 2006 until January 2009 Ambassador Rees served as Special Representative for Social Issues in the U.S. Department of State. He was responsible for promoting human dignity, including issues affecting vulnerable persons and the family, within the United Nations system. He served as Acting U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Counsel during the fall 2007 session of the UN General Assembly and also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations.
From 1995 until 2002 Rees was a senior staff member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the United States House of Representatives, where he was responsible for human rights and refugee protection and played a major role in the drafting and enactment of important human rights legislation including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the International Religious Freedom Act, and the Torture Victims Relief Act.
Ambassador Rees also formerly served as General Counsel of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (1991-93), as Chief Justice of the High Court of American Samoa (1986-1991), and as Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the United States (1985-86).
Prior to his work in Washington, Rees served for seven years as a law professor at the University of Texas. He has written and spoken widely on international law, human rights, refugees, and related issues.
Rees obtained his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his law degree from Louisiana State University Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Louisiana Law Review and was selected for the academic honor society Order of the Coif.
Rees was born in New Orleans, the oldest of 12 children. He is married to Lan Dai Nguyen Rees and has one son. He retired from government service in January 2009 and now lives and works in Lafayette, Louisiana.
In addition to English, Ambassador Rees speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese, Samoan, and Tetum.
The Future of Regulatory Review
Ronald A. Cass, E. Donald Elliott, Sally Katzen, Jeffrey Lubbers, A. Raymond Randolph
Administrative Law & Regulation Practice Group
On January 18, President Obama announced through a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that he...
Regulatory Authority in the EPA
Ronald A. Cass, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Jason C. Schwartz, Robert Verchick
Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group
The Environmental Protection Agency has broad discretion, delegated to it by Congress in several different...
Regulatory Authority in the EPA
Ronald A. Cass, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Jason C. Schwartz, Robert Verchick
Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group
The Environmental Protection Agency has broad discretion, delegated to it by Congress in several different...
Administrative Law: Breakdown of the Public-Private Distinction: Implications for the Administrative State
David Berenbaum, Ronald A. Cass, David G. Leitch, David Zaring, J.W. Verret
2009 National Lawyers Convention
This panel will address how increasing government involvement, investment, and control over nominally private firms...
Administrative Law: Breakdown of the Public-Private Distinction: Implications for the Administrative State
David Berenbaum, Ronald A. Cass, David G. Leitch, David Zaring, J.W. Verret
2009 National Lawyers Convention
This panel will address how increasing government involvement, investment, and control over nominally private firms...
Self-Protectionism: The Economics and Politics of Trade
Ronald A. Cass
Although the basic arguments of trade were established more than two centuries ago, they continue...
Panel II: Reprivatizing Credit Risk: Where Do We Go From Here?
David Berenbaum, Ronald A. Cass, Jeb Hensarling, Alex J. Pollock, John Weicher
The Financial Services Bailout
After discussing the extent to which credit risk has been nationalized directly or indirectly through...
Administrative Law: The 25th Anniversary of Chevron
Ronald A. Cass, William N. Eskridge, Kristin E. Hickman, Thomas W. Merrill, Eileen J. O'Connor
2008 National Lawyers Convention
Twenty-five years ago, in October Term 1983, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Chevron...
The Supreme Court’s Standing Problem
Ronald A. Cass
Standing is a concept that at its core signals a peculiar problem. In ordinary damage...
Dictating Norms: Who Decides What's Right for the World?
John R. Bolton, Ronald A. Cass, James P. Kelly, Leonard A. Leo, Alyssa Luttjohann, David Peyton, Danielle Pletka, Grover Joseph Rees, Claudia Rosett
The Inauguration of Global Governance Watch
The proliferation of international policymaking organizations has intensified and institutionalized the influence of global governance....