Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
BRADFORD A. BERENSON is a litigator in the Washington, D.C., office whose practice focuses on the defense of white collar criminal cases, investigations by government agencies and congressional committees, and other civil or constitutional matters that present unusual legal, public relations, or political risks. He has defended criminal cases at every stage of development, from internal investigations and grand jury proceedings through trials, sentencings, and appeals. Mr. Berenson’s practice has included criminal matters in the fraud, environmental, health care, pharmaceutical, and public corruption areas. In addition, Mr. Berenson served as a consultant to Independent Counsel David M. Barrett in the prosecution of former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros. He has also handled a variety of civil and appellate cases in federal court.
From January 2001 through January 2003, Mr. Berenson served as Associate Counsel to the President of the United States. In the White House, he worked on a wide variety of legal, legislative and policy issues associated with the Bush Administration’s relations with Congress, its justice and domestic policy initiatives, and the war on terrorism. These included judicial selection, responses to congressional oversight and investigations, the USA Patriot Act, the Military Order authorizing the use of military commissions, detainee and anti-terrorism litigation, presidential action against terrorist financing, and the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Berenson has also provided commentary on legal matters in the mainstream media, publishing articles in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Washington Times and making appearances on news and public affairs programming on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN and Fox News Channel. He was a consultant to ABC News in connection with the departures of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor from the Supreme Court and the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts, Harriet Miers and Justice Alito.
Mr. Berenson holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale University, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was Supreme Court editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following graduation, he clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
Andrew is a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and a former federal prosecutor with more than 25 years of experience in civil and criminal litigation. He represents clients in federal and state courts in complex civil litigation and in rulemaking and investigations before numerous federal and state agencies, including the Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Election Commission, Federal Communications Commission and state attorneys general.
Professor from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center
Adjunct Scholar and Former Director, Project On Criminal Justice, Cato Institute
Tim Lynch is an attorney specializing in criminal law, constitutional law, and civil liberties. He is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the former director of Cato’s Project on Criminal Justice. His research interests include all aspects of constitutional criminal procedure, overcriminalization, the drug war, and police and prosecutorial misconduct. In 2000, he served on the National Committee to Prevent Wrongful Executions. Lynch also prepares amicus briefs before appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving constitutional rights. He is the editor of In the Name of Justice: Leading Experts Reexamine the Classic Article “The Aims of the Criminal Law” and After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century.
Lynch has published a variety of articles in both the law journals and in opinion pieces for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers. He has appeared on The PBS NewsHour, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. Lynch is a member of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and Supreme Court bars. He earned both a BS and a JD from Marquette University.
Mr. Lynch can be reached via his personal website.
Frank Edwards Tyler Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Kansas School of Law
Stephen Ware is the author of four books, over 50 law review articles, and many other publications. His writings have been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States and in at least 36 other cases. Ware teaches and writes on: Arbitration, Mediation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution, Bankruptcy, Insolvency, and Debt Collection, Contracts and Commercial Law, and Judicial Selection, each with an international or comparative dimension.
Ware has testified before both houses of the U.S. Congress, several state legislatures and, as an expert witness, in court. He is a frequent guest lecturer and speaker at academic and professional conferences—having given such presentations throughout the U.S. and in several other countries. He has appeared on numerous television and radio stations and been quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, National Law Journal and many other news outlets. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and has served, at various times in his career, on the editorial board of the Journal of Legal Education and as an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association.
Frank Edwards Tyler Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Kansas School of Law
Stephen Ware is the author of four books, over 50 law review articles, and many other publications. His writings have been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States and in at least 36 other cases. Ware teaches and writes on: Arbitration, Mediation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution, Bankruptcy, Insolvency, and Debt Collection, Contracts and Commercial Law, and Judicial Selection, each with an international or comparative dimension.
Ware has testified before both houses of the U.S. Congress, several state legislatures and, as an expert witness, in court. He is a frequent guest lecturer and speaker at academic and professional conferences—having given such presentations throughout the U.S. and in several other countries. He has appeared on numerous television and radio stations and been quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, National Law Journal and many other news outlets. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and has served, at various times in his career, on the editorial board of the Journal of Legal Education and as an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Partner, Millbank LLP
Mr. Katyal, the former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, focuses on appellate and complex litigation. He has argued 54 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
He has extensive experience in matters of antitrust, corporate, constitutional, securities, technology, criminal, patent, copyright, trademark, ERISA, products liability, labor, employment and tribal law. In the 2022-23 Supreme Court term, he argued five separate cases (nearly 10% of the docket), including winning the landmark voting case Moore v. Harper, which Judge Michael Luttig described as “the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding.” Judge Luttig also said Mr. Katyal’s argument “was the single best oral argument I have ever heard made in the Supreme Court of the United States.” His cases include successfully striking down the Guantanamo military tribunals, successfully defending the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act and successfully defending the Peace Cross in Maryland. His 2017 win in Bristol Myers Squibb v. Superior Court was a landmark victory for personal jurisdiction law and his 2006 win in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was described by former Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger as “simply the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law ever. Ever.”
From 2010 to 2011, Mr. Katyal served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States, where he argued several major Supreme Court cases involving a variety of issues, such as his successful defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his victorious defense of former Attorney General John Ashcroft for alleged abuses in the war on terror, his unanimous victory against eight states who sued the nation's leading power plants for contributing to global warming, and a variety of other matters. As Acting Solicitor General, he was responsible for representing the federal government of the United States in all appellate matters before the US Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals throughout the nation. He served as Counsel of Record hundreds of times in the US Supreme Court. He was also the only head of the Solicitor General's office to argue a case in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on the important question of whether certain aspects of the human genome were patentable.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Mr. Katyal clerked for The Honorable Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as well as for The Honorable Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the US Supreme Court. He also served in the Deputy Attorney General's Office at the Justice Department as National Security Advisor and as Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General during 1998-1999.
Mr. Katyal is a best-selling New York Times author and has published dozens of scholarly articles in law journals (including several in the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal), as well as many op-ed articles in publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. He has testified numerous times before various committees of both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School; Former President, American Civil Liberties Union
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. An internationally acclaimed free speech scholar and advocate, who regularly addresses diverse audiences and provides media commentary around the world, Strossen is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series distributed on public television in 2023. Her books about free speech include: Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Oxford University Press 2023); HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018); and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights (Scribner 1995), which was republished with a new Preface in 2024 as part of the NYU Classics Series. Her many honors and awards include the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech. She serves on the Advisory Boards of several organizations that do free speech work, including: ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Partner, Millbank LLP
Mr. Katyal, the former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, focuses on appellate and complex litigation. He has argued 54 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
He has extensive experience in matters of antitrust, corporate, constitutional, securities, technology, criminal, patent, copyright, trademark, ERISA, products liability, labor, employment and tribal law. In the 2022-23 Supreme Court term, he argued five separate cases (nearly 10% of the docket), including winning the landmark voting case Moore v. Harper, which Judge Michael Luttig described as “the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding.” Judge Luttig also said Mr. Katyal’s argument “was the single best oral argument I have ever heard made in the Supreme Court of the United States.” His cases include successfully striking down the Guantanamo military tribunals, successfully defending the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act and successfully defending the Peace Cross in Maryland. His 2017 win in Bristol Myers Squibb v. Superior Court was a landmark victory for personal jurisdiction law and his 2006 win in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was described by former Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger as “simply the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law ever. Ever.”
From 2010 to 2011, Mr. Katyal served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States, where he argued several major Supreme Court cases involving a variety of issues, such as his successful defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his victorious defense of former Attorney General John Ashcroft for alleged abuses in the war on terror, his unanimous victory against eight states who sued the nation's leading power plants for contributing to global warming, and a variety of other matters. As Acting Solicitor General, he was responsible for representing the federal government of the United States in all appellate matters before the US Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals throughout the nation. He served as Counsel of Record hundreds of times in the US Supreme Court. He was also the only head of the Solicitor General's office to argue a case in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on the important question of whether certain aspects of the human genome were patentable.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Mr. Katyal clerked for The Honorable Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as well as for The Honorable Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the US Supreme Court. He also served in the Deputy Attorney General's Office at the Justice Department as National Security Advisor and as Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General during 1998-1999.
Mr. Katyal is a best-selling New York Times author and has published dozens of scholarly articles in law journals (including several in the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal), as well as many op-ed articles in publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. He has testified numerous times before various committees of both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School; Former President, American Civil Liberties Union
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. An internationally acclaimed free speech scholar and advocate, who regularly addresses diverse audiences and provides media commentary around the world, Strossen is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series distributed on public television in 2023. Her books about free speech include: Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Oxford University Press 2023); HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018); and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights (Scribner 1995), which was republished with a new Preface in 2024 as part of the NYU Classics Series. Her many honors and awards include the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech. She serves on the Advisory Boards of several organizations that do free speech work, including: ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin.
Chairman & CEO, The Abraham Group
Secretary Spencer Abraham is Chairman & CEO of The Abraham Group.
He served as the tenth Secretary of Energy of United States from 2001-2005. He helped President George W. Bush devise America’s first national energy plan in over a decade and oversaw its implementation. As part of this plan, he led efforts to broaden America’s international energy partnerships as well as forge closer ties to key oil producing nations.
Secretary Abraham has been a close observer of world energy markets, and under his leadership the Department of Energy conducted a number of important short and long-term studies of world oil, gas, electricity and other markets.
According to the Presidential Management Agenda scorecard, the Department of Energy went from “worst to first” of well-run agencies under Secretary Abraham’s leadership.
Prior to being a Cabinet Member, Secretary Abraham served as an effective and highly productive U.S. Senator from Michigan for six years. In the Senate, he was a member of the Senate Commerce, Judiciary and Budget Committees and served as chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee and the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Manufacturing and Competitiveness. He was also a senior official in the Administration of former President George H.W. Bush as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Vice President.
Secretary Abraham is a member of the Board of Directors of Occidental Petroleum, NRG Energy, PBF Energy, Uranium Energy Corp and Two Harbors Investment Corporation.
In addition, he is a frequent commentator on FOX News, CNN and Bloomberg TV as well as a periodic contributor of op-ed articles to the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard and other publications.
Spencer Abraham and his wife, Jane, are the parents of adult children. He holds a law degree from Harvard University, where he co-founded the Federalist Society, and is a native of East Lansing, Michigan.
Co-Founder, Trustee, and Legal Advisor, Reason Foundation and Ge, Individual Rights Foundation
Manuel "Manny" Klausner was one of the founding partners in Reason Enterprises, which began publishing Reason magazine in 1971, three years after the publication's creation. He became editor in the summer of 1972 and a senior editor in June 1978. In 1978 he co-founded the Reason Foundation with Tibor Machan and Bob Poole. He remains on the board of the Reason Foundation today, is a stalwart supporter of the Federalist Society, and a libertarian lawyer extraordinaire.
Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus, The Heritage Foundation
Edwin Meese III, the prominent conservative leader, thinker and elder statesman, continues a quarter-century formal association with The Heritage Foundation as the leading think tank’s Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus.
In that capacity, Meese oversees special projects and acts as an ambassador for Heritage within the conservative movement.
Meese was chairman of Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies from its founding in 2001 until what he calls his “semi-retirement” on Feb. 1, 2013.
He joined Heritage in 1988 as the think tank's first Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow -- the only policy chair in the country to be officially named for the 40th president. His work focused on keeping President Reagan’s legacy of conservative principles alive in public debate and discourse.
The legal center now bears his name, in recognition of Meese’s contributions to the rule of law and the nation’s understanding of constitutional law. Its mission is to educate government officials, the media and the public about the Constitution and legal principles -- and how they affect public policy.
Perhaps best known as U.S. attorney general during Reagan’s second term, Meese’s service to the conservative icon stretched from the California governor’s mansion in 1966 to the White House in 1981 before he went to the Department of Justice four years later.
His Heritage “hats” kept Meese among the major conservative voices in national policy debates at an age when most men and women enjoyed quiet retirements.
In 2006, for example, Meese was named to the Iraq Study Group, a special presidential commission dedicated to examining the best resolutions for America's involvement in Iraq. In the past few years he wrote and spoke about constitutional topics ranging from religious liberty to the responsibility of Supreme Court justices.
Immediately after Reagan's death in 2004, and in the years since, Meese often agreed to major media appearances to discuss the lasting impact of his old friend, mentor and boss. He has summarized the Reagan legacy in three accomplishments: Reagan cut taxes and kept them low. He worked to defeat and end the Soviet Union and its worldwide push for communism. And he restored America's faith in itself after years of failure and "malaise."
"I admired him as a leader and cherish his friendship," Meese wrote in a 2004 essay for Heritage members and supporters. "Ronald Reagan had strong convictions. He was committed to the principles that had led to the founding of our nation. And he had the courage to follow his convictions against all odds." <[>Edwin Meese III was born Dec. 2, 1931, to Edwin Jr. and Leone Meese in Oakland, Calif. He graduated from Yale University in 1953 and holds a law degree from the University of California-Berkeley.
Meese spent much of his adult life working for Reagan, first after the former actor, sports announcer and athlete was elected as California’s governor in 1966 and then when he sought and won the presidency in 1980.
Reagan never forgot Meese's loyalty and hard work. During a press conference at which reporters questioned Meese's actions at the Justice Department, Reagan replied: "If Ed Meese is not a good man, there are no good men."
During the Reagan governorship, Meese served as executive assistant and chief of staff from 1969 through 1974 and as legal affairs secretary from 1967 through 1968. He previously was deputy district attorney in Alameda County, Calif.
From January 1981 to February 1985, Meese held the position of counsellor to the president -- the senior job on the White House staff -- and functioned as Reagan's chief policy adviser. In 1985, he received Government Executive magazine's annual award for excellence in management.
Meese served as the 75th attorney general of the United States from February 1985 to August 1988. As the nation's chief law enforcement officer, he directed the Justice Department and led international efforts to combat terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime.
Meese’s relationship with Heritage began when he met with senior management to discuss the think tank's landmark policy guide, Mandate for Leadership, prepared for the incoming administration. Meese later recalled that Reagan personally handed out copies of the 1,093-page book to members of his Cabinet and asked them to read it. Nearly two-thirds of Mandate's 2,000 recommendations would be adopted or attempted by the Reagan administration.
More than a decade after joining Heritage, Meese assumed the chairmanship of its Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Under his guidance, the center counseled White House staffers, Justice Department officials and Senate Judiciary Committee members on the importance of filling judicial vacancies with qualified men and women who are committed to interpreting the Constitution according to the founding document's original meaning.
The center became known for hosting "moot court" practice sessions to sharpen the arguments of attorneys slated to bring important cases before the Supreme Court. Those cases addressed constitutional issues ranging from property rights to racial preferences in primary and secondary schools to restrictions on free speech in campaign finance law.
Meese headed the legal center's Advisory Board for the writing and editing of the best-selling book, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (Regnery, 2005). In it, 109 experts walked readers through a clause-by-clause analysis of the Constitution. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) was among those keeping the reference work handy during Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominees.
Meese's other books include “Leadership, Ethics and Policing” (Prentice Hall, 2004); “Making America Safer” (Heritage, 1997); and “With Reagan: The Inside Story” (Regnery Gateway, 1992).He wrote the Introduction to a well-received 2010 book on the “overcriminalization” trend, “One Nation Under Arrest,” by Heritage veterans Paul Rosenzweig and Brian W. Walsh.
He also is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California and lectures, writes and consults throughout the United States on a variety of subjects.
As both attorney general and counsellor to Reagan, Meese was a member of the Cabinet and the National Security Council. He served as chairman of the Domestic Policy Council and the National Drug Policy Board. After Reagan won the White House in the 1980 election, Meese headed the transition team. During the campaign, he was the Reagan-Bush Committee's senior official.
Meese had a career outside government and politics. From 1977 to 1981, he was a law professor at the University of San Diego, where he also directed the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Management.
He was an executive in the aerospace and transportation industry as vice president for administration of Rohr Industries Inc. in Chula Vista, Calif. He left Rohr to return to the practice of law, doing corporate and general work in San Diego County.
A retired colonel in the Army Reserve, Meese remains active in numerous civic and educational organizations.
He and his wife, Ursula, have two grown children and reside in McLean, Va.
Chairman & CEO, The Abraham Group
Secretary Spencer Abraham is Chairman & CEO of The Abraham Group.
He served as the tenth Secretary of Energy of United States from 2001-2005. He helped President George W. Bush devise America’s first national energy plan in over a decade and oversaw its implementation. As part of this plan, he led efforts to broaden America’s international energy partnerships as well as forge closer ties to key oil producing nations.
Secretary Abraham has been a close observer of world energy markets, and under his leadership the Department of Energy conducted a number of important short and long-term studies of world oil, gas, electricity and other markets.
According to the Presidential Management Agenda scorecard, the Department of Energy went from “worst to first” of well-run agencies under Secretary Abraham’s leadership.
Prior to being a Cabinet Member, Secretary Abraham served as an effective and highly productive U.S. Senator from Michigan for six years. In the Senate, he was a member of the Senate Commerce, Judiciary and Budget Committees and served as chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee and the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Manufacturing and Competitiveness. He was also a senior official in the Administration of former President George H.W. Bush as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Vice President.
Secretary Abraham is a member of the Board of Directors of Occidental Petroleum, NRG Energy, PBF Energy, Uranium Energy Corp and Two Harbors Investment Corporation.
In addition, he is a frequent commentator on FOX News, CNN and Bloomberg TV as well as a periodic contributor of op-ed articles to the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard and other publications.
Spencer Abraham and his wife, Jane, are the parents of adult children. He holds a law degree from Harvard University, where he co-founded the Federalist Society, and is a native of East Lansing, Michigan.
Co-Founder, Trustee, and Legal Advisor, Reason Foundation and Ge, Individual Rights Foundation
Manuel "Manny" Klausner was one of the founding partners in Reason Enterprises, which began publishing Reason magazine in 1971, three years after the publication's creation. He became editor in the summer of 1972 and a senior editor in June 1978. In 1978 he co-founded the Reason Foundation with Tibor Machan and Bob Poole. He remains on the board of the Reason Foundation today, is a stalwart supporter of the Federalist Society, and a libertarian lawyer extraordinaire.
Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus, The Heritage Foundation
Edwin Meese III, the prominent conservative leader, thinker and elder statesman, continues a quarter-century formal association with The Heritage Foundation as the leading think tank’s Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus.
In that capacity, Meese oversees special projects and acts as an ambassador for Heritage within the conservative movement.
Meese was chairman of Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies from its founding in 2001 until what he calls his “semi-retirement” on Feb. 1, 2013.
He joined Heritage in 1988 as the think tank's first Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow -- the only policy chair in the country to be officially named for the 40th president. His work focused on keeping President Reagan’s legacy of conservative principles alive in public debate and discourse.
The legal center now bears his name, in recognition of Meese’s contributions to the rule of law and the nation’s understanding of constitutional law. Its mission is to educate government officials, the media and the public about the Constitution and legal principles -- and how they affect public policy.
Perhaps best known as U.S. attorney general during Reagan’s second term, Meese’s service to the conservative icon stretched from the California governor’s mansion in 1966 to the White House in 1981 before he went to the Department of Justice four years later.
His Heritage “hats” kept Meese among the major conservative voices in national policy debates at an age when most men and women enjoyed quiet retirements.
In 2006, for example, Meese was named to the Iraq Study Group, a special presidential commission dedicated to examining the best resolutions for America's involvement in Iraq. In the past few years he wrote and spoke about constitutional topics ranging from religious liberty to the responsibility of Supreme Court justices.
Immediately after Reagan's death in 2004, and in the years since, Meese often agreed to major media appearances to discuss the lasting impact of his old friend, mentor and boss. He has summarized the Reagan legacy in three accomplishments: Reagan cut taxes and kept them low. He worked to defeat and end the Soviet Union and its worldwide push for communism. And he restored America's faith in itself after years of failure and "malaise."
"I admired him as a leader and cherish his friendship," Meese wrote in a 2004 essay for Heritage members and supporters. "Ronald Reagan had strong convictions. He was committed to the principles that had led to the founding of our nation. And he had the courage to follow his convictions against all odds." <[>Edwin Meese III was born Dec. 2, 1931, to Edwin Jr. and Leone Meese in Oakland, Calif. He graduated from Yale University in 1953 and holds a law degree from the University of California-Berkeley.
Meese spent much of his adult life working for Reagan, first after the former actor, sports announcer and athlete was elected as California’s governor in 1966 and then when he sought and won the presidency in 1980.
Reagan never forgot Meese's loyalty and hard work. During a press conference at which reporters questioned Meese's actions at the Justice Department, Reagan replied: "If Ed Meese is not a good man, there are no good men."
During the Reagan governorship, Meese served as executive assistant and chief of staff from 1969 through 1974 and as legal affairs secretary from 1967 through 1968. He previously was deputy district attorney in Alameda County, Calif.
From January 1981 to February 1985, Meese held the position of counsellor to the president -- the senior job on the White House staff -- and functioned as Reagan's chief policy adviser. In 1985, he received Government Executive magazine's annual award for excellence in management.
Meese served as the 75th attorney general of the United States from February 1985 to August 1988. As the nation's chief law enforcement officer, he directed the Justice Department and led international efforts to combat terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime.
Meese’s relationship with Heritage began when he met with senior management to discuss the think tank's landmark policy guide, Mandate for Leadership, prepared for the incoming administration. Meese later recalled that Reagan personally handed out copies of the 1,093-page book to members of his Cabinet and asked them to read it. Nearly two-thirds of Mandate's 2,000 recommendations would be adopted or attempted by the Reagan administration.
More than a decade after joining Heritage, Meese assumed the chairmanship of its Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Under his guidance, the center counseled White House staffers, Justice Department officials and Senate Judiciary Committee members on the importance of filling judicial vacancies with qualified men and women who are committed to interpreting the Constitution according to the founding document's original meaning.
The center became known for hosting "moot court" practice sessions to sharpen the arguments of attorneys slated to bring important cases before the Supreme Court. Those cases addressed constitutional issues ranging from property rights to racial preferences in primary and secondary schools to restrictions on free speech in campaign finance law.
Meese headed the legal center's Advisory Board for the writing and editing of the best-selling book, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (Regnery, 2005). In it, 109 experts walked readers through a clause-by-clause analysis of the Constitution. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) was among those keeping the reference work handy during Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominees.
Meese's other books include “Leadership, Ethics and Policing” (Prentice Hall, 2004); “Making America Safer” (Heritage, 1997); and “With Reagan: The Inside Story” (Regnery Gateway, 1992).He wrote the Introduction to a well-received 2010 book on the “overcriminalization” trend, “One Nation Under Arrest,” by Heritage veterans Paul Rosenzweig and Brian W. Walsh.
He also is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California and lectures, writes and consults throughout the United States on a variety of subjects.
As both attorney general and counsellor to Reagan, Meese was a member of the Cabinet and the National Security Council. He served as chairman of the Domestic Policy Council and the National Drug Policy Board. After Reagan won the White House in the 1980 election, Meese headed the transition team. During the campaign, he was the Reagan-Bush Committee's senior official.
Meese had a career outside government and politics. From 1977 to 1981, he was a law professor at the University of San Diego, where he also directed the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Management.
He was an executive in the aerospace and transportation industry as vice president for administration of Rohr Industries Inc. in Chula Vista, Calif. He left Rohr to return to the practice of law, doing corporate and general work in San Diego County.
A retired colonel in the Army Reserve, Meese remains active in numerous civic and educational organizations.
He and his wife, Ursula, have two grown children and reside in McLean, Va.
Vilas Research Fellow & Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School
Shubha Ghosh has taught in the fields of intellectual property, business organizations, tort law, antitrust, property, and law & economics since Fall 1996. He is the author of over fifty articles and book chapters. He is the co-author of two intellectual property casebooks: Intellectual Property: Private Rights, The Public Interest, and the Regulation of Creative Activity (Thomson West 2007) and Intellectual Property in Business Organizations (Lexis-Nexis 2006).
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was born in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 1965. He married Ashley Estes in 2004, and they have two daughters - Margaret and Liza. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1987 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990. He served as a law clerk for Judge Walter Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1990-1991, for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1991-1992, and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1993 Term. In 1992-1993, he was an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. From 1994 to 1997 and for a period in 1998, he was Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel. He was a partner at a Washington, D.C., law firm from 1997 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was Associate Counsel and then Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2003 to 2006, he was Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary for President Bush. He was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on October 6, 2018.
Stevenson Bernard Professor, George Washington University Law School
The Honorable F. Scott Kieff is the Stevenson Bernard Professor at George Washington University Law School and a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
He served as Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission from 2013-2017. He also served during the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations in the part-time leadership of the national security defense-intelligence community.
He was previously a professor of law and medicine at Washington University in Saint Louis and a Senior Fellow at Hoover. A former law clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich, he is a graduate of Penn Law School and MIT, where he studied molecular biology and microeconomics. He was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2012 and the Academia Europaea in 2024.
His private sector work through Kieff Strategies LLC (www.kieffstrategies.com) provides neutral services including mediation and compliance, and expert services including crisis management, advising, and testimony.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has published extensively on why patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights have been—and should be—legally secured to innovators and creators as property rights. His scholarship has been relied on by the United States Supreme Court, by lower federal courts, and by U.S. federal agencies. He has been invited to testify numerous times before the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on intellectual property legislation. His writings on intellectual property policy have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Investors Business Daily, and in other media outlets. His journal articles can be downloaded here.
Professor Mossoff is a longstanding member of the Executive Committee of the Intellectual Property Practice Group of the Federalist Society, on which he served as Chairperson from 2016-2018, and he is Chair of the Intellectual Property Working Group of the Regulatory Transparency Project of the Federalist Society. He is a Senior Fellow and Chair of the Forum for Intellectual Property at the Hudson Institute, a Visiting Intellectual Property Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding. He is a member of the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of ANSI and he has served as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the IEEE-USA, on which he remains a member in good standing.
CoFounder, RightsClick
Steven’s extensive background in IP law and policy began as an attorney for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, after which, he served as senior counsel for Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Copyright Office and then as Chief Intellectual Property Counsel for the Global Intellectual Property Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Before co-founding RightsClick, he started the IP consultancy Sentinel Worldwide, and teaches copyright law at George Washington University Law School.
President, Canfield & Associates, Inc.
Anne Canfield is President of Canfield & Associates, Inc., a firm she formed in October 1996. Canfield & Associates, Inc. is a consulting firm providing strategic planning, policy advice, and representational services to major corporations on federal and state legislative and regulatory issues in the financial services, health care, tax, trade and budget policy areas. Ms. Canfield’s affiliated firm, Canfield Press, LLC, publishes The GSE Report, a publication that tracks and analyzes activities of the government-sponsored enterprises including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loans Banks, Ginnie Mae, Farmer Mac, the Postal Service, TVA, and assistance plans implemented by international governments to stabilize their financial systems. The GSE Report is distributed worldwide to public policy officials, academics, analysts, industry participants, and the media. Ms. Canfield’s firm also publishes the – Roadmap to Financial and Housing Market Stabilization Plans, a weekly publication that tracks the efforts of both the U.S.and worldwide governments to stabilize the financial system; Roadmap to the Dodd-Frank Act, a publication that tracks the requirements of the Act and the federal government’s agencies efforts to implement it; Roadmap to GSE Reform, a newer publication that tracks and compares the legislative initiatives that are being considered on Capitol Hill; The Mortgage Report, a quarterly publication that provides a comprehensive review of the legislative, regulatory and litigation challenges facing the mortgage industry; and the Washington Roundup, a weekly publication that summarizes the U.S. Government’s legislative and regulatory activities in key policy areas which are of interest to the firm’s clients. Prior to forming Canfield & Associates, Inc. Ms. Canfield was a Principal in the firm of McClure, Gerard & Neuenschwander, Inc. (MGN). Ms. Canfield joined MGN following ten years at GE/GE Capital Services. In that position, she developed and implemented corporate policy and legislative and regulatory strategies both domestically and abroad. Before joining GE Capital, Ms. Canfield had over eleven years of experience on Capitol Hill, working as a senior staff advisor for three Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and then as the senior advisor and Senate Finance Committee aide to a member of the Senate Finance Committee. Ms. Canfield received degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Paris, Paris, France.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
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.
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