Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Regents Professor, University System of Maryland
Professor Graber held a faculty position in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park from 1993-2007 and taught at the University of Maryland School of Law as an adjunct professor beginning in the fall of 2002. In 2004, he was appointed Professor of Government and Law at the School of Law, a title he held until May 1, 2015 at which time he received an appointment as the Jacob A. France Professor of Constitutionalism. In 2016, he was named Regents Professor, one of only seven Regents Professors in the history of the University System of Maryland and the only Regents Professor on the UMB campus. He served as associate dean for research and faculty development from 2010 to 2013. He has also been one of the organizers of the annual Constitutional Law "Schmooze", which attracts scholars from across the country to the law school.
He is the author of A New Introduction to American Constitutionalism, forthcoming in 2013 from Oxford University Press, and co-editor (with Keith Whittington and Howard Gillman) of American Constitutionalism: Structures and Powers and American Constitutionalism: Rights and Powers, both also from Oxford University Press. He is presently working on Forged in Failure, a book that will examine how much constitutional change in the United States has been caused by the failure of constitutional practices to function as expected.
Professor Graber is also the author of scores of articles, including "The Non-Majoritarian Problem: Legislative Deference to the Judiciary" in Studies in American Political Development, "Naked Land Transfers and American Constitutional Development", published in the Vanderbilt Law Review and "Resolving Political Questions into Judicial Questions: Tocqueville’s Aphorism Revisited", published by Constitutional Commentary.
During fall 2013, he was a visiting faculty member at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Chairman and President, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson is Founder and President of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a bipartisan, public-interest law firm that protects the free expression of all religious traditions. Since 1994, Hasson and the Becket Fund have successfully represented clients from nearly every faith tradition including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Native Americans, Unitarians and Zoroastrians. Along the way, The Becket Fund has won kudos from thinkers from Pope John Paul II to Elie Wiesel.
Hasson enjoys broad credibility in the national media. He has been widely quoted, appearing for example, in Newsweek, US News and World Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, as well as in regional media from The L.A. Times to The Chicago Tribune to The Philadelphia Enquirer. He has appeared on broadcast news programs including The Today Show, Dateline NBC, McLaughlin One on One, NPR's Talk of the Nation, and CNN Talkback Live. He's also appeared twice on Al-Jazeera, debating Saudi clerics.
Hasson lectures and debates frequently, in venues ranging from Oxford to the Vatican, from Harvard to BYU. He is the author of The Right to be Wrong: Ending the Culture War over Religion in America.
Before founding the Becket Fund in 1994, Hasson was an attorney at Williams & Connolly in Washington D.C., where he focused on religious liberty litigation. From 1986 to 1987, he served in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department where he advised the White House and cabinet departments on church-state relations. He is a 1985 magna cum laude graduate of Notre Dame Law School and also holds a Master's degree in theology from Notre Dame.
President, The Free State Foundation
Randolph J. May is Founder and President of The Free State Foundation. The Free State Foundation is an independent, non-profit free market-oriented think tank founded in 2006.
From October 1999-May 2006, May was a Senior Fellow and Director of Communications Policy Studies at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. Prior to joining PFF, he practiced communications, administrative, and regulatory law as a partner at major national law firms. From 1978 to 1981, May served as Assistant General Counsel and Associate General Counsel at the Federal Communication Commission.
May has held numerous leadership positions in bar associations. He is a past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Mr. May also has served as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and currently is a Senior Fellow at ACUS.
Mr. May has published more than two hundred articles and essays on communications, administrative and constitutional law topics. He is author of A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform, and co-author of #CommActUpdate: A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age and The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property. Mr. May is editor of two books, Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age: The Next Five Years and New Directions in Communications Policy. In addition, he is the co-editor of two other books, Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated? and Communications Deregulation and FCC Reform. In the past, Mr. May has written regular columns on legal and regulatory affairs for Legal Times and the National Law Journal, leading national legal periodicals.
He received his A.B. from Duke University and his J.D. from Duke Law School, where he serves as a member of the Board of Visitors.
Emeritus Dean and Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School
Professor Huffman joined the law school faculty in 1973, was appointed Acting Dean in 1993 and Dean in 1994, and returned to full time teaching in 2006. Born in Fort Benton, Montana, Jim graduated from Montana State University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the University of Chicago Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, the University of Oregon, the University of Athens in Greece and Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala. He was also a fellow at the Humane Studies Institute and a Distinguished Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation. Jim serves on the boards of the National Crime Victims Law Institute, the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Classroom Law Project, and the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. He is a member and former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Environment and Property Rights Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is a member of the Montana Bar Association and is admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. He is the author of more than 100 articles and chapters on a wide array of legal topics.
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.
Betts Professor Emeritus of Law, Columbia Law School
Peter L. Strauss is the Betts Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He teaches courses in administrative law, legal methods, and legislation. He joined the faculty in 1971, and has twice served as vice dean.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1964 and his A.B. from Harvard College in 1961. Before joining the Law School, he clerked for David L. Bazelon and William J. Brennan in Washington, D.C.; spent two years lecturing on criminal law in the national university of Ethiopia; and three years as an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General, briefing and arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. During 1975 to 1977, Strauss was on leave from Columbia as the first general counsel of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In 1987, the American Bar Association's section of administrative law and regulatory practice presented Strauss with its third annual award for distinguished scholarship in administrative law. From 1992 to 1993, he served as chair of the section. He has been a reporter for rulemaking on its APA and European Union administrative law projects, and was a member of its E-Rulemaking task force. In 2008, the American Constitution Society awarded him the first Richard Cudahy prize for his essay “Overseer or 'The Decider'? The President in Administrative Law.”
Strauss has been a visitor at the European University Institute, Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law, and New York University, and has lectured widely on American administrative law abroad, including programs in Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Brazil, China, Colombia, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Turkey, and Venezuela. During 2008 to 2009, he was Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European Law Institute and Parsons Fellow at the University of Sydney Law School.
A life member of the American Law Institute, Strauss was elected in 2010 to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has also long been a faculty member on the board of the Law School's Public Interest Law Foundation.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Vice-chair, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Adjunct Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Abigail Thernstrom is the vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York from 1993 to 2009, and a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education for more than a decade until her third term ended in November 2006. She also serves on the board of advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She received her Ph.D. in 1975 from the Department of Government, Harvard University.
In 2007 she and her husband, Stephan Thernstrom, along with James Q. Wilson, Martin Feldstein, and John Bolton, were the recipients of a Bradley Foundation prizes for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement.
Thernstrom and her husband, Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, are the co-authors of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (Simon & Schuster, October 2003), which has been awarded the 2007 Fordham Foundation prize for “for distinguished scholarship,” and was named by both the Los Angeles Times and the American School Board Journal as one of the best books of 2003.
They also collaborated on America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (Simon & Schuster), which the New York Times Book Review, in its annual end-of-the-year issue, named as one of the notable books of 1997.
They are the editors of a Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity. Their lengthy review of William G. Bowen and Derek Bok's much-noticed work, The Shape of the River, appeared in the June 1999 issue of the UCLA Law Review.
Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Harvard University Press) won four awards, including the American Bar Association's Certificate of Merit, and the Anisfield-Wolf prize for the best book on race and ethnicity. It was named the best policy studies book of that year by the Policy Studies Organization (an affiliate of the American Political Science Association), and won the Benchmark Book Award from the Center for Judicial Studies. Along with her husband, she also won the 2004 Peter Shaw Memorial Award given by National Association of Scholars.
She is currently completing a book entitled Voting Rights and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections, and is working, as well, with her husband on another book with the tentative title of Don’t Call it Segregation: The Myth of Contemporary Apartheid. She (and two co-authors) submitted an amicus brief in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, challenging the constitutionality of Seattle's racial balancing plan.
Her frequent media appearances have included Fox News Sunday, Good Morning America, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos. For some years, she was a stringer for The Economist, and continues to write for a variety of journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the (London) Times Literary Supplement.
She serves on several boards, and from 1992 to 1997 was a member of the Aspen Institute's Domestic Strategy Group.
The First Amendment and Sunday.
David K. Huttar
The First Amendment says, in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of...
Priveleges, Immunities, and Free Enterprise
Richard A. Epstein, Mark Graber
PROFESSOR EPSTEIN: This is a very strange debate because I don’t know which side I’m...
How High A Wall? Originalism and the Separation of Church and State.
Kevin J. Hasson, James Nickels
MR. HASSON: Thank you for having me. I’m going to tell you some stories and...
Make Way for Wal- Mart! Eminent Domain After Kelo.
Daniel R. Madelker
PROFESSOR MANDELKER: As a beginning, I wish to give you some background on urban redevelopment...
Infringing Free Speech in the Broadband Age: Net Neutrality Mandates
Randolph May
There are many reasons why Congress should not adopt laws mandating so-called “net neutrality” for...
Bush AdministrationEnvironment Policy: 18 Months Later
James L. Huffman
Over a year ago I suggested in a talk to the Environmental Law & Property...
The ABA and the Presidential Signing Statement Controversy
Ronald A. Cass, Peter L. Strauss
Engage Volume 7, Issue 2, October 2006
The big news from the American Bar Association’s annual meeting this year was its resolution...
An Unemumerated Right of Privacy... and What to do About It
Judge Demoss
One of the most perplexing issues now confronting the American people in general,and agitating the...
"Aloha!," Akaka Bill
Gail L. Heriot
Hawaii has long been known for its warm and welcoming “Spirit of Aloha.” It’s hard...
Reviewing (and Reconsidering) the Voting Rights Act
Abigail Thernstrom
Race is the third rail of American politics. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Congress...