Consultant in Media Policy and Law
Jane Mago began her communications law career in 1978 as a staff attorney at the Federal Communications Commission. She stayed at the FCC for more than 26 years, serving in many high level roles, including General Counsel, Chief of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, Deputy Chief of the Enforcement Bureau, Chief of Staff for Commissioners Rachelle Chong and Michael Powell, and Legal Advisor to Commissioner Anne Jones. During her FCC career, she also worked as an appellate litigator defending the FCC’s decisions in such matters as Radio and TV Deregulation, Broadcast Indecency and Must-Carry Rules.
Jane joined the National Association of Broadcasters in 2004 where she stayed until retiring in October 2014 as the Executive Vice President and General Counsel. She led the NAB legal team during many significant shifts in the regulatory landscape, including two rounds of review of the broadcast ownership rules.
Jane is a member of the New York Bar. She has an extensive background in appellate litigation and expertise in Constitutional issues (particularly First Amendment matters), FCC ownership rules, political broadcasting, EEO, administrative law, enforcement and licensing matters.
Jane holds BA, MA and JD degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Visiting Fellow, Hudson Institute
Michael O’Rielly is a visiting fellow with Hudson Institute’s Center for the Economics of the Internet.
Comm. O'Rielly was nominated for a seat on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama on August 1, 2013 and was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on October 29, 2013. He was sworn into office on November 4, 2013. On January 29, 2015, he was sworn into office for a new term, following his re-nomination by the President and confirmation by the United States Senate and served through December 11, 2020.
Prior to joining the agency Commissioner O’Rielly served as a Policy Advisor in the Office of the Senate Republican Whip, led by U.S. Senator John Cornyn, since January 2013. He worked in the Republican Whip’s Office since 2010, as an Advisor from 2010 to 2012 and Deputy Chief of Staff and Policy Director from 2012 to 2013 for U.S. Senator Jon Kyl.
He previously worked for the Republican Policy Committee in the U.S. Senate as a Policy Analyst for Banking, Technology, Transportation, Trade, and Commerce issues from 2009 to 2010. Prior to this, Commissioner O’Rielly worked in the Office of U.S. Senator John Sununu, as Legislative Director from 2007 to 2009, and Senior Legislative Assistant from 2003 to 2007. Before his tenure as a Senate staffer, he served as a Professional Staff Member on the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the United States House of Representatives from 1998 to 2003, and Telecommunications Policy Analyst from 1995 to 1998.
He began his career as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Congressman Tom Bliley from 1994 to 1995.
Commissioner O’Rielly received his B.A. from the University of Rochester.
President, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies
Lawrence J. Spiwak is President of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that studies broad public-policy issues related to governance, social and economic conditions, with a particular emphasis on the law and economics of the digital age. Mr. Spiwak is a prolific scholar whose work is frequently cited by policymakers, major news media and academic journals around the world, and is in the top 1.3%of authors downloaded on the Social Science Research Network. Mr. Spiwak currently serves as the co-chair of the Federal Communications Bar Association’s (FCBA) committee responsible for overseeing the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL and is a member of the program committee of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (“TPRC”). Mr. Spiwak is also the recipient of the FCBA’s Distinguished Service Award. Prior to joining the Phoenix Center, Mr. Spiwak was a Senior Attorney with the Competition Division in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel from 1994-1998. While in college, Mr. Spiwak was accepted into the Presidential Stay-In School program where he was responsible for delivering classified and confidential material among senior White House and Reagan Administration officials and received a full FBI security clearance. Mr. Spiwak received his B.A. with Special Honors from the George Washington University and his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Mr. Spiwak is a member in good standing of the bars of New York, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Partner, Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP
Christopher Wright has been the head of the appellate group at Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP since 2001. He has represented clients in a wide variety of appellate cases, with an emphasis on cases involving complex technical issues and cutting-edge constitutional law and administrative law issues.
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Wright served as General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States, and as a law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Ninth Circuit Judge Joseph T. Sneed. Mr. Wright is one of very few lawyers who has argued more than 25 cases in both the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit, and he has argued in many of the other federal circuits as well.
Mr. Wright is a former President of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, the nation’s preeminent association of appellate lawyers, and a former President of the Federal Communications Bar Association, the nation’s preeminent association of communications lawyers. Mr. Wright has taught the D.C. Bar CLE courses on oral advocacy and judicial review of agency decisions on multiple occasions. He is ranked as an outstanding appellate lawyer and/or communications lawyer by numerous publications. Mr. Wright was elected to the Order of the Coif at Stanford Law School and Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard College.
Director, GW Regulatory Studies Center & Distinguished Professor of Practice, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, The George Washington University
Susan Dudley is the Founder and Director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, established in 2009 to raise awareness of regulations’ effects and improve regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. She is also a distinguished professor of practice in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. She is past-president of the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis, a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and on the Regulatory Transparency Project Regulatory Practice Working Group. Her book, Regulation: A Primer, with Jerry Brito, is available on Amazon.com.
From April 2007 through January 2009, Professor Dudley served as the Presidentially-appointed Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and was responsible for the review of draft executive branch regulations under Executive Order 12866, the collection of federal-government-wide information under the Paperwork Reduction Act, the development and implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information policy, privacy, and statistical policy, and international regulatory cooperation efforts.
Prior to OIRA, she directed the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and taught courses on regulation at the George Mason University School of Law. Earlier in her career, Professor Dudley served as an economist at OIRA, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She was also a consultant to government and private clients at Economists Incorporated. She holds a Master of Science degree from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and a Bachelor of Science degree (summa cum laude) in Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
President, Center for Individual Rights
Todd Gaziano is the President of the Center for Individual Rights. Mr. Gaziano received his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University, summa cum laude in 1985. He was selected as a Truman Scholar from West Virginia while an undergraduate.
Mr. Gaziano’s previous legal work includes service as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Houston trial attorney, and as a chief corporate legal officer. He also served a six-year term as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008-2013), where he helped conduct oversight and investigations of civil rights agencies.
For most of the last 25 years, Mr. Gaziano was a legal scholar and public interest law leader, promoting individual liberty in the Supreme Court and Congress. From 1997 to 2013, he was the founding director of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. From 2014 until he joined CIR, he was the Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and Director of the Center for the Separation of Powers, at Pacific Legal Foundation.
Vice President, Energy & Resources Policy, The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)
Rachel Jones is vice president of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Ms. Jones oversees the NAM’s energy and environmental policy work and has expertise on issues ranging from energy production and use to air and water quality, climate change, energy efficiency and environmental regulation. She is a key voice for manufacturing on Capitol Hill, at federal agencies and across all forms of media.
Before joining the NAM, Jones was the environment and energy counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, where she advised the Committee on EPA, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, FERC, NASA, NOAA and the White House Office of Science and Technology activities. She served as a legal fellow for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and as executive student notes and comments editor for the Energy Law Journal.
Ms. Jones’s relentless drive has made her a powerful advocate for our members and a respected voice on the Hill and in the Administration on issues ranging from environmental policy to energy production to infrastructure and regulatory issues.
Ms. Jones has a B.A. from Oklahoma Baptist University and a J.D. from University of Tulsa College of Law.
Policy Fellow for Regulations, Americans for Prosperity
Clint Woods is the policy fellow for regulations at Americans for Prosperity. From 2017 to 2019, he served as the deputy assistant administrator for Air and Radiation at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and previously worked as executive director for the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies, and in positions with the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association. He has also served on a number of state and national committees, including the U.S. Group on Earth Observations of the National Science and Technology Council and the National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology. He holds an MA in international commerce and policy from George Mason University and a BA from the University of Mary Washington. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he now resides in Delaware County, Ohio with his family.
Director of the Center for Energy and Environment and Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Daren Bakst is Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a Senior Fellow. In this role, he manages, develops, and leads the coalition, advocacy, and research activities of the Center, which is one of the most effective advocates for Free Market Environmentalism.
Before joining CEI as Deputy Director in March, 2023, Daren was a Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Policy and Regulation at the Heritage Foundation, where he played a leading role in the launch of the organization’s new energy and environment center, and created and hosted the Heritage Foundation’s energy and environment podcast the “PowerCast.” During his decade at Heritage, Daren wrote about energy and environmental policy, food and agricultural policy (including editing and co-authoring the book Farms and Free Enterprise), regulation, and trade among other topics.
Daren also worked on environmental policy and regulation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he was a policy counsel and served as the executive to the association’s Government Oversight, Operations & Consumer Affairs committee, which was responsible for issues such as regulatory process reform. Daren has significant state level experience, working for seven years at the Raleigh, N.C.-based John Locke Foundation, one of the largest state-based, free-market think tanks. As director of legal and regulatory studies, his broad portfolio included energy and environmental policy, regulatory reform, and property rights.
Daren has testified numerous times before Congress, regularly submits comments to federal agencies and has appeared in or been quoted by a wide range of media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Al-Jazeera America, and U.S. News and World Report. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Executive Committee and serves on the College Level Advisory Board for Constituting America, an organization that informs and educates about the importance of the U.S. Constitution.
Daren, who hails from Florida, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Washington University. A licensed attorney, he holds a law degree from the University of Miami and a master of laws degree from American University.
United States District Judge, Middle District of Florida
Judge Berger was raised in Jacksonville, Florida. She received her undergraduate degree from The Florida State University in 1990 and her law degree from The Florida State University College of Law in 1992, where she was a member of Law Review. Judge Berger served as an Assistant State Attorney in the Seventh Judicial Circuit from 1993 – 2000. In January 2001, Judge Berger left the State Attorney’s Office to serve as an Assistant General Counsel to Governor Jeb Bush. Judge Berger served in Governor Bush’s administration from January 2001 until May 2005, when she was appointed by the governor to serve as a Circuit Judge in the Seventh Judicial Circuit. During her service on the circuit court, Judge Berger presided over the civil and probate divisions (2005-2006) and adult felony division (2006-2012) in St. Augustine. She was also the presiding judge of the St. Johns County Adult Drug Court Program (2005-2012).
Judge Berger is currently a member of the St. Johns County Bar Association, the Orange County Bar Association, The Florida Supreme Court Committee on Civil Jury Instructions, the Florida Bar Criminal Procedure Rules Committee, the Florida Bar Appellate Practice Section’s Executive Council, the Dunn Blount Inn of Court, and the Federalist Society. She has prior service on the Florida Bar’s Judicial Administration and Evaluation Committee (2008 – 2013), the Judicial Administration Selection and Tenure Committee (2001-2004), the Florida Supreme Court Subcommittee on Postconviction Relief (2010-2011), the Statewide Diversity Team (2009-2012), and has been a member of both the National Association of Drug Court Professionals and the Florida Association of Drug Court Professionals.
Judge Berger has lectured on a wide range of topics including practicing with professionalism, judicial diversity, the judicial appointment process, effective oral arguments, fundamentals of extradition, capital cases, gender bias in the media, drug court, and drug and alcohol prevention.
Active in her community, Judge Berger served as a member of the St. Johns County Consortium on Substance Abuse as well as the St. Johns County Public Safety Committee. She is a member of the St. Augustine Rotary Club (Paul Harris Fellow) and is a steering committee member of The Marketplace Christian Professional Resources. She volunteers in the schools, has served as a reading mentor, and participates in the PACT Prevention Coalition’s Safe Prom Event. Judge Berger is also an active member of Trinity Episcopal Parish.
Judge Berger and her husband, Larry, live in St. Augustine with their two children.
Associate Chief Justice, Utah Supreme Court
Thomas R. Lee was appointed to the Utah Supreme Court by Governor Gary Herbert in July 2010. He currently serves as Associate Chief Justice and as a member of the Utah Judicial Council. He also chaired the Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professionalism and Civility during a time in which the court promulgated Standards of Professionalism and Civility for judges in Utah. Justice Lee is a graduate, with high honors, of the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, he served as a law clerk for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court. Justice Lee then joined the law firm now known as Parr, Brown, Gee & Loveless, where he became a shareholder. Prior to his appointment to the bench, Justice Lee was a full-time professor at the law school at Brigham Young University, where he continues to serve as Distinguished Lecturer. During his years as a full-time law professor, he maintained a part-time intellectual property litigation practice with Howard, Phillips, & Andersen. He also developed a part-time appellate practice, arguing numerous cases in federal courts throughout the country and in the United States Supreme Court. In 2004 - 05, Justice Lee served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Don Forchelli Professor of Law and Director of Graduate Education, Brooklyn Law School
Lawrence Solan holds both a law degree and a Ph.D. in linguistics. His scholarly works are largely devoted to exploring interdisciplinary issues related to law, language and psychology, especially in the areas of statutory and contractual interpretation, the attribution of liability and blame, and linguistic evidence. He is director of the Law School's Center for the Study of Law, Language and Cognition, and his acclaimed book, The Language of Judges, is widely recognized as a seminal work on linguistic theory and legal argumentation. His most recent books are The Language of Statutes: Laws and their Interpretation, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010, and The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, co-edited with Peter Tiersma and published in 2012. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters, and regularly lectures in the United States and abroad.
Professor Solan has been a visiting professor in the Council of Humanities and the Psychology Department at Princeton University. He has also been and a visiting professor at Yale Law School. He has served as president of the International Association of Forensic Linguistics, is on the board of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, and the editorial board of the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.
Prior to joining the faculty in 1996, Professor Solan was a partner in the firm of Orans, Elsen and Lupert, where he specialized in complex civil litigation, before which he was a law clerk to Justice Stewart Pollock of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
Assistant Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
Professor Tobia’s teaching and scholarship are motivated by a tension between two views of the law. On the first view, law is a system of experts, founded upon knowledge of specialized concepts: dicta, habeas corpus, parol evidence, strict liability. Law students learn these new concepts; treatises and restatements clarify these concepts’ features; and legal scholars debate how these concepts should apply and evolve. On a radically different view, law’s most central concepts are actually ordinary ones. Lay juries regularly evaluate familiar questions like: did he act reasonably; was her act intentional; what caused the outcome; was the agreement formed with consent; what was their motive? Using methods from philosophy, cognitive science, and linguistics, Professor Tobia’s research examines the features of central legal concepts, with the overarching aim of clarifying the relationship between law and the people it governs.
Prof. Tobia received a B.A., summa cum laude, in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Cognitive Science from Rutgers University; a B.Phil. with distinction from Oxford as an Ertegun Scholar; and a J.D. and Ph.D. with distinction from Yale, as an Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal, Coker Teaching Fellow in Torts, and Prize Teaching Fellow in Philosophy. Kevin’s scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and journals of philosophy and cognitive science (e.g. Analysis; Mind & Language; Cognitive Science) and has been awarded Yale Law School’s Felix S. Cohen prize for legal philosophy and the AALS Section on Jurisprudence “Future Promise Award” for scholarship in legal philosophy.
Professor Tobia teaches in Torts and Section 3’s Legal Justice Seminar at Georgetown and has previously taught Legal Philosophy at Oxford and assisted in the instruction of courses in Contracts, Torts, Health Law & Bioethics, and Law & Economics. Professor Tobia frequently collaborates with scholars from Georgetown and abroad, as a Research Affiliate with the ETH Zurich Center for Law & Economics and collaborator in the Experimental Jurisprudence Cross-Cultural Study exchange.
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Former Adjunct Professor of Law; former Special Counsel to the President; former federal prosecutor, Georgetown Law (ret.)
Bill Otis is a former Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, a one-time federal prosecutor, and a former Special White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he started his career in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, then became chief of appeals for the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. In the 1980's he served on the Department's "Train the Trainer" team, which taught US Attorneys Offices across the county how to implement the then-new Sentencing Reform Act. He has held several posts in the federal government, including Special Assistant to the Secretary of Energy and Counselor to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in addition to the White House post. He has testified before Congress on issues in criminal procedure, illegal drugs, the US Sentencing Commission, and the death penalty, and has given numerous media interviews on those and other subjects. He currently teaches a seminar at Georgetown Law titled "Conservatism in Law in America" with his wife, Federalist Society co-founder Lee Liberman Otis.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
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.
U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit
Judge Williams practiced law in New York City (at the firm of Debevoise Plimpton and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney) and then taught law at the University of Colorado Law School from 1969 to 1986, with visiting years at UCLA, SMU, and the University of Chicago (where he was also a fellow in law and economics). He was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1986. His most recent book is a biography of Vasily Maklakov, The Reformer: How One Liberal Fought to Preempt the Russian Revolution (Encounter Books, 2017).
Former United States Attorney General
Griffin Boyette Bell was born in Americus, Georgia, on October 31, 1918. He attended Georgia Southwestern College, and received an LL.B. degree cum laude from Mercer University Law School in Macon, Georgia. In addition, he received the Order of the Coif from Vanderbilt Law School, and honorary degrees from a number of colleges and universities.
Mr. Bell served in the U. S. Army from 1941 to 1946, attaining the rank of major.
He was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1947, and practiced in Savannah and Rome, Georgia, before joining the Atlanta law firm of King & Spalding in 1953. From January 1959 to October 1961, Bell held the honorary position of chief of staff to Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver.
In 1961 President Kennedy appointed him to serve on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In March 1976, he returned to King & Spalding as a senior partner. He resigned from the firm on December 31, 1976, after being nominated for the office of Attorney General by President Carter. Confirmed by the Senate on January 25, 1977, Bell was sworn in on January 26, receiving the oath of office from Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.
During his career, Bell served as Chairman of the Committee on Innovation and Development of the Federal Judicial Center, of the American Bar Association's Division of Judicial Administration and of the Pound Conference Follow-Up Task Force.
His memberships included the American Law Institute, the American Bar Association's Commission on Standards of Judicial Administration, the Board of Directors of the Federal Judicial Center, the American College of Trial Lawyers, and the Visiting Committee of Vanderbilt Law School. He was a trustee of Mercer University and an attorney with the law firm King & Spalding. Bell died January 5, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Former General Counsel, United States Senate Intelligence Committee
Between 2003 and 2011, Michael Davidson served first as Minority Counsel and then General Counsel at the Senate Intelligence Committee. In 1997 and 1998, he participated in representing Senators Byrd, Moynihan, and Levin in their challenge to the constitutionality of the Line Item Veto Act. After teaching clinical law at the State University of New York in Buffalo and then two years as chief staff counsel at the DC Circuit, he served as the first Senate Legal Counsel (1979-95), where his responsibilities included representing the Senate in separation of powers cases. After graduation from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964, Davidson served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, and then as an Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Columnist, The Wall Street Journal
Gordon Crovitz is the former "Information Age" columnist for the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Page. He is a media and information industry adviser and executive, including former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, executive vice president of Dow Jones and president of its Consumer Media Group. He has been active in digital media since the early 1990s, overseeing the growth of The Wall Street Journal Online to more than one million paying subscribers, making WSJ.com the largest paid news site on the Web. He launched the Factiva business-search service and led the acquisition for Dow Jones of the MarketWatch Web site, VentureOne database, Private Equity Analyst newsletter and online news services VentureWire (Silicon Valley), e-Financial News (London) and VWD (Frankfurt).
In 2009, he co-founded Press+, which was acquired by RR Donnelley in 2011.
He is a member of the board of directors of Blurb, Business Insider, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Marin Software, Minneapolis Star Tribune and ProQuest. He is an angel investor and is on the board of advisors of several early-stage companies, including Halogen Media, Quid, Skift, SkyGrid, SocialMedian (sold to XING) and WatchUp. He is an investor in Betaworks, a New York incubator for startups.
Earlier in his career, Gordon wrote the "Rule of Law" column for the Journal and won several awards including the Gerald Loeb Award for business commentary. He was editor and publisher of the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong and editorial-page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels.
He graduated from the University of Chicago and has law degrees from Wadham College, Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes scholar, and Yale Law School.
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument Webinar: FCC v. Prometheus Radio Project
Jane Mago, Michael O'Rielly, Lawrence J. Spiwak, Christopher J. Wright
On January 19, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Federal Communications Commission...
The Congressional Review Act: First Branch Gets the Last Word
Susan E. Dudley, Todd F. Gaziano
After living in relative obscurity since its passage in 1996, the Congressional Review Act caught...
Topics
The FCC’s Regulatory “Bonfire of the Vanities”
After net neutrality, perhaps no proceeding at the Federal Communications Commission has inflamed more passions...
Deep Dive Episode 160 – The Myths and Facts Regarding the EPA’s Benefit-Cost Analysis and Science Transparency Rules
Rachel Jones, Clint Woods, Daren Bakst
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
The Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized two new transparency-related rules. The stated purpose of the...
Luncheon Panel: A Virtual Discussion on Corpus Linguistics
Wendy Berger, Thomas Rex Lee, Lawrence Solan, Kevin Tobia
2021 Annual Florida Chapters Conference
Corpus linguistics has recently emerged as a method for addressing problems in the legal/textualist interpretation....
Feddie Night Fights: Plea Bargain Punch Out!
Clint Bolick, Clark Neily, William G. Otis
Arizona State Student Chapter
The Federalist Society's Student Division &Arizona State Student Chapter Present Feddie Night Fights:Plea Bargain Punch Out!...
Necessary & Proper Episode 61: Congress and the Administrative State
Christopher J. Walker
In this presentation co-sponsored by the Federalist Society's Article I Initiative and Columbia Student Chapter, Professor...
Topics
Undoing the Trump Legacy, Fast: How Congress Could Use the CRA to Nix Trump-Era Regulations
The 2020 election gave Democrats control over the White House and both chambers of Congress...
Topics
Statutory Integration Clauses: How Congress Can Require Textualist Construction of its Statutes
Textualists have long decried the problems associated with non-textualist statutory interpretation. To prevent judges from...
Panel III: Congressional Control of the Administration of Government: Hearings, Investigations, Oversight, and Legislative History [Archive Collection]
Peter L. Strauss, Stephen F. Williams, Griffin Bell, Michael Davidson, L. Gordon Crovitz
The Presidency and Congress
On January 19-20, 1990, The Federalist Society hosted a conference at the Mayflower Hotel in...