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.
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.
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.
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).
Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Berlau is a senior fellow and Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work focuses on how public policy affects access to capital, entrepreneurship, and investments made by the public and business community alike. In recent years, he has studied the consequences of financial reform efforts passed by Congress like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis including the Dodd-Frank Act, the placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, and the rise of cryptocurrency.
He is also the author of the book George Washington: Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World. The book received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other forums, and was endorsed by eminent historians and scholars such as Richard Brookhiser, Amity Shlaes, and Craig Shirley.
Berlau is a contributing writer for Forbes. His work has been published and cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, National Journal, National Review, American Spectator, Reason Magazine, and more. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including CNBC’s “The Call,” “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell,” Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and Fox Business’ “Cavuto.”
He has testified on the impact of financial regulation before the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A recognized expert on the phenomenon of crowdfunding, Berlau has spoken at prominent conferences such as South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the FinTech Global Expo in San Diego, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit in San Francisco and the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) Summit in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the widely cited paper “Declaration of Crowdfunding Independence: Finance of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
Berlau is an award-winning financial and political journalist. He served as Washington correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily and as a staff writer for Insight magazine, published by The Washington Times. In 2002, he received the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism from Washington’s National Press Club. He was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2003. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1994 with degrees in journalism and economics.
Securities Lawyer
He regularly represents clients before U.S. federal and state financial regulatory authorities, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. He also represents clients in filing comment letters and amicus briefs in connection with SEC rulemakings.
Senior Counsel, Corporate Engagement Team, Alliance Defending Freedom
Brian Knight serves as senior counsel on the Corporate Engagement Team. His work focuses on issues of financial access, debanking, and preventing the power of the private sector from being weaponized against people of faith by both public and private actors.
Prior to joining ADF, Knight spent almost nine years at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, as both a senior research fellow and as a program director. In addition to managing a team of scholars, Knight’s research focused on financial regulation and the politicization of financial services. His research helped inform legislation and regulation at the federal and state level. He was also the lead author for two amicus briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of National Rifle Association v. Vullo.
Before joining Mercatus, Knight worked at the Milken Institute, where he focused on financial technology. He was also an entrepreneur, co-founding a firm focused on compliance for crowdfunding.
Knight earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts from the College of William and Mary.
Director and Professor, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University
Paul Carrese is the founding director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. For nearly two decades he was a professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and co-founded a new honors program blending liberal arts education and leadership education. He is author of The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism, and co-editor of three other books – on George Washington, constitutionalism, and American grand strategy. His most recent book is Democracy in Moderation: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Sustainable Liberalism. He has held fellowships at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar; Harvard University; the University of Delhi (as a Fulbright fellow); and the James Madison Program, Politics Department, Princeton University. He served on the founding advisory board of the Program on Public Discourse at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and currently is co-leading a national study funded by the NEH and US Department of Education on improving American history and civics education in K-12 schools with partners from Harvard and Tufts Universities and iCivics.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Eric R. Claeys is Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has written widely in the fields of property, private law, and constitutional law. Professor Claeys’s current research interests focus on flourishing- and labor-based natural rights justifications for property—in American property theory, in intellectual property, and in contemporary regulation of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing. He is a member of the American Law Institute, he serves on the ALI’s Members’ Consultative Group for the first Restatement of Copyright, and he also serves as an adviser to the Restatement (Fourth) of the Law of Property.
Professor Claeys received his JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He received his AB from Princeton University, and he is a former visiting fellow and current member of Princeton’s Politics Department’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. After law school, Professor Claeys clerked for the Hon. Melvin Brunetti, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Hon. William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.
Professor Claeys’s main teaching interests include Property, Torts, Jurisprudence, and Intellectual Property. In recent years, he has also taught Water Law, Remedies, Estates and Trusts, Trade Secrecy, Constitutional Law, Torts, and Oil and Gas law. Spring 2018, he is teaching Torts and Jurisprudence as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
Professor of History and Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage, Hillsdale College
After reading Litterae Humaniores at Wadham College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship from 1971-1974, Paul A. Rahe completed a Ph.D. in ancient history at Yale University under the direction of Donald Kagan in 1977. In subsequent years, he taught at Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Tulsa, where he spent twenty-four years before accepting a position at Hillsdale College, where he is Professor of History and Political Science and holds The Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage.
Professor Rahe’s entire scholarly career has been focused on studying the origins and evolution of self-government within the West. His range is considerable. His first book, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992), was 1200 pages in length and surveyed the origins and development of self-government in ancient Greece and Rome, its re-emergence in a new form in the Middle Ages, the transformation it underwent at the hands of the political philosophers of early modernity, and the statesmanship of the American Founding Fathers. Within the first thirteen months of publication, the hardback edition sold out. Thereafter, it reappeared as an alternative selection of the History Book Club. In 1994, it was reissued in a three-volume paperback edition by the University of North Carolina Press, and it remains in print.
In the course of his career, Professor Rahe has published dozens of chapters on related subjects in edited books and scholarly articles in journals such as The American Journal of Philology, Historia, The American Journal of Archaeology, The American Historical Review, The Review of Politics, The American Journal of Business and Professional Ethics, The Journal of the Historical Society, The National Interest, The Woodrow Wilson Quarterly, and History of Political Thought. He spent two years in Istanbul, Turkey in the mid-1980s as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs; he has been awarded research fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Earhart Foundation; and he has held research fellowships at the Center for Hellenic Study, the National Humanities Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D. C. , Clare College at Cambridge University, All Souls College at Oxford University, and the American Academy in Berlin; and he has given a host of public lectures at universities in the United States and abroad – most recently at the Hebrew University and at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England and the Free University in Berlin. In 1997-98, he was named to the Templeton Honor Rolls for Education in a Free Society by The John M. Templeton Foundation, and in 2006 the Society for French Historical Studies awarded him the Koren Prize for the Best Article Published in French History the preceding year.
Professor Rahe co-edited Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws(2001) with David W. Carrithers and Michael A. Mosher, and he edited Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy (2006). His second book, Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic, which examines the political thought inspired by the abortive republican experiment that took place in England in the period stretching from 1649 to 1660, was published by Cambridge University Press in April, 2008. His third and fourth books, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville on the Modern Prospect, were published by Yale University Press in 2009. For his fifth book, The Spartan Way of War, which he hopes to have finished by the end of 2010, Professor Rahe has received a contract from Yale University Press.
Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science, The University of Notre Dame
Michael Zuckert (B.A., Cornell University; PhD, University of Chicago, 1974) is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor, and Department Chair of Political Science at University of Notre Dame. Professor Zuckert teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Political Philosophy and Theory, American Political Thought, American Constitutional Law, American Constitutional History, Constitutional Theory, and Philosophy of Law. His advising specialties are graduate programs in political science.
Professor Zuckert has published extensively on a variety of topics, including George Orwell, Plato, Shakespeare, and contemporary liberal theory. He is currently finishing a book called Completing the Constitution: The Post-Civil War Amendments and is co-authoring another book on Machiavelli and Shakespeare. He has been commissioned to write the volume on John Rawls for a series on Twentieth Century Political Philosophy. He co-authored and co-produced public radio series Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson: A Nine Part Drama for the Radio. He also was senior scholar for Liberty! (1997), a six hour public television series on the American Revolution, and served as senior advisor on the PBS series on Benjamin Franklin (2002) and Alexander Hamilton (2007). He is currently head of the new Tocqueville Center for the Study of Religion in American Public Life.
Zuckert has received grants from NEH, the Woodrow Wilson Center, Earhart Foundation and NSF, and has taught at Carleton College, Cornell University, Claremont Men’s College, Fordham University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Chicago.
Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; Former General Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Alden Abbott is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. Prior to joining Mercatus, he served as the General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As the Commission’s chief legal officer and adviser, he represented the agency in court and provides legal counsel to the Commission and its bureaus and offices.
Prior to rejoining the FTC in April 2018, Mr. Abbott served in executive positions at the Heritage Foundation (2014-2018) and BlackBerry (2012-2014). He also held a variety of senior positions in the U.S. federal government (in the FTC, the Commerce Department, and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the Antitrust Division).
He speaks French, Spanish, and Italian.
Internet Policy Counsel and Director of Appellate Litigation, TechFreedom
Corbin Barthold is TechFreedom's Internet Policy Counsel and Director of Appellate Litigation.
Corbin clerked for the Hon. Steven D. Merryday (M.D. Fla.) and the Hon. Robert H. Cleland (E.D. Mich.). After his clerkships, he became an associate, and later a partner, in the Los Angeles office of Browne George Ross LLP, where he engaged in high-stakes complex litigation. He then served as Senior Litigation Counsel at Washington Legal Foundation, a D.C. public-interest firm, where his practice focused on appeals involving administrative law, the separation of powers, antitrust, and tech policy.
Corbin received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He also holds a B.A., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of California, San Diego, and an Msc., with distinction, from the London School of Economics.
Consultant, American Edge Project and U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Daniel Blomberg is vice president and senior counsel for Becket. Before joining Becket, he clerked for Chief Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as litigation counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Daniel’s clients have included an international order of nuns, the world’s largest religious media organization, synagogues, members of the U.S. military, religious healthcare ministries, peaceful protestors, halfway houses, religious colleges, state legislators, homeless shelters, religious business owners, an art gallery, and churches. Daniel has represented a wide variety of faith groups, including Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Hindus, Hutterites, Jews, Lutherans, Mennonites, Muslims, Presbyterians, Russian Orthodox, and Sikhs. Cases on which he has served as counsel to a party include: Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey-Berru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020); Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 141 S. Ct. 63 (2020); Zubik v. Burwell, 136 S. Ct. 1557 (2016); Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius, 134 S. Ct. 1022 (2014); Wheaton College v. Burwell, 134 S. Ct. 2806 (2014); Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. SJUSD, 82 F.4th 664 (9th Cir. 2023) (en banc); Singh v. Berger, 56 F.4th 88 (D.C. Cir. 2022); Demkovich v. St. Andrew the Apostle Parish, 3 F.4th 968 (7th Cir. 2021) (en banc); Maxon v. Fuller Theological Seminary, 2021 WL 5882035 (9th Cir. 2021); Intervarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. University of Iowa, 5 F.4th 855, 867 (8th Cir. 2021); Business Leaders in Christ v. University of Iowa, 991 F.3d 969 (8th Cir. 2021); Whole Woman’s Health v. Smith, 896 F.3d 362 (5th Cir. 2018); Lee v. Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, 903 F.3d 113 (3d Cir. 2018); Gagliardi v. TJCV, 889 F.3d 728 (11th Cir. 2018); Harvest Family Church v. FEMA, 2018 WL 386192 (5th Cir. 2018); Fratello v. Archdiocese of New York, 863 F.3d 190 (2d Cir. 2017); Eternal Word Television Network v. U.S. Dep’t of HHS, 756 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2014); InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. Bd. of Governors of Wayne State Univ., 534 F. Supp. 3d 785 (E.D. Mich. 2021); and Singh v. Carter, 168 F. Supp. 3d 216 (D.D.C. 2016).
Daniel has been featured on CNN, Huffington Post Live, Fox News, EWTN Nightly News, and CBS Evening News.
He earned his J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law, graduating magna cum laude. While in law school, Daniel clerked for the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office, served on a South Carolina Supreme Court task force, and interned with Judge J. Michelle Childs of the Circuit Court for the Fifth Judicial Circuit as a part of the Judicial Observation and Education program. He is a Blackstone Fellow. Daniel received his undergraduate degree from Columbia International University. He and his wife have five children and too many animals.
Partner, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP
Miles practices in the areas of appeals, business litigation, and First Amendment law. In addition to representing clients in complex civil and criminal litigation and appeals, Miles advises and represents public and private universities and serves as outside general counsel to several business and educational clients. He also represents and counsels private entities and government agencies and officials, including multiple current and former governors of South Carolina and members of Congress, on issues relating to the constitutional and statutory freedoms of speech, religion, and association. His First Amendment work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court.
Partner, Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP
Misha leads Troutman Peppers' national appellate and Supreme Court practice. Most recently, he successfully obtained orders from the Supreme Court blocking an unconstitutional restriction on places of worship, as well as overturning a lower court order that had blocked several state election laws. He has also argued and prevailed before the Supreme Court in Gill v. Whitford, one of the most significant redistricting cases in decades, as well as Murr v. Wisconsin, a high-stakes regulatory taking case.
Before joining Troutman, Misha served as Solicitor General of the State of Wisconsin. Misha previously served as a law clerk for the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court, Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit, and Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit. He graduated from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was President of the Federalist Society Chapter.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Daniel Blomberg is vice president and senior counsel for Becket. Before joining Becket, he clerked for Chief Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as litigation counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Daniel’s clients have included an international order of nuns, the world’s largest religious media organization, synagogues, members of the U.S. military, religious healthcare ministries, peaceful protestors, halfway houses, religious colleges, state legislators, homeless shelters, religious business owners, an art gallery, and churches. Daniel has represented a wide variety of faith groups, including Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Hindus, Hutterites, Jews, Lutherans, Mennonites, Muslims, Presbyterians, Russian Orthodox, and Sikhs. Cases on which he has served as counsel to a party include: Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey-Berru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020); Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 141 S. Ct. 63 (2020); Zubik v. Burwell, 136 S. Ct. 1557 (2016); Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius, 134 S. Ct. 1022 (2014); Wheaton College v. Burwell, 134 S. Ct. 2806 (2014); Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. SJUSD, 82 F.4th 664 (9th Cir. 2023) (en banc); Singh v. Berger, 56 F.4th 88 (D.C. Cir. 2022); Demkovich v. St. Andrew the Apostle Parish, 3 F.4th 968 (7th Cir. 2021) (en banc); Maxon v. Fuller Theological Seminary, 2021 WL 5882035 (9th Cir. 2021); Intervarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. University of Iowa, 5 F.4th 855, 867 (8th Cir. 2021); Business Leaders in Christ v. University of Iowa, 991 F.3d 969 (8th Cir. 2021); Whole Woman’s Health v. Smith, 896 F.3d 362 (5th Cir. 2018); Lee v. Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, 903 F.3d 113 (3d Cir. 2018); Gagliardi v. TJCV, 889 F.3d 728 (11th Cir. 2018); Harvest Family Church v. FEMA, 2018 WL 386192 (5th Cir. 2018); Fratello v. Archdiocese of New York, 863 F.3d 190 (2d Cir. 2017); Eternal Word Television Network v. U.S. Dep’t of HHS, 756 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2014); InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. Bd. of Governors of Wayne State Univ., 534 F. Supp. 3d 785 (E.D. Mich. 2021); and Singh v. Carter, 168 F. Supp. 3d 216 (D.D.C. 2016).
Daniel has been featured on CNN, Huffington Post Live, Fox News, EWTN Nightly News, and CBS Evening News.
He earned his J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law, graduating magna cum laude. While in law school, Daniel clerked for the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office, served on a South Carolina Supreme Court task force, and interned with Judge J. Michelle Childs of the Circuit Court for the Fifth Judicial Circuit as a part of the Judicial Observation and Education program. He is a Blackstone Fellow. Daniel received his undergraduate degree from Columbia International University. He and his wife have five children and too many animals.
Partner, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP
Miles practices in the areas of appeals, business litigation, and First Amendment law. In addition to representing clients in complex civil and criminal litigation and appeals, Miles advises and represents public and private universities and serves as outside general counsel to several business and educational clients. He also represents and counsels private entities and government agencies and officials, including multiple current and former governors of South Carolina and members of Congress, on issues relating to the constitutional and statutory freedoms of speech, religion, and association. His First Amendment work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court.
Partner, Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP
Misha leads Troutman Peppers' national appellate and Supreme Court practice. Most recently, he successfully obtained orders from the Supreme Court blocking an unconstitutional restriction on places of worship, as well as overturning a lower court order that had blocked several state election laws. He has also argued and prevailed before the Supreme Court in Gill v. Whitford, one of the most significant redistricting cases in decades, as well as Murr v. Wisconsin, a high-stakes regulatory taking case.
Before joining Troutman, Misha served as Solicitor General of the State of Wisconsin. Misha previously served as a law clerk for the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court, Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit, and Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit. He graduated from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was President of the Federalist Society Chapter.
WILLIAM G. HYLAND JR is the author of four non-fiction books, including the award nominated IN DEFENSE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON (St. Martins 2009). His previous screenplay, DEADLINE, placed as a finalist in the STORYBAY competition. His legal publications include Law v. National Security: When Lawyers Make Terrorism Policy, University of Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business (Summer, 2008); Creative Malpractice: The Cinematic Lawyer, University of Texas Review of Entertainment and Sport Law, Vol. 9 (May, 2008); A Civil Action: Hemings v. Jefferson, American Journal of Trial Advocacy, Vol. 31. (December, 2007). He is also a member of Mystery Writers of America and the American Screenwriters Association. With a B.A. from the University of Alabama, Hyland is a noted trial lawyer, law professor and former prosecutor, whose credentials also include a TOP SECRET security clearance from the State Department in Washington.
Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science, The University of Notre Dame
Michael Zuckert (B.A., Cornell University; PhD, University of Chicago, 1974) is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor, and Department Chair of Political Science at University of Notre Dame. Professor Zuckert teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Political Philosophy and Theory, American Political Thought, American Constitutional Law, American Constitutional History, Constitutional Theory, and Philosophy of Law. His advising specialties are graduate programs in political science.
Professor Zuckert has published extensively on a variety of topics, including George Orwell, Plato, Shakespeare, and contemporary liberal theory. He is currently finishing a book called Completing the Constitution: The Post-Civil War Amendments and is co-authoring another book on Machiavelli and Shakespeare. He has been commissioned to write the volume on John Rawls for a series on Twentieth Century Political Philosophy. He co-authored and co-produced public radio series Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson: A Nine Part Drama for the Radio. He also was senior scholar for Liberty! (1997), a six hour public television series on the American Revolution, and served as senior advisor on the PBS series on Benjamin Franklin (2002) and Alexander Hamilton (2007). He is currently head of the new Tocqueville Center for the Study of Religion in American Public Life.
Zuckert has received grants from NEH, the Woodrow Wilson Center, Earhart Foundation and NSF, and has taught at Carleton College, Cornell University, Claremont Men’s College, Fordham University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Chicago.
Director and Professor, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University
Paul Carrese is the founding director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. For nearly two decades he was a professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and co-founded a new honors program blending liberal arts education and leadership education. He is author of The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism, and co-editor of three other books – on George Washington, constitutionalism, and American grand strategy. His most recent book is Democracy in Moderation: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Sustainable Liberalism. He has held fellowships at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar; Harvard University; the University of Delhi (as a Fulbright fellow); and the James Madison Program, Politics Department, Princeton University. He served on the founding advisory board of the Program on Public Discourse at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and currently is co-leading a national study funded by the NEH and US Department of Education on improving American history and civics education in K-12 schools with partners from Harvard and Tufts Universities and iCivics.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Panel III: Congressional Control of the Administration of Government: Hearings, Investigations, Oversight, and Legislative History [Archive Collection]
Griffin Bell, L. Gordon Crovitz, Michael Davidson, Peter L. Strauss, Stephen F. Williams
The Presidency and Congress
On January 19-20, 1990, The Federalist Society hosted a conference at the Mayflower Hotel in...
Deep Dive Episode 159 – Countering the Politicization of Financial Services: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?
John Berlau, C. Wallace DeWitt, Brian Knight
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
In several recent high-profile cases, banks have conditioned or denied financial services to disfavored industries after...
Locke & Montesquieu: The Philosophers Behind the Founders
Paul Carrese, Eric R. Claeys, Paul Rahe, Michael P. Zuckert
Short video featuring Paul Carrese, Eric Claeys, Paul Rahe, and Michael Zuckert
Where did the founding ideas of Washington, Madison, and Jefferson find their origins? How did...
Deep Dive Episode 158 – Courthouse Steps Oral Arguments: AMG Capital Management v. FTC
Alden F. Abbott, Corbin K. Barthold, Asheesh Agarwal
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
On January 13, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in AMG Capital Management v. FTC, a...
SCOTUS Stops Cuomo’s COVID Synagogue Targeting
Daniel Blomberg, Miles Coleman, Misha Tseytlin
Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston South Carolina Lawyers Chapters
On December 17, 2020, the Federalist Society's Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston, South Carolina Lawyers Chapters...
SCOTUS Stops Cuomo’s COVID Synagogue Targeting
Daniel Blomberg, Miles Coleman, Misha Tseytlin
Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston South Carolina Lawyers Chapters
On December 17, 2020, the Federalist Society's Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston, South Carolina Lawyers Chapters...
Founding Friends | Blueprint for American Rights
William G. Hyland
The FedSoc Films Podcast
In this episode of the FedSoc Films Podcast, author of George Mason: The Founding Father...
America’s Tag Team Philosophers | The Philosophers Behind the Founders
Michael P. Zuckert, Paul Carrese
The FedSoc Films Podcast
Who were the two most important philosophers behind the founders? In the episode of our...
McConnell v. Barnett | Retained by the People
Michael W. McConnell, Randy E. Barnett
The FedSoc Films Podcast
In this episode of the FedSoc Films Podcast, esteemed law professors Michael W. McConnell (Stanford...
Episode Zero | What is the FedSoc Films Podcast?
The FedSoc Films Podcast
The FedSoc Films Podcast gives audiences a deeper dive into the issues and stories featured...