Partner, Briscoe Prows Kao Ivester & Bazel LLP
Tony Francois is experienced in Water and Real Property Law, Land Use and Zoning, Environmental Regulation, Natural Resources Development, Agricultural Law, and Constitutional Law. He has represented homeowners, builders, farmers and ranchers, trade associations, and water districts in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies and state and federal trial and appellate courts. He is a member of the California State Bar and the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California and the Districts of New Mexico and North Dakota, and has litigated cases in federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has appeared before the Supreme Courts of California, Idaho, Nevada, and the United States.
Prior to attending law school, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in the former West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tony was an Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation from 2012 to 2021. He was a lobbyist for 10 years, first with California Farm Bureau Federation from 2003 to 2007, and then with KP Public Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was an attorney at McQuaid, Bedford & Van Zandt in San Francisco from 1999 – 2003.
Executive Director, Committee for Justice
Ashley Baker is Executive Director of the Committee for Justice and founder of the Alliance on Antitrust coalition. Her work focuses on antitrust law, technology regulation, administrative-agency authority, the Supreme Court, and judicial nominations. She closely follows the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, with particular attention to merger review, agency procedure, and the effects of regulation on American innovation and competitiveness. She is also founder of the Alliance on Antitrust Coalition.
Ashley has testified before the United States Senate on antitrust law. Her writing has appeared in Fox News, USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Hill, RealClearPolitics, The American Spectator, and other national publications. She also provides policy analysis through congressional testimony and correspondence, regulatory comments, and public commentary.
Ashley serves on the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project and Antitrust and Consumer Protection Practice Group Executive Committee. She is also active in the Republican National Lawyers Association and has spoken on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. An authority on the judicial-confirmation process, she worked closely on the successful confirmation efforts for Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as multiple federal appellate judges.
James G. Dinan University Professor, Carey Law School, University of Pennsylvania
Herbert Hovenkamp is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2008 won the Justice Department’s John Sherman Award for his lifetime contributions to antitrust law. In 2012 he served on the ABA’s Committee to advise the President-elect on antitrust matters. His principal writing includes The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought, 1870-1970 (Oxford, 2015); Antitrust Law (formerly with Phillip E. Areeda and Donald F. Turner) (22 vols., Aspen 2008-18); Principles of Antitrust (West, 2017); Creation Without Restraint: Promoting Liberty and Rivalry in Innovation (Oxford, 2012, with Bohannan); The Making of Competition Policy (Oxford, 2012, with Crane); The Antitrust Enterprise: Principle and Execution (Harvard, 2006); Federal Antitrust Policy: The Law of Competition and Its Practice (West, 5th ed. 2015); IP and Antitrust (2 vols., Aspen, 2017, with Janis, Lemley, Leslie, and Carrier); and Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937 (Harvard, 1991). He has also co-authored casebooks in antitrust, property law, and a free open source casebook on innovation and competition policy. He has consulted on numerous antitrust cases for various government entities and private plaintiffs. He has two sons.
Head of AI Policy, Abundance Institute
Neil Chilson is the Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute. Prior to this position, he served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity. Chilson is a lawyer, computer scientist, and author of the book “Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World.”
Chilson was previously the senior research fellow for Technology and Innovation at Stand Together, where he guided efforts to understand and promote the legal and cultural paradigms that best enable people to discover, innovate, and improve all our lives.
Before Stand Together, Chilson was the Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, where he focused on the economics of privacy and blockchain-related issues. Previously, he was an attorney advisor to Acting FTC Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen. In both roles he advised Chairman Ohlhausen and worked with staff on nearly every major technology-related case, report, workshop, or other FTC proceeding since January 2014. Neil joined the FTC from telecom firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer. Neil is frequently quoted by the press and his work has appeared in numerous news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USAToday, and Newsweek. Neil has a J.D. from The George Washington Law School, a M.S. in computer science from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a B.S. in computer science from Harding University.
President, Harned Strategies LLC
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
Partner, Goodwin Procter LLP
Jaime A. Santos is a partner in the firm’s Appellate Litigation practice. Her work focuses on appellate matters and complex civil litigation in federal courts, and she has experience in a wide range of areas including ERISA litigation, patent litigation, constitutional law, and product litigation. Ms. Santos has been the primary author of dozens of briefs filed in the Supreme Court, many more briefs filed in federal courts of appeals and federal district courts, and she has presented oral argument in state and federal trial and appellate courts. Ms. Santos also co-hosts the Supreme Court podcast Strict Scrutiny.
Ms. Santos maintains an active pro bono practice. She has been counsel of record in numerous criminal, immigration, and civil rights appeals in the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits. She has also advocated on behalf of transgender litigants asserting constitutional claims before the Fourth Circuit and the Supreme Court, and represented a criminal defendant challenging his sentence before the Supreme Court. In 2015, Ms. Santos was honored by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights for her commitment to pro bono civil rights work.
In addition to her pro bono practice, Ms. Santos has been a thought leader in preventing and addressing bias and harassment in the legal profession. She speaks at conferences across the country and has published several articles on the topic. Since January 2018, she has advised numerous state and federal courts on improving the policies and processes governing inappropriate conduct in the workplace.
Ms. Santos serves on the MacArthur Justice Center Supreme Court & Appellate Advisory Board, and on the National Women’s Law Center’s Leadership Advisory Council.
Before joining Goodwin in 2013, Ms. Santos served as a law clerk to the Honorable George H. King of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and to the Honorable Raymond C. Fisher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In law school, she was a supervising editor for the Harvard Law Review.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Jacob Huebert is Senior Litigation Counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He previously served as President and Director of Litigation of the Liberty Justice Center, where he successfully litigated cases to protect constitutional rights, including the landmark Janus v. AFSCME case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld government employees’ First Amendment right to choose for themselves whether to pay money to a union. Jacob was also previously a Senior Attorney at the Goldwater Institute, where he litigated cases on free speech, property rights, and the Second Amendment.
Jacob and his work have appeared in numerous national media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Fox News Channel. He is also the author of a book, Libertarianism Today.
Jacob holds a B.A. in economics from Grove City College and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, he served as a clerk to Judge Deborah Cook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Jacob has served as an adjunct law professor at several law schools, teaching courses in advanced appellate advocacy, the law of payments, legal writing, and jurisprudence. Before working in public interest law, Jacob was a litigator in private practice.
Partner, Horvitz & Levy LLP
Jeremy Rosen is nationally renowned for his proficiency in numerous issues arising under the First Amendment and California’s anti-SLAPP law. Using that knowledge, Jeremy has helped a wide variety of clients – including churches, private businesses, and individuals – defeat lawsuits that seek to impose liability on clients for exercising their rights of petition, free speech, and free exercise of religion. He has also handled hundreds of appeals in numerous appellate courts, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the California Supreme Court, and California’s intermediate appellate courts. In addition to First Amendment and anti-SLAPP cases, his cases have involved numerous important issues regarding anti-trust, class actions, wage and hour law, employment law, breach of contract, California’s Unfair Competition Law, CEQA, the enforceability of arbitration clauses, hospital peer review, the scope of public employee whistleblower protection, and the application of the primary assumption of risk doctrine.
Jeremy is a partner at the firm, which he joined in 2001. He is a California State Bar Certified Appellate Specialist and a member of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Jeremy directed the Pepperdine University School of Law Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic for 6 years. The Clinic represents individuals in the Ninth Circuit who are identified by the court as needing pro bono counsel. Jeremy also previously served a three-year term where he was appointed by the Ninth Circuit to serve as one of 18 appellate lawyer representatives to the court.
Jeremy is a member of the National Chamber Litigation Center’s California Litigation Advisory Committee. Before joining the firm, Jeremy was a Litigation Associate with Munger, Tolles & Olson.
Executive Director, Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, The Ohio State University
Professor Lee J. Strang serves as the inaugural executive director of the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at The Ohio State University.
Initiated in 2023 by the state of Ohio, the Chase Center will be an academic home at Ohio State for teaching, research, and programing on the foundations of the American constitutional order and its impact on society. As executive director, Professor Strang is responsible for organizing the center, overseeing the hiring and appointment of the center’s faculty, developing curriculum, and delivering student and academic programming. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State.
Professor Strang is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has published dozens of articles in leading journals in the fields of constitutional law and interpretation, property law, and religion and the First Amendment. He co-edits the textbook Federal Constitutional Law, and his most recent book, Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution is the first book-length, natural law justification for originalism. He currently is writing on civic thought and leadership, and he is finalizing a book on the history of American Catholic legal education (with John M. Breen).
Before joining Ohio State, Professor Strang served as the inaugural director of the University of Toledo’s Institute of American Constitutional Thought & Leadership. He joined the Toledo College of Law faculty in 2008, was granted tenure in 2010, and was named John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values in 2015. The University of Toledo awarded Professor Strang its Outstanding Faculty Research and Scholarship Award in 2017. Before that, he was a visiting professor at Michigan State University College of Law. A graduate of the University of Iowa, where he was articles editor of the Iowa Law Review and Order of the Coif, Professor Strang holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School.
Professor Strang has been a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. In 2016, he was appointed to the Ohio Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and reappointed as chair in 2023.
Prior to teaching, Professor Strang served as a judicial clerk for Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was also an associate for Jenner & Block LLP in Chicago, where he practiced in general and appellate litigation.
Professor Strang is a frequent presenter at scholarly conferences. He is the president of the Board of Trustees of Northwest Ohio Classical Academy, Ohio’s first classical charter school. He is also a regular participant in debates at law schools across the country, a contributor to the media, and a speaker to political, civic, and religious groups.
Professor of Law, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
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