Instructor of Accounting, University of Central Florida College of Business
Professor F. E. Guerra-Pujol was born in Los Angeles, Calif., to Francisco Guerra and Oilda Pujol. He attended college at the University of California at Santa Barbara, graduating with highest honors, and received his Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School. After practicing business law for several years, Professor Guerra-Pujol began his academic career at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico. He is currently teaching at the University of Central Florida. His areas of research include markets, property rights and the philosophy of law. He is also the author of many scholarly papers, journal articles and book chapters, including “Gödel’s Loophole,” “A Bayesian Model of Litigation” and “The Poker-Litigation Game.” You can access his work here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=649450
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Director, Damon Key Leong Kupchak Hastert
Robert H. Thomas is a land use and appellate lawyer, and focuses on regulatory takings, eminent domain, water rights, and election and political law cases. He has tried cases and appeals in Hawaii, California, and the federal courts. For a list of reported cases in which he’s been involved, go here.
Robert is also the inaugural Joseph T. Waldo Visiting Chair in Property Rights Law at the William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he teaches courses on eminent domain, property rights, and other property-related courses.
Robert received his LLM, with honors, from Columbia Law School where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and his JD from the University of Hawaii School of Law where he served as editor of the Law Review. Robert taught law at the University of Santa Clara School of Law, and was an exam grader and screener for the California Committee of Bar Examiners.
He was the Chair (2017-18) of the American Bar Association’s Section on State & Local Government Law, was the long-time Chair of the Section’s Eminent Domain Law Committee, and currently chairs the Regulatory Takings Committee.
He is the Hawaii member of Owners’ Counsel of America, a national network of the most experienced eminent domain and property rights lawyers. Membership in OCA is by invitation only, and is limited to a single attorney from each state. He is also the Co-Planning Chair of the American Law Institute-CLE’s annual three-day conference on condemnation law, Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation. Robert is also the Managing Attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation Hawaii Center, and is listed in Best Lawyers in Eminent Domain and Condemnation Law, and Land Use & Zoning Law, and in Super Lawyers in Appellate Law, Land Use/Zoning, and Government/Cities/Municipalities.
He is also a frequent speaker on land use and eminent domain issues in Hawaii and nationwide. Robert regularly publishes scholarly and practical articles in his area of practice. For a partial list, go here. His blog on land use, property, and takings law, inversecondemnation.com, is one of the most widely-read blogs on those subjects.
Vice President of Law & Policy, Property and Environment Research Center
Jonathan Wood is vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). An attorney, Jonathan has litigated environmental and property-rights cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, federal and state appellate courts, and trial courts across the country. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, Reason, and other outlets. And his research has been published in journals such as Environmental Law Reporter, Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Pace Environmental Law Review, and California Western Law Review.
Prior to coming to PERC, Jonathan was a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he litigated cases concerning the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal environmental laws. He was co-counsel for forest landowners in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that private land could not be arbitrarily regulated as critical habitat under the ESA. He also led a successful effort to reform regulation of threatened species to better align the incentives of private landowners with the interests of rare species.
Jonathan has testified before several congressional committees on wildlife conservation and endangered species topics. He has also appeared on national television and radio, including NPR’s All Things Considered, C-Span’s Washington Journal, Stossel, Fox News, and Hill.TV.
Jonathan has a law degree from the New York University School of Law, a masters degree in economic policy from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Texas. He is on the executive committee for the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group and a steering committee member for the Environmental Law Institute’s Emerging Leaders Initiative.
Author and Founding Member, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
Roya Hakakian is a writer. Her opinion columns, essays and book reviews appear in English language publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and NPR’s All Things Considered among many others. She has collaborated on over a dozen hours of programming for leading journalism units in network television, including CBS 60 Minutes. She currently serves as an editorial board member of World Affairs. An active thinker of foreign relations, Roya is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. She has been featured in the Washington Post and the US News and World Report, among other publications. In the book, Political Awakenings by University of California at Berkeley’s Professor Harry Kreisler, she has been highlighted “among the most important activists, academics, and journalists of her generation.”
In 2008, she received a Guggenheim prize in nonfiction. It enabled her to complete the work on her most recent book, Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (Grove/Atlantic), about Iran’s terror campaign against exiled dissidents in Western Europe received the Asian American Literary Award for best non-fiction book in 2013. It was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2011, made Newsweek’s Top Ten Not-to-be-missed books and was among Kirkus Reviews Best Non-Fictions in the same year. Her account of the work of the German prosecutor of the case, a modern day Atticus Finch, moved the US Federal Bar Association to establish “the Rule of Law Award,” the first of which was bestowed upon that prosecutor in 2014 at the Daniel Moynihan Federal Courthouse in New York City.
Her memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown) has been a celebrated Freshman Experience book at a number of colleges in the US. It was a Barnes and Noble’s Pick of the Week, Ms. Magazine Must Read of the Summer, Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, Elle Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2004, and was named Best Memoir by the Connecticut Center for the Book in 2005 and has been translated into several languages including German, Dutch, and Spanish.
She is currently at work on a new book at the The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where she has been awarded a fellowship in 2014. Talking to her readers is one of her great joys and she has addressed them at venues ranging from high schools on Native American reservations to the US Capitol and the CIA.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Koplow specializes in the areas of public international law and national security law. He joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 1981. His principal courses have been International Law I (the introductory survey of public international law topics), a seminar in the area of arms control, non-proliferation and terrorism, and the pro-seminar for LLM students in national security law. In addition, he has directed a clinic, the Center for Applied Legal Studies, in which students provide pro bono representation to refugees who seek asylum in the United States because of persecution in their homelands. His government service has included stints as Special Counsel for Arms Control to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense (2009-2011); as Deputy General Counsel for International Affairs at the Department of Defense (1997-1999); and as Attorney-Advisor and Special Assistant to the Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1978-1981). He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School and a Rhodes Scholar. Most of his scholarly writing concentrates on the intersection between international law and U.S. constitutional law, especially in the areas of arms control and national security and treaty negotiation and implementation.
Legal Counsel, Global Religious Freedom, ADF International
Sean Nelson serves as Legal Counsel for Global Religious Freedom with ADF International, where he advocates on behalf of Christians and other religious minorities being persecuted for their faith around the world.
East Asia Team Leader, Christian Solidarity Worldwide
Benedict Rogers is a journalist and human rights advocate based in London. His work focuses mainly on Burma, North Korea and Indonesia. He is a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Huffington Post and has appeared on BBC, CNN, Sky, Al Jazeera and other television and radio stations. He is the co-founder and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party's human rights commission and the co-founder of the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea. He is also the East Asia Team Leader at Christian Solidarity Worldwide and the founder of Hong Kong Watch. He has written three books which focus on Burma, including A Land Without Evil: Stopping the Genocide of Burma's Karen People (Monarch, 2004) and Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads (2012), and co-authored two others on Christian human rights obligations.
Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Professor Derek Muller is a nationally-recognized scholar in the field of election law. His research focuses on the role of states in the administration of federal elections, the constitutional contours of voting rights and election administration, the limits of judicial power in the domain of elections, and the Electoral College.
He has published more than two dozen academic works, and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has testified before Congress, and he is a contributor at the Election Law Blog. He is a co-author on a Federal Courts casebook published by Carolina Academic Press. He is also the co-reporter on a new Restatement of the Law, Election Litigation, an effort led by the American Law Institute.
Professor Muller teaches Election Law, Civil Procedure, and Evidence.
Attorney, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Devin Watkins is an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Devin Watkins previously worked at the Cato Institute as a legal associate and interned at the Institute for Justice. At the Cato Institute, Watkins worked on a variety of Supreme Court cases, and one of the briefs he worked on was cited by the Court. His op-eds have appeared in National Review Online, The Hill, Time, and The Federalist among others.
Watkins holds a Juris Doctor cum laude from George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, where he was the development editor on the Mason Law Review. Prior to his legal career Watkins was a senior software developer at Intel and WebMD. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Watkins is a member of the Virginia State Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Bar, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Bar.
Managing Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
David Thompson is the Managing Partner of Cooper & Kirk and joined the firm at its founding. Mr. Thompson has extensive trial and appellate experience in a wide range of matters and has secured victories worth billions of dollars. He has successfully challenged numerous laws on Second Amendment grounds. He has also litigated cases in over 30 federal district courts, argued in each of the 13 federal circuit courts of appeal, and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as many state courts. Mr. Thompson was awarded an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1991, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1994, Mr. Thompson received a J.D. degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
Of Counsel, Spencer Fane LLP
Anthony J. “A.J.” Ferate has built a multi-faceted background in the areas of the law, policy, energy, campaigns and elections, and defense over the last 20 years.
Through recent representation as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (“OIPA”), A.J. held responsibilities over government efforts outside of the legislative branch on matters as broad as water, electric generation, commodity marketing, land matters, and seismicity. A.J. also maintained responsibility for legal matters at OIPA, including amicus briefing in appellate matters. A.J.’s extensive experience also includes management of public policy strategy for a Fortune 500 company.
For the past eleven years, A.J. has volunteered as General Counsel and spokesman for the Oklahoma Republican Party and has represented a number of elected officials, including U.S. Senator James Lankford, former statewide elected officials, a number of state legislators, and members of Congress.
Additionally, A.J. has assisted elected officials serve their constituents in all branches of government. Early in his career, A.J. held legislative aide duties in the Nebraska Legislature, then went on to work for former Nebraska Treasurer David Heineman. A.J. gained experience in the judiciary while serving Judge Gary L. Lumpkin at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal appellate court in Oklahoma. Following this service, A.J. began work with Denise A. Bode of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, assisting her in her duties regulating 70 percent of Oklahoma’s economy, including oil and gas and electric utilities.
A.J. honorably served ten years as an intelligence analyst for the United States Naval Reserve, including time at the Office of Naval Intelligence in the greater Washington DC area.
Opinion pieces authored or ghostwritten by A.J. have been published in the Seattle Times, Politico, Law360, The Oklahoman, Tulsa World and The Journal Record. A.J. has also been interviewed by national and international newspapers, and has also appeared on national radio programs including NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show and On Point with Tom Ashbrook.
W. DeVier Pierson Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law
In 2001 Taiawagi Helton joined the faculty of the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where he teaches environmental law, property law, and Indian law. His research emphasizes environmental and natural resources issues relating to Native Americans, as well as nation building in Indian country.
Helton began his legal career as a clerk for the Honorable Robert H. Henry, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He has served as a Special Justice for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Supreme Court (2004-2008) and as a member of the Board of Directors of Oklahoma Indian Legal Services. In 2012, Helton received the O.U. Regents’ Award for Superior Teaching, the University’s highest award for teaching excellence.
Helton earned his Master of Laws degree from Yale Law School in 2001. In 1999 he received a juris doctor degree with highest honors from the University of Tulsa College of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Tulsa Law Journal and earned membership in the Order of the Curule Chair.
Partner, Spencer Fane LLP
Andy Lester has a civil litigation and appellate practice in both state and federal court. His fields of emphasis include complex business, civil rights, commercial, constitutional, and state and local government law. He has faced off against the White House over the use of Executive Privilege, has appeared as counsel before committees of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, and has been a featured guest on television shows such as Hardball with Chris Matthews and The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. He has also served as Acting General Counsel for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and has twice served as Chief Counsel to Special House Committees investigating public corruption.
While in law school, Lester served on President Ronald Reagan’s Transition Team for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2002, he chaired Governor Brad Henry’s Law Enforcement/Corrections Transition Team and, as a member of the Budget/Finance Transition Team, helped write Governor Henry’s first State budget.
He is a former United States Magistrate Judge for the Western District of Oklahoma, and has served as Adjunct Professor at Oklahoma City University School of Law, having taught State & Local Government, Employment Law, Criminal Law, and International Law. Lester has written over 100 articles and papers on professional and public policy issues, and has published one book, Constitutional Law and Democracy, a collection of speeches he gave in 1993 in the former Soviet Union.
Lester is a former member of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, and in 2019 was named a State Regent Emeritus. He served on the board of Eureka College (President Reagan’s alma mater), is a former chairman of the Oklahoma Advisory Committee for the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and is a past president, past board chairman, and current board member of the Tenth Circuit Historical Society. He co-chaired the bipartisan Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, which conducted the first-ever independent, objective, and thorough review of the state’s entire capital punishment system.
In 2012, Lester was named Citizen of the Year of Edmond, Oklahoma. He is a past president of the Rotary Club of Edmond, and in 2011 was named Rotarian of the Year.
Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP
Matthew Brill, Global Chair of the Communications Law Practice and a member of the Supreme Court and Appellate Practice, is a nationally recognized communications lawyer and former FCC senior official. He represents clients in litigation, regulatory, and transactional matters.
Vice President, Policy & Advocacy, USTelecom – The Broadband Association
Kristine (Fargotstein) Hackman serves as Vice President, Policy & Advocacy at USTelecom – The Broadband Association. In this role, she advocates on behalf of USTelecom members before the White House and Executive Branch, regulatory agencies, courts and other government entities in Washington, DC and state capitals to ensure members can compete, grow and thrive. Prior to joining USTelecom, she held several roles at the FCC, including Acting Wireline Advisor to Chairman Ajit Pai, Special Counsel in the Office of General Counsel, Legal Advisor to the Wireline Bureau Chief, and Attorney Advisor in the Wireline Competition Bureau. She also was detailed to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee where she worked on broadband infrastructure, net neutrality, and spectrum, among other connectivity matters. Before her legal career, Kristine led public service initiatives at the National Association of Broadcasters.
Kristine graduated from the George Mason University School of Law where she developed a dedicated communications law concentration, and for the past five years has served as an adjunct professor of Communications Law. She is an active member of the Federal Communications Bar Association and a former co-chair of its Young Lawyers Committee.
Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP
Russell P. Hanser has nearly 20 years of experience working in communications law and commercial litigation. His practice focuses on the regulation of next-generation broadband services and IP-enabled applications, information privacy, Universal Service, intercarrier compensation, and a range of other issues faced by the information and communications technology industry. Mr. Hanser’s clients include wireline carriers, mobile wireless providers, cable operators, Internet service providers, equipment manufacturers, private equity funds, and investment advisors.
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Hanser worked at the FCC, where he held senior positions in the Wireline Competition Bureau and the Office of General Counsel, and served as wireline Legal Advisor in the Office of Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law, where he teaches telecommunications law. He has previously been an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of New Hampshire Law School and the George Washington University Law School. Following law school, Mr. Hanser clerked for Judge Norman H. Stahl on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
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.
COVID-19 & Property Rights: Do Government Actions in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic Create Compensable Takings?
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Numerous businesses around the country have been shuttered by state government shutdown orders adopted to...
Courthouse Steps Decision: Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian
Jonathan Wood
On April 20, 2020, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 7-2, held that owners...
Nuclear Arms Agreements and Human Rights
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Governments that seek to acquire nuclear weapons, such as Iran and North Korea, are sometimes...
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument: CO Dept. of State v. Baca and Chiafalo v. WA
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Should We Be Re-Thinking Section 101?
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Criminal Law & Procedure and Civil Rights Co-Sponsored Practice Group Teleforum
Please join Amy Swearer of the Heritage Foundation and David Thompson of Cooper & Kirk...
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument Teleforum: McGirt v. Oklahoma
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Matthew A. Brill, Kristine (Fargotstein) Hackman, Russell P. Hanser, Lawrence J. Spiwak
In Mozilla v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 Restoring Internet...
Topics
Making China Pay For Coronavirus Wrongs
The costs and harms that accrue daily from China’s negligence -- framed generously -- in...