Chancellor Professor, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Law
Peltz-Steele received his law degree from Duke University and a bachelor’s in journalism and Spanish from Washington & Lee University. Peltz-Steele has won awards in teaching, research, and public service. He practiced commercial law in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and taught law for more than thirteen years before coming to UMass Law in 2011.
Peltz-Steele is author, co-author, or co-editor of qualitative and quantitative research in law and mass communication in journals and books, of treatises in law and development and access to information, and of textbooks in tort law and freedom of information. He is especially active in international media law and policy, having presented papers on five continents and having published in foreign journals and multinational collaborations. His current research focuses on comparative transparency in the context of development and in the private sector. Peltz-Steele serves in various roles in public service organizations, including the legal education committee of the American Bar Association, International Law Section.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Mr. Doug Smith has litigated cases at both the trial and appellate stage in state and federal courts throughout the country, including commercial, mass tort, product liability, securities, bankruptcy, environmental, and intellectual property cases. He is a member of the American Law Institute and has published on a wide variety of legal topics.
Thomas W. Smith Fellow; Contributing Editor, City Journal, Manhattan Institute
Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald’s work at City Journal has covered a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Mac Donald's newest book, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture (2018), argues that toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture.
Mac Donald’s The War on Cops (2016), a New York Times bestseller, warns that raced-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. Other previous works include The Burden of Bad Ideas (2001), a collection of Mac Donald’s City Journal essays, details the effects of the 1960s counterculture’s destructive march through America’s institutions. In The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan than Today’s (2007), coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga, she chronicles the effects of broken immigration laws and proposes a practical solution to securing the country’s porous borders. In Are Cops Racist? (2010), another City Journal anthology, Mac Donald investigates the workings of the police, the controversy over so-called racial profiling, and the anti-profiling lobby’s harmful effects on black Americans.
A nonpracticing lawyer, Mac Donald clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She has frequently testified before U.S. House and Senate Committees. In 1998, Mac Donald was appointed to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s task force on the City University of New York. She has received numerous awards for her writing:
A frequent guest on Fox News and other TV and radio programs, Mac Donald holds a B.A. in English from Yale University, graduating with a Mellon Fellowship to Cambridge University, where she earned an M.A. in English and studied in Italy through a Clare College study grant. She holds a J.D. from Stanford University Law School.
At the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation's 2018 annual meeting in downtown Los Angeles, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called Mac Donald, “the greatest thinker on criminal justice in America today.”
Research Fellow, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Trevor Burrus is a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and Center for the Study of Science, as well as managing editor of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, legal history, and the interface between science and public policy. His academic work has appeared in journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty, the New York University Annual Survey of American Law, the Syracuse Law Review, and many others. His popular writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, Forbes, the Huffington Post, the New York Daily News, and others.
Burrus lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Foundation for Economics Education, and other organizations, and he frequently appears on major media outlets. He is also the co-host of Free Thoughts, a weekly podcast that covers topics in libertarian theory, history, and philosophy.
He is the editor of A Conspiracy against Obamacare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Deep Commitments: The Past, Present, and Future of Religious Liberty (Cato, 2017), and holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
Historian and Author
Garrett Peck is an author, historian and tour guide in the nation's capital. He leads tours through The Smithsonian Associates, and his Temperance Tour of Prohibition-related sites has been featured on C-SPAN Book TV and the History Channel program "Ten Things You Didn't Know About" with punk rock legend Henry Rollins. He was featured on a two-hour documentary about Prohibition by the Smithsonian Channel. His seventh book, The Great War in America: World War I and Its Aftermath, was published in 2018.
Peck was involved with the DC Craft Bartenders Guild in lobbying the DC City Council to have the Rickey declared Washington's native cocktail in 2011. He researched and pinpointed the Washington Brewery site at Navy Yard, and is particularly proud that Green Hat Gin is named after a character Peck wrote about in Prohibition in Washington, D.C.: congressional bootlegger George Cassiday. He has lectured at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution, and often speaks at historical societies, literary clubs and trade associations.
Peck is on the board of the Woodrow Wilson House and is a member of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of D.C. A native Californian and graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and George Washington University and U.S. Army veteran, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.
Head Brewer, Atlas Brew Works
As Head Brewer at Atlas, Daniel oversees production of Atlas’ varied portfolio of ales and lagers. Daniel has a Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry from the University of Maryland and he is a graduate of the Siebel Institute's Concise Course in Brewing Technology. Daniel came to Atlas mere months after we opened from Franklin's Restaurant and Brewery in Hyattsville, MD. Before entering the craft beer industry, Daniel held a position with Chesapeake Spice Co, as a Quality Control technician. Raised in Prince George’s County, he works hard, has incredible tastes in suits, and loves pepperoni pizza.
Founder, Atlas Brew Works
Now a DC resident for more than a decade, Justin was born and raised in the Smokey Mountains of East Tennessee. Justin pursued his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University in Engineering Science and Economics. Shortly after, he moved to Washington, DC to work in business consulting. He returned to law school at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, VA. After graduating in 2009, Justin took a Presidential Management Fellowship with the General Services Administration.
Meanwhile, he honed his homebrewing skills, becoming a very popular neighbor by having lots of great beer always on hand. Justin decided to throw caution to the wind and explore his entrepreneurial side by opening Atlas Brew Works in his new hometown, the District of Columbia. Calling on long time friend Will Durgin to join as Head Brewer, the two opened the business in September of 2013.
When not putting out fires or marketing and selling beer, Justin enjoys any activity on the water, watching crappy reality TV, and spending time with his wife and English Bulldog.
Partner, Dinsmore & Shohl LLP
Candace has experience in the craft beer industry, which began while bartending at Hamilton’s Tavern, one of San Diego’s premier craft beer bars. She worked at Hamilton’s during law school, and the tavern is where she learned how craft brewers were lacking representation in the legal field, as many had trouble finding attorneys who could answer specific questions about the intricate alcohol-based industry. Craft brewers are constantly dealing with questions such as whether their clever craft brewery name will be approved by the trademark office or whether a lease for a new taproom space will protect their needs and interests. She is aware of what it takes to start, open, sustain and grow a craft brewery.
She has devoted her practice to serving the needs of craft brewers, and during her career, Candace has worked with more than 350 craft breweries and breweries-in-planning across the country. She has counseled them on issues, including business entity formation, alcoholic beverage law, contract review, trademark law and other legal needs.
Candace has also spoken to brewers guilds and at brewers association meetings nationwide on matters such as distribution laws and trademarks, to ensure clients and breweries-in-planning are complying with industry standards and regulations. She has also been a resource for brewery-related issues in newspapers, magazines, TV segments, online and at conferences across the country.
Constitutional Scholarship Director and Senior Legal Analyst, Pacific Legal Foundation
Anastasia Boden is Director of Constitutional Scholarship at Pacific Legal Foundation, where she leads the organization’s Supreme Court commentary and directs scholarly analysis in support of the firm’s litigation. She has represented entrepreneurs and small businesses nationwide in challenges to onerous licensing regimes, anti-competitive titling restrictions, Certificate of Need (“competitor’s veto”) laws, and other forms of unnecessary red tape that block economic opportunity.
Prior to this role, Anastasia developed nearly a dozen constitutional challenges to Certificate of Need laws across the country, helping spur legislative reform in Montana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Her victories include a ruling invalidating Houston’s busking restrictions, multiple appellate decisions expanding access to the courts for civil rights plaintiffs, and the legislative repeal of Virginia’s happy-hour advertising ban.
Her writings on law and liberty have been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more, and she has appeared on Headline News, CBS News, Fox News, ReasonTV, Newsmax, and John Stossel. In 2020, she was featured on Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s Supreme Court shortlist.
Anastasia earned her BA with dean’s honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was research assistant to Professor Randy E. Barnett—the “intellectual godfather” of the constitutional challenge to Obamacare. She is the co-creator of the podcast Dissed, about infamous Supreme Court dissents. She authors the biweekly newsletter SCOTUS Scoop and the column, “In Dissent” for SCOTUSblog.
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