Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law (on leave); Senior Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice
Professor Dolin’s scholarship centers on patent law with a specific focus on how the patent regime affects innovation, especially in bio-pharmaceutical areas. His work in these areas includes a number of scholarly articles, presentations, amicus briefs, and congressional testimony.
Dr. Dolin is currently on leave from his academic duties while he serves as Senior Counsel in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.
From January 2020 to January 2022, Professor Dolin served as a resident Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau. In this role, he (together with other members of the Court) heard appeals in civil, criminal, administrative, and constitutional law matters.
Prior to joining the University of Baltimore School of Law, Professor Dolin held visiting appointments in other law schools. He also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Pauline Newman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the late Hon. H. Emory Widener Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Rumors that he has a real Russian bear in his office are entirely true.
Associate Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia and President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia
Craig E. Leen is an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He also serves as the 139th President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia and a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
Prior to being sworn in, Judge Leen was a partner at K&L Gates in the Washington, DC office focused on labor & employment, litigation, government contracts, and administrative & regulatory law. He was also the pro bono coordinator for the DC office.
Judge Leen was formerly a federal agency head, serving as Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Prior to his federal service at OFCCP, Judge Leen was the City Attorney of the City of Coral Gables, and before that was Chief of the Appeals Section and then Chief of the Federal Litigation Section at the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office. Earlier in his career, Judge Leen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton, United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts.
In recognition of his public service, Judge Leen received the Secretary's Exceptional Achievement Award - Professional while at the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Paul S. Buchman Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Area of Legal Public Service while in local government.
Judge Leen received his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and having served as a teaching fellow in both Contracts and Torts. Judge Leen received his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Georgetown University, where he majored in both Government and Economics.
Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law (on leave); Senior Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice
Professor Dolin’s scholarship centers on patent law with a specific focus on how the patent regime affects innovation, especially in bio-pharmaceutical areas. His work in these areas includes a number of scholarly articles, presentations, amicus briefs, and congressional testimony.
Dr. Dolin is currently on leave from his academic duties while he serves as Senior Counsel in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.
From January 2020 to January 2022, Professor Dolin served as a resident Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau. In this role, he (together with other members of the Court) heard appeals in civil, criminal, administrative, and constitutional law matters.
Prior to joining the University of Baltimore School of Law, Professor Dolin held visiting appointments in other law schools. He also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Pauline Newman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the late Hon. H. Emory Widener Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Rumors that he has a real Russian bear in his office are entirely true.
Associate Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia and President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia
Craig E. Leen is an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He also serves as the 139th President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia and a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
Prior to being sworn in, Judge Leen was a partner at K&L Gates in the Washington, DC office focused on labor & employment, litigation, government contracts, and administrative & regulatory law. He was also the pro bono coordinator for the DC office.
Judge Leen was formerly a federal agency head, serving as Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Prior to his federal service at OFCCP, Judge Leen was the City Attorney of the City of Coral Gables, and before that was Chief of the Appeals Section and then Chief of the Federal Litigation Section at the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office. Earlier in his career, Judge Leen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton, United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts.
In recognition of his public service, Judge Leen received the Secretary's Exceptional Achievement Award - Professional while at the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Paul S. Buchman Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Area of Legal Public Service while in local government.
Judge Leen received his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and having served as a teaching fellow in both Contracts and Torts. Judge Leen received his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Georgetown University, where he majored in both Government and Economics.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Justice
Harmeet K. Dhillon is the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. She was nominated by President Donald Trump in December 2024. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 3, 2025, and sworn in as AAG by Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 7, 2025.
Prior to joining the Division, Ms. Dhillon founded both the Dhillon Law Group, Inc., a successful legal practice with offices in California, Florida, Virginia, and New Jersey; and the Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit organization dedicated to pursuing civil liberties legal claims. Her law practice focused on First Amendment / free speech, civil rights, and campaign and election law issues. Among her many notable cases, Ms. Dhillon brought legal challenges against the University of California, Berkeley over its free speech policy, against an Antifa organization for an assault on a conservative journalist, against several states for their restrictive responses to Covid-19, and against various large tech companies for a host of civil rights issues.
Assistant Attorney General Dhillon was born in Chandigarh, India, and lived in London before moving to The Bronx, New York. Her family ultimately settled in rural Smithfield, North Carolina. After graduating high school at age 16, Ms. Dhillon attended Dartmouth College where she became editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth Review. After earning her bachelor’s degree in Classical Studies, she attended the University of Virginia School of Law and served on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. She later clerked for the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Baltimore, Maryland.
Assistant Professor of Law, The Ohio State University - Moritz College of Law
Bridget Dooling is a nationally recognized expert on administrative law and regulatory policy. Her scholarship on regulatory matters has been or will be published in leading legal journals including the Duke Law Journal, the Administrative Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review Headnotes, the American University Law Review and The Annals of Health Law.
Professor Dooling teaches courses on legislation and regulation, administrative law and other regulatory topics. She is a Senior Fellow at the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) and recently served on the Council of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.
Prior to joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dooling was a research professor with the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center and a professor of law (by courtesy) at GW Law. Before that, Professor Dooling spent over 10 years in the federal government as a deputy chief, senior policy analyst and attorney for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
Director, GW Regulatory Studies Center & Distinguished Professor of Practice, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, The George Washington University
Susan Dudley is the Founder and Director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, established in 2009 to raise awareness of regulations’ effects and improve regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. She is also a distinguished professor of practice in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. She is past-president of the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis, a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and on the Regulatory Transparency Project Regulatory Practice Working Group. Her book, Regulation: A Primer, with Jerry Brito, is available on Amazon.com.
From April 2007 through January 2009, Professor Dudley served as the Presidentially-appointed Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and was responsible for the review of draft executive branch regulations under Executive Order 12866, the collection of federal-government-wide information under the Paperwork Reduction Act, the development and implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information policy, privacy, and statistical policy, and international regulatory cooperation efforts.
Prior to OIRA, she directed the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and taught courses on regulation at the George Mason University School of Law. Earlier in her career, Professor Dudley served as an economist at OIRA, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She was also a consultant to government and private clients at Economists Incorporated. She holds a Master of Science degree from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and a Bachelor of Science degree (summa cum laude) in Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Senior Counsel and Director of Global Regulatory Matters, ConsenSys Software
Bill Hughes is senior counsel and director of global regulatory matters for ConsenSys Software, the leading Ethereum blockchain software company. Bill focuses on the diverse and ever evolving crypto global regulatory landscape, and the legal and public policy issues with which ConsenSys and the broader crypto ecosystem is grappling.
Bill joined ConsenSys after serving as an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, where he managed, among other things, the Department’s work on prospective regulations, legislative proposals, and policies across a broad spectrum of legal and operational issues. He worked closely with the White House and other federal agencies on regulatory and policy initiatives and coordinated DOJ’s law enforcement response to COVID-19-related consumer fraud and money laundering. Bill also has served at the White House, where he oversaw various operational components. Bill began his career by clerking for a federal judge in New York and litigating with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Bill received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law and his BA from Vanderbilt University.
Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School
Professor Pierce is author of over twenty books and 130 articles on administrative law, government regulation, and the effects of various forms of government intervention on the performance of markets. His books and articles have been cited in hundreds of judicial opinions, including over a dozen opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance, American Enterprise Institute; Executive Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. He also directs the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
He writes on regulation and constitutional government for a variety of publications. He practiced law in Washington, D.C., after clerking for the D.C. Circuit's Judge David Sentelle. He also has been chairman of the ABA's Administrative Law Section.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court.
Assistant Professor of Law, Liberty University School of Law
Eric Bolinder joined Liberty University as an Assistant Professor of Law after a 10-year career in public interest litigation, working both as counsel at Cause of Action Institute and managing policy counsel at Americans for Prosperity Foundation.
Most notably, Professor Bolinder argued Loper Bright at the D.C. Circuit and was part of the team that took it from the district court to the Supreme Court. In 2024, the Supreme Court decided Loper Bright, overturning the 40-year precedent of Chevron deference. Professor Bolinder was also part of a team that successfully defended an FTC claim for equitable relief at trial, resulting in no monetary judgment against his clients.
At Cause of Action Institute, Professor Bolinder litigated exclusively against the federal government on both plaintiff actions challenging government regulations and as defense counsel in an agency enforcement proceeding.
At Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Professor Bolinder drove community efforts to plan engagement with strategic litigation opportunities. He also led a team dedicated to government oversight: filing FOIA requests and litigation, connecting with Hill staff, and producing investigative reports.
Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Trent McCotter is a partner with Boyden Gray PLLC. He previously served as Deputy Associate Attorney General of the United States and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Mr. McCotter maintains an extensive appellate practice. He has considerable experience identifying and briefing cases that draw the Supreme Court’s attention, having persuaded the Court to grant certiorari in numerous cases raising issues of sovereignty, constitutional rights, due process, and criminal law. He has authored and submitted over 60 briefs at the Court.
He has also personally argued more than fifteen federal appeals across the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, Federal, and D.C. Circuits—including once arguing three separate appeals in just four days. He has also twice argued before the 17-judge en banc Fifth Circuit. He has been counsel in over 50 other appeals raising matters from FOIA and the APA to constitutional rights and statutory construction.
As Deputy Associate Attorney General, Mr. McCotter oversaw DOJ’s Civil Appellate and Federal Programs branches, which are responsible for defending nearly all major litigation against the federal government. During his three years as a federal trial attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia’s “Rocket Docket,” Mr. McCotter won the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.
During his DOJ tenures, Mr. McCotter also assisted with the confirmations of two Supreme Court justices and over a dozen lower-court judges.
Mr. McCotter served as an inaugural clerk to the Hon. Steven J. Menashi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and also clerked for the Hon. R. Lanier Anderson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Vice President, Practice Groups, The Federalist Society
Senior Advisor to the Governor, State of Florida
Eric Soskin is the team leader for Florida’s DOGE initiative, identifying wasteful and unnecessary spending within the state government, local governments, state colleges, and universities as Senior Advisor to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He previously served in the federal government as Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation, as Senior Trial Counsel and Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice.
In extending the DOGE mission to Florida, Gov. DeSantis and Mr. Soskin are assuring that citizens receive efficient and effective government at all levels of our federal system, as taxpayers are entitled to expect. Florida has long been a leader in efficient state government, relying on the fewest state employees per capita to deliver government services with excellence and reliability. Nevertheless, there is more to be done to take advantage of this inspiring moment of public enthusiasm for government reform efforts.
Mr. Soskin was previously nominated by President Trump, and confirmed by the Senate, as the 7th Inspector General of the Department of Transportation. As IG, he provided oversight to the programs and operations of DOT, guiding audits that identified improvements to the Department’s efficiency and effectiveness as well as opportunities to combat waste and fraud. He also led DOT’s principal law enforcement component, with over 100 federal law enforcement officers investigating crimes against America’s transportation networks. While serving, he introduced mandatory training for law enforcement agents in the First and Second Amendments, and educated all agency staff in the U.S. Constitution and highlights from American history. When President Trump removed nearly all then-serving IGs in 2025, Mr. Soskin filed an amicus brief in support of the President’s authority to do so, explaining why IGs should be treated as principal officers for whom statutory removal restrictions cannot be constitutional.
During 14 years at the Department of Justice, Mr. Soskin specialized in constitutional and administrative law, representing the President, Cabinet officials and agencies, and law enforcement in district court. His work included defending President Trump’s Executive Orders on immigration, the public-charge rule, and actions to assert the state secrets privilege and other executive privileges. Mr. Soskin also served as one of DOJ’s leading experts in Second Amendment and firearms litigation and spent four years defending habeas petitions brought by Al Qaeda terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay. He also taught trial advocacy, deposition practice, and received the Attorney General’s 2nd highest award for his work on Supreme Court confirmations.
Mr. Soskin graduated from Williams College and Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Paul S. Diamond of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Philip Wallach is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies America’s separation of powers, with a focus on regulatory policy issues and the relationship between Congress and the administrative state.
In his latest book Why Congress (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dr. Wallach defends the centrality of Congress in America’s constitutional system, traces the roots of current dysfunction, and suggests how the institution might be restored.
Before joining AEI, Dr. Wallach was a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, where he authored To the Edge: Legality, Legitimacy, and the Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2015). He was later affiliated with the R Street Institute and served as a fellow with the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress in 2019.
Dr. Wallach’s scholarly and popular work has been published widely, including in the publications of the Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets, Studies in American Political Development, Fortune, National Affairs, National Review, Law & Liberty, Los Angeles Times, RealClearPolicy, the Bulwark, the Hill, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. A frequent conference participant, he has lectured at William & Mary, the University of Oregon, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, among others.
Dr. Wallach received a master’s and doctorate in politics from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University’s College of Social Studies.
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Closing Address
Harmeet K. Dhillon
Featuring: Hon. Harmeet K. Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Justice
Plenary 4: The Art of Deregulation: Executive Orders and Limited Government
Bridget Dooling, Susan E. Dudley, William C. Hughes, Richard J. Pierce, Adam White
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Plenary 3: The Constitutionality and Economics of Presidential Tariffs and Impoundment
Eric R. Bolinder, Trent McCotter, Elizabeth Slattery, Eric J. Soskin, Philip A. Wallach
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