Vice President of Domestic and Economic Policy, The Heritage Foundation
Roger Severino is Vice President of Economic and Domestic Policy, and the Joseph C. and Elizabeth A. Anderlik Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
Severino is a national authority on civil rights, conscience and religious freedom, the administrative state, and information privacy, particularly as applied to health care law and policy. Find his tweets at @RogerSeverino_.
Severino spearheaded the HHS Accountability Project while a Senior Fellow at EPPC from 2021 to 2023. Previously, Severino was Director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, where he led a team of over 250 staff enforcing our nation’s civil rights, conscience and religious freedom, and health information privacy laws. He served from 2017 to 2021 and was the longest-serving OCR director of the past three decades.
Prior to joining HHS, Severino served for two years as Director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at Heritage, advocating for life, family, and religious-freedom policies. Before that, he was a trial attorney for seven years at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division where he enforced the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Severino started his legal career at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, where he was Legal Counsel and Chief Operations Officer and defended the rights of people of all faiths under federal and international law.
Severino has been profiled in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill and has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS, among others. In 2020, The New York Times dubbed him and his wife Carrie, “a conservative power couple” to be reckoned with.
Severino holds a JD from Harvard Law School, a master’s degree in public policy, with highest distinction, from Carnegie Mellon University, and a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Southern California. He was appointed by President Trump to the Administrative Conference of the United States and is a member of the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Virginia bars.
As OCR director, Severino founded the federal government’s first division dedicated exclusively to conscience and religious freedom compliance and enforcement. He enforced the Weldon Amendment for the first time against a state (California) after it coerced families and religious organizations into paying for abortion insurance coverage, leading to a $200 million federal funding disallowance. He also enforced laws protecting pro-life pregnancy resource centers from discrimination by states hostile to their message and enforced laws prohibiting forced participation in abortions by medical professionals.
With respect to civil rights, Severino protected older persons and people with disabilities from being denied life-saving care due to discriminatory “quality of life” judgments, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also achieved a landmark sexual harassment resolution with Michigan State University in the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual assault scandal and protected the rights of non-English speakers to have equal access to health and human services.
In the area of health privacy, he secured the largest HIPAA monetary settlement in history and achieved the largest number of enforcement resolutions both in a single year and across four years. He also facilitated the transformational use of Skype, Zoom, and Facetime for delivery of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
His regulatory reform activities resulted in a comprehensive conscience protection regulation and proposed a life-affirming disability rights regulation. He achieved regulatory savings of $3.6 billion in health care industry costs over five years and identified and proposed an additional $3.2 billion in cost savings from the repeal of ineffective and unnecessary regulatory burdens.
Severino is a Spanish speaker who teaches salsa and west coast swing in his spare time.
CFO and Co-founder, Flytenow, Inc.
Alan is the CFO and Co-founder of Flytenow, Inc., a ridesharing service for small planes. Flytenow was admitted to Y Combinator, an American seed accelerator, which Fast Company has called "the world's most powerful start-up incubator".
Alan received his MBA and JD from Northeastern University in 2014. Prior to launching Flytenow, Alan served as Counsel to Carbonite, Inc. (NASDAQ: CARB) an online data backup company headquartered in Boston, MA and later, as Vice President, Finance & Strategy at Bannerman, a technology-enabled security company.
Alan earned his private pilot’s license in 2009.
He lives in San Francisco, CA.
Professor of Law and Public Policy, Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law
Greg McNeal is an award winning entrepreneur, professor, and investor. He co-founded AirMap, a multinational aerospace and defense company honored as one of the “World’s Most Innovative Companies” by Fast Company and ranked as an Inc.com 25 Most Disruptive Company. The company also received a Los Angeles Business Journal Innovation Award, and a Consumer Electronics Show “Innovation Award.” The company was acquired in 2021.
He invests in and advises companies and entrepreneurs in SAAS, Defense, AI, and entertainment. The companies he founded or serves on the corporate board of have raised over $100 million in funding with his direct participation in the process. Those investors include Microsoft, Flexport, Sony, Qualcomm, Rakuten, Baidu, Airbus, and top global financial services and venture capital funds including Greycroft, Social Capital, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Bullpen Capital, Bay Bridge Ventures, Teamworthy Ventures, Operate Studio, TenOneTen, Temasek, Macquarie Group, Graph Ventures and many others. The companies he advises have raised substantially more funding, in part due to his advice and mentorship.
He is a tenured Professor of Law and Public Policy at Pepperdine University and a faculty member with the Palmer Center for Entrepreneurship and the Law and teaches courses in technology, public policy, internet, and privacy law.
As a public policy and legal expert, Greg has worked with the White House, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and independent regulatory agencies on matters related to technology, law and policy. He has on multiple occasions testified before Congress and state legislatures about entrepreneurship and emerging technology and has aided state legislators, cities, municipalities, and executive branch officials in drafting legislation and ordinances related to technological advances and has been appointed by Cabinet officials to serve on Federal Rulemaking Committees.
He is a frequent keynote speaker at industry events and academic conferences related to technology, law, and public policy. He advises venture capital firms and other investors, start-ups, law enforcement, consulting firms, and Fortune 500 companies about the legal and regulatory issues associated with emerging technologies.
He regularly appears on television and radio to discuss technology and business, wrote a column on business and technology for Forbes and has authored Op-Eds for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Washington Times, among others. In his early career he worked on national security, international criminal law and counterterrorism matters and served as an Army officer.
Senior Director of Strategy and Research, The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University
Christopher Koopman is the Senior Director of Strategy and Research at The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University. He previously served as a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Technology Policy Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He specializes in regulation, competition, and innovation. His research and commentary has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg,and NPR. He is also a contributor at The Hill, and was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 2016 for law and policy.
Koopman earned his J.D. from Ave Maria University and his LL.M. in law and economics at George Mason University where he now teaches in both the economics department and the George Mason University School of Law.
Vice President for Litigation & General Counsel, Goldwater Institute
Jon Riches is the Vice President for Litigation for the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and General Counsel for the Institute. He litigates in federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, regulatory reform, free speech, taxpayer protections, public labor issues, government transparency, and school choice, among others.
Jon has developed and authored several pieces of legislation, including the landmark Right to Earn a Living Act, which provides some of the greatest protections in the country to job-seekers and entrepreneurs facing arbitrary licensing regulations. He also developed legislation eliminating deference to administrative agencies in Arizona—a first-of-its-kind regulatory reform that can serve as a model for the rest of the country.
His work at the Institute has been covered by national media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CBS This Morning, Bloomberg News, and Politico. Jon is also a member of the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project: State and Local Working Group.
Prior to joining the Goldwater Institute, Jon served on active duty in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. While on active duty, Jon represented hundreds of clients, litigated dozens of court-martial cases, and advised commanders on a vast array of legal issues.
He previously clerked for Sen. Jon Kyl on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, worked for the Rules Committee in the Arizona State Senate, and clerked in the Office of Counsel to the President at the White House. Jon received his B.A. from Boston College, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D. from the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law.
Jon served as a presidentially appointed Panel Member on the Federal Service Impasses Panel. He is an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University School of Law. Jon is a native of Phoenix.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig, LLP
Dominic E. Draye has litigated at every level of the state and federal judiciary—from state trial court to the Supreme Court of the United States. His practice focuses on constitutional, regulatory, and environmental matters, and he has represented clients in both the public and private sectors. In the federal appellate courts, Mr. Draye has represented clients in the Second, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits.
Before joining Greenberg, Mr. Draye served as the Solicitor General of Arizona, where he briefed and argued the State’s highest-profile civil and criminal appeals and served as lead counsel for several multi-state coalitions litigating over agency rulemaking in the D.C. Circuit. Prior to government service, Mr. Draye was a litigator in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where his practice focused on legal issues and appeals.
Mr. Draye is a sought-after speaker on topics of administrative and constitutional law. He clerked for Hon. Edith H. Jones on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Assistant Attorney General, Colorado Attorney General's Office
Senior Attorney, DC, Pacific Legal Foundation
Steve Simpson joined PLF in 2019 to head up its Separation of Powers practice group.
Steve’s career in public interest law started at the Institute for Justice in 2001, where he litigated free speech, campaign finance, and economic liberty cases. Among other high-profile cases in which Steve was involved, he was co-counsel in Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, IJ’s successful Supreme Court challenge to Arizona’s public financing law for political campaigns. He was the lead litigator in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, a joint effort between IJ and the Institute for Free Speech that led to the creation of super PACs. And he was co-counsel in Swedenburg v. Kelly, IJ’s successful Supreme Court challenge to New York’s ban on the interstate shipping of wine.
In 2013, Steve moved into the policy arena as the Ayn Rand Institute’s director of Legal Studies, where he spent five years writing and speaking on a wide variety of legal and cultural issues. From there, he moved back into law as senior litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance in Washington, D.C.
Steve has spoken and written on a wide variety of legal and policy issues. He has testified in Congress and briefed congressional staffers. He has been interviewed on scores of television and radio programs, including PBS News Hour, Stossel, and The Rubin Report. His writings have appeared in many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In 2014, Steve was a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. He is the editor of Defending Free Speech (ARI Press, 2016).
Steve earned his law degree magna cum laude from New York Law School in 1994. Following law school, he clerked for a federal district judge in the Southern District of Florida and spent several years as a litigator at Shearman & Sterling.
When he’s not at work or spending time with his wife and three daughters, Steve can usually be found mucking around in the woods at his cabin on Shenandoah Mountain.
Joseph Tartakovsky, Author of The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America's Supreme Law.
Joseph Tartakovsky is author of The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America’s Supreme Law (2018) and the former Deputy Solicitor General of Nevada. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
Judge Tymkovich, of Denver, Colorado, was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, and confirmed in April 2003. On October 1, 2015 he became Chief Circuit Judge and held this position until October 2022. He was Chair of the US Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources from 2011 to 2015. Since 2008 he has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Election Law. He is a member of the Doyle Inn of Court, the American Law Institute, and the International Society of Barristers. Since he joined the Circuit, Judge Tymkovich has hosted judicial delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, and has also represented the United States in programs at Kiev and Yalta in Ukraine.
Distinguished Fellow and Director of Forum on Law, Culture & Society, NYU Law School
Thane Rosenbaum is an essayist, law professor, and author of the novels, How Sweet It Is!, The Stranger Within Sarah Stein, The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible. His articles, reviews and essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Haaretz, Huffington Post and Daily Beast, among other national publications.
He moderates an annual series of discussions on culture, world events and politics at the 92nd Street Ycalled The Talk Show.
He is a Distinguished Fellow at New York University School of Law where he directs the Forum on Law, Culture & Society.
He is the author of Payback: The Case for Revenge and The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right. He is the editor of the anthology, Law Lit, from Atticus Finch to "The Practice,": A Collection of Great Writing about the Law. His forthcoming book is entitled The High Cost of Free Speech: Rethinking the First Amendment.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig, LLP
Dominic E. Draye has litigated at every level of the state and federal judiciary—from state trial court to the Supreme Court of the United States. His practice focuses on constitutional, regulatory, and environmental matters, and he has represented clients in both the public and private sectors. In the federal appellate courts, Mr. Draye has represented clients in the Second, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits.
Before joining Greenberg, Mr. Draye served as the Solicitor General of Arizona, where he briefed and argued the State’s highest-profile civil and criminal appeals and served as lead counsel for several multi-state coalitions litigating over agency rulemaking in the D.C. Circuit. Prior to government service, Mr. Draye was a litigator in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where his practice focused on legal issues and appeals.
Mr. Draye is a sought-after speaker on topics of administrative and constitutional law. He clerked for Hon. Edith H. Jones on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Assistant Attorney General, Colorado Attorney General's Office
Senior Attorney, DC, Pacific Legal Foundation
Steve Simpson joined PLF in 2019 to head up its Separation of Powers practice group.
Steve’s career in public interest law started at the Institute for Justice in 2001, where he litigated free speech, campaign finance, and economic liberty cases. Among other high-profile cases in which Steve was involved, he was co-counsel in Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, IJ’s successful Supreme Court challenge to Arizona’s public financing law for political campaigns. He was the lead litigator in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, a joint effort between IJ and the Institute for Free Speech that led to the creation of super PACs. And he was co-counsel in Swedenburg v. Kelly, IJ’s successful Supreme Court challenge to New York’s ban on the interstate shipping of wine.
In 2013, Steve moved into the policy arena as the Ayn Rand Institute’s director of Legal Studies, where he spent five years writing and speaking on a wide variety of legal and cultural issues. From there, he moved back into law as senior litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance in Washington, D.C.
Steve has spoken and written on a wide variety of legal and policy issues. He has testified in Congress and briefed congressional staffers. He has been interviewed on scores of television and radio programs, including PBS News Hour, Stossel, and The Rubin Report. His writings have appeared in many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In 2014, Steve was a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. He is the editor of Defending Free Speech (ARI Press, 2016).
Steve earned his law degree magna cum laude from New York Law School in 1994. Following law school, he clerked for a federal district judge in the Southern District of Florida and spent several years as a litigator at Shearman & Sterling.
When he’s not at work or spending time with his wife and three daughters, Steve can usually be found mucking around in the woods at his cabin on Shenandoah Mountain.
Joseph Tartakovsky, Author of The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America's Supreme Law.
Joseph Tartakovsky is author of The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America’s Supreme Law (2018) and the former Deputy Solicitor General of Nevada. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
Judge Tymkovich, of Denver, Colorado, was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, and confirmed in April 2003. On October 1, 2015 he became Chief Circuit Judge and held this position until October 2022. He was Chair of the US Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources from 2011 to 2015. Since 2008 he has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Election Law. He is a member of the Doyle Inn of Court, the American Law Institute, and the International Society of Barristers. Since he joined the Circuit, Judge Tymkovich has hosted judicial delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, and has also represented the United States in programs at Kiev and Yalta in Ukraine.
Distinguished Fellow and Director of Forum on Law, Culture & Society, NYU Law School
Thane Rosenbaum is an essayist, law professor, and author of the novels, How Sweet It Is!, The Stranger Within Sarah Stein, The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible. His articles, reviews and essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Haaretz, Huffington Post and Daily Beast, among other national publications.
He moderates an annual series of discussions on culture, world events and politics at the 92nd Street Ycalled The Talk Show.
He is a Distinguished Fellow at New York University School of Law where he directs the Forum on Law, Culture & Society.
He is the author of Payback: The Case for Revenge and The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right. He is the editor of the anthology, Law Lit, from Atticus Finch to "The Practice,": A Collection of Great Writing about the Law. His forthcoming book is entitled The High Cost of Free Speech: Rethinking the First Amendment.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Professor Richard L. Hasen is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Hasen is a nationally recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, and is co-author of a leading casebook on election law.
From 2001-2010, he served (with Dan Lowenstein) as founding co-editor of the quarterly peer-reviewed publication, Election Law Journal. He is the author of over 100 articles on election law issues, published in numerous journals including the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review and Supreme Court Review. He was elected to The American Law Institute in 2009 and served as an Adviser on ALI’s law reform project, Principles of Election Law: Resolution of Election Disputes.
Professor Hasen was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal in 2013, and one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California in 2005 and 2016 by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal.
His op-eds and commentaries have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, and Slate. Hasen also writes the often-quoted Election Law Blog, which the ABA Journal named to its “Blawg 100 Hall of Fame” in 2015. His newest book, The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption, will be published in 2018 by Yale University Press.
Professor Hasen holds a B.A. degree (with highest honors) from UC Berkeley, and a J.D., M.A., and Ph.D. (Political Science) from UCLA. After law school, Hasen clerked for the Honorable David R. Thompson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then worked as a civil appellate lawyer at the Encino firm Horvitz and Levy.
From 1994-1997, Hasen taught at the Chicago-Kent College of Law and from 1998-2011 he taught at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where he was named the William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law in 2005. He joined the UC Irvine School of Law faculty in July 2011, and is a faculty member of the UC Irvine Jack W. Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy.
Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Joseph R. Rose is an associate in the San Francisco office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He practices in the firm’s Litigation Department, focusing on white collar defense, antitrust, and appellate litigation.
Representative matters include:
Mr. Rose also assists with internal investigations, and has achieved favorable resolution of government and regulatory inquiries on behalf of technology companies and financial institutions. Responsibilities include factual investigation, preparing for and conducting witness and employee interviews, managing document review and production, and drafting proffers and other reports to regulators.
Mr. Rose received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2011, where he was Production Editor of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, co-director of Berkeley Law’s McBaine Moot Court Competition, and a member of the Board of Advocates (moot court). Prior to law school, Mr. Rose worked as a Paralegal Specialist at the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, assisting in grand jury investigations, civil merger reviews, and managing and presenting exhibits at trial. He earned his B.A. in Law, Letters and Society, with special honors, from the University of Chicago in 2005.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Professor Richard L. Hasen is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Hasen is a nationally recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, and is co-author of a leading casebook on election law.
From 2001-2010, he served (with Dan Lowenstein) as founding co-editor of the quarterly peer-reviewed publication, Election Law Journal. He is the author of over 100 articles on election law issues, published in numerous journals including the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review and Supreme Court Review. He was elected to The American Law Institute in 2009 and served as an Adviser on ALI’s law reform project, Principles of Election Law: Resolution of Election Disputes.
Professor Hasen was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal in 2013, and one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California in 2005 and 2016 by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal.
His op-eds and commentaries have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, and Slate. Hasen also writes the often-quoted Election Law Blog, which the ABA Journal named to its “Blawg 100 Hall of Fame” in 2015. His newest book, The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption, will be published in 2018 by Yale University Press.
Professor Hasen holds a B.A. degree (with highest honors) from UC Berkeley, and a J.D., M.A., and Ph.D. (Political Science) from UCLA. After law school, Hasen clerked for the Honorable David R. Thompson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then worked as a civil appellate lawyer at the Encino firm Horvitz and Levy.
From 1994-1997, Hasen taught at the Chicago-Kent College of Law and from 1998-2011 he taught at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where he was named the William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law in 2005. He joined the UC Irvine School of Law faculty in July 2011, and is a faculty member of the UC Irvine Jack W. Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy.
Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Joseph R. Rose is an associate in the San Francisco office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He practices in the firm’s Litigation Department, focusing on white collar defense, antitrust, and appellate litigation.
Representative matters include:
Mr. Rose also assists with internal investigations, and has achieved favorable resolution of government and regulatory inquiries on behalf of technology companies and financial institutions. Responsibilities include factual investigation, preparing for and conducting witness and employee interviews, managing document review and production, and drafting proffers and other reports to regulators.
Mr. Rose received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2011, where he was Production Editor of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, co-director of Berkeley Law’s McBaine Moot Court Competition, and a member of the Board of Advocates (moot court). Prior to law school, Mr. Rose worked as a Paralegal Specialist at the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, assisting in grand jury investigations, civil merger reviews, and managing and presenting exhibits at trial. He earned his B.A. in Law, Letters and Society, with special honors, from the University of Chicago in 2005.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
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.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Sandra Segal Ikuta was confirmed as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 19, 2006. She filled a judgeship vacant since September 1, 2000, when Chief Judge Emeritus James R. Browning took senior status.
Before becoming a U.S. Circuit Judge, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to be deputy secretary and general counsel of the California Resources Agency in January 2004.
Prior to her political appointment, Judge Ikuta was a partner at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She joined the law firm in 1990 as an associate and became a partner in 1997. She specialized in environmental and natural resources law and co-chaired the firm's environmental practice group. She previously served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 1989-90, and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1988-89.
Prior to her legal career, Judge Ikuta took an unorthodox career path, which included serving as the first female editor-in-chief of a national martial arts magazine.
She received her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and a Master of Science from Columbia University School of Journalism. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.
In addition to her duties as an active U.S. Circuit Judge, Judge Ikuta was an appointed member of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.
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.
Assistant Clinical Professor of Law & Director, Religious Freedom Clinic, Harvard Law School
Josh is the Director of Harvard Law School’s Religious Freedom Clinic, a pro bono program that gives students a hands-on, supervised experience representing a diverse group of clients in First Amendment and religious freedom cases.
Before entering clinical teaching, Josh clerked for the Honorable Cormac J. Carney of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and the Honorable Jay S. Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In addition to serving as a staff attorney in the clinic’s inaugural semester in 2020, he was previously a trial litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson and an appellate litigator at Horvitz & Levy, where he specialized in representing individual and organizational clients in both commercial and civil rights cases, with particular expertise in First Amendment and religious freedom issues.
While in private practice, Josh received a Daily Journal 2022 California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) award, was twice named a “One to Watch” in appellate law by Best Lawyers, and argued in numerous appellate courts and courts of last resort, including twice before the California Supreme Court. His amicus brief for Jewish schools in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court was quoted by Justice Kavanaugh at oral argument.
Josh earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University and graduated first in his class from UCLA School of Law.
President, Constitutional Accountability Center
Elizabeth is Constitutional Accountability Center’s President. From 2008-2016, she served as CAC's Chief Counsel, representing the Center as well as clients including preeminent constitutional scholars and historians, state and local government organizations, and groups such as the League of Women Voters and the AARP. She frequently participates in Supreme Court litigation and her legal brief writing has been recognized as “exemplary” by the Green Bag Almanac & Reader. Elizabeth has also argued several important cases in the federal courts of appeals on a range of issues, including immigration law, habeas corpus, and sovereign immunity. She joined CAC from private practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in San Francisco, where she was an attorney working with former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan in the firm’s Supreme Court/appellate practice. Previously, Elizabeth was a supervising attorney and teaching fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center appellate litigation clinic, a law clerk for Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and a lawyer at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a law firm in Washington. She has appeared as a legal expert for NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, Current TV, and NPR, among other outlets. Elizabeth has been quoted extensively in the print media and is a regular contributor to the ABA’s Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, Politico, CNN.com, Slate, and on numerous political and legal blogs, such as Huffington Post, SCOTUSblog, and ACSblog. She has also published in the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Syracuse Law Review, The Cato Institute’s Supreme Court Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law. Elizabeth is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Director of Litigation, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
A native of the Philadelphia area, Marieke graduated summa cum laude from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2004. Marieke continued her studies at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, graduating magna cum laude in 2008.
After law school, Marieke clerked for the Honorable A. Richard Caputo in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania before joining the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania as a legal fellow in 2009. She later joined the Philadelphia firm of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis as a commercial litigation associate, where she continued to work on civil rights cases on a pro bono basis, focusing primarily on the First Amendment. Right before joining FIRE, she served as a Project Coordinator for the nonprofit Resources for Human Development, where she implemented projects addressing disability discrimination and health care reform. Outside the office, she loves to be around horses and volunteers for a therapeutic riding program.
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.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Sandra Segal Ikuta was confirmed as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 19, 2006. She filled a judgeship vacant since September 1, 2000, when Chief Judge Emeritus James R. Browning took senior status.
Before becoming a U.S. Circuit Judge, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to be deputy secretary and general counsel of the California Resources Agency in January 2004.
Prior to her political appointment, Judge Ikuta was a partner at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She joined the law firm in 1990 as an associate and became a partner in 1997. She specialized in environmental and natural resources law and co-chaired the firm's environmental practice group. She previously served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 1989-90, and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1988-89.
Prior to her legal career, Judge Ikuta took an unorthodox career path, which included serving as the first female editor-in-chief of a national martial arts magazine.
She received her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and a Master of Science from Columbia University School of Journalism. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.
In addition to her duties as an active U.S. Circuit Judge, Judge Ikuta was an appointed member of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.
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.
Assistant Clinical Professor of Law & Director, Religious Freedom Clinic, Harvard Law School
Josh is the Director of Harvard Law School’s Religious Freedom Clinic, a pro bono program that gives students a hands-on, supervised experience representing a diverse group of clients in First Amendment and religious freedom cases.
Before entering clinical teaching, Josh clerked for the Honorable Cormac J. Carney of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and the Honorable Jay S. Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In addition to serving as a staff attorney in the clinic’s inaugural semester in 2020, he was previously a trial litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson and an appellate litigator at Horvitz & Levy, where he specialized in representing individual and organizational clients in both commercial and civil rights cases, with particular expertise in First Amendment and religious freedom issues.
While in private practice, Josh received a Daily Journal 2022 California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) award, was twice named a “One to Watch” in appellate law by Best Lawyers, and argued in numerous appellate courts and courts of last resort, including twice before the California Supreme Court. His amicus brief for Jewish schools in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court was quoted by Justice Kavanaugh at oral argument.
Josh earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University and graduated first in his class from UCLA School of Law.
President, Constitutional Accountability Center
Elizabeth is Constitutional Accountability Center’s President. From 2008-2016, she served as CAC's Chief Counsel, representing the Center as well as clients including preeminent constitutional scholars and historians, state and local government organizations, and groups such as the League of Women Voters and the AARP. She frequently participates in Supreme Court litigation and her legal brief writing has been recognized as “exemplary” by the Green Bag Almanac & Reader. Elizabeth has also argued several important cases in the federal courts of appeals on a range of issues, including immigration law, habeas corpus, and sovereign immunity. She joined CAC from private practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in San Francisco, where she was an attorney working with former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan in the firm’s Supreme Court/appellate practice. Previously, Elizabeth was a supervising attorney and teaching fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center appellate litigation clinic, a law clerk for Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and a lawyer at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a law firm in Washington. She has appeared as a legal expert for NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, Current TV, and NPR, among other outlets. Elizabeth has been quoted extensively in the print media and is a regular contributor to the ABA’s Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, Politico, CNN.com, Slate, and on numerous political and legal blogs, such as Huffington Post, SCOTUSblog, and ACSblog. She has also published in the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Syracuse Law Review, The Cato Institute’s Supreme Court Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law. Elizabeth is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Director of Litigation, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
A native of the Philadelphia area, Marieke graduated summa cum laude from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2004. Marieke continued her studies at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, graduating magna cum laude in 2008.
After law school, Marieke clerked for the Honorable A. Richard Caputo in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania before joining the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania as a legal fellow in 2009. She later joined the Philadelphia firm of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis as a commercial litigation associate, where she continued to work on civil rights cases on a pro bono basis, focusing primarily on the First Amendment. Right before joining FIRE, she served as a Project Coordinator for the nonprofit Resources for Human Development, where she implemented projects addressing disability discrimination and health care reform. Outside the office, she loves to be around horses and volunteers for a therapeutic riding program.
Conscience and Religious Freedom Division
Roger Severino
Religious Liberties Practice Group Teleforum
On January 18, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the creation of...
Topics
Outstanding New Article on “Disparate Impact” and School Discipline
Gail Heriot and Alison Somin have written an important article that will appear in the Texas...
Regulating Planesharing: Exploring Common Carriage and Expense Sharing
Alan Guichard, Gregory S. McNeal, Christopher L. Koopman, Jonathan Riches
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Video
The legal fate of Flytenow, a ridesharing platform for small planes, was sealed by the...
Topics
Docket Watch: Cooper v. Berger
In State ex rel. Cooper v. Berger, No. 52PA17-2 (N.C. Jan. 26, 2018), the Supreme...
Free Speech Absolutism: Have We Gone Too Far?
Dominic Draye, Joseph A. Peters, Steve Simpson, Joseph Tartakovsky, Timothy M. Tymkovich, Thane Rosenbaum
2018 Annual Western Chapters Conference
No clause in the Constitution draws more judicial encomia to liberty than the Free Speech...
Free Speech Absolutism: Have We Gone Too Far?
Dominic Draye, Joseph A. Peters, Steve Simpson, Joseph Tartakovsky, Timothy M. Tymkovich, Thane Rosenbaum
2018 Annual Western Chapters Conference
No clause in the Constitution draws more judicial encomia to liberty than the Free Speech...
Donor privacy and Campaign-Related Speech
Carlos T. Bea, Richard Hasen, Joseph Rose, Bradley A. Smith
2018 Annual Western Chapters Conference
With federal proposals like the DISCLOSE Act sidelined by Republicans in Congress, some state governments...
Donor privacy and Campaign-Related Speech
Carlos T. Bea, Richard Hasen, Joseph Rose, Bradley A. Smith
2018 Annual Western Chapters Conference
With federal proposals like the DISCLOSE Act sidelined by Republicans in Congress, some state governments...
The First Amendment and Campus Speech
Harmeet K. Dhillon, Sandra Segal Ikuta, Michael W. McConnell, Joshua C. McDaniel, Elizabeth B. Wydra, Marieke Beck-Coon
2018 Annual Western Chapters Conference
Free speech on college campuses has been under attack in recent years, increasingly from students...
The First Amendment and Campus Speech
Harmeet K. Dhillon, Sandra Segal Ikuta, Michael W. McConnell, Joshua C. McDaniel, Elizabeth B. Wydra, Marieke Beck-Coon
2018 Annual Western Chapters Conference
Free speech on college campuses has been under attack in recent years, increasingly from students...