Managing Director & Head of Global Policy and Public Investment, DigitalBridge Investment Management
Jonathan S. Adelstein is a Managing Director and Head of Global Policy and Public Investment at DigitalBridge Investment Management. In this role, Mr. Adelstein works with all DigitalBridge portfolio companies on public policy and strategic regulatory matters and reviews policy impacts on potential investments.
Prior to joining DigitalBridge, Mr. Adelstein was President and CEO of the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA), where he represented over 200 businesses that build, own, and operate wireless infrastructure, including infrastructure owners, developers, carriers, and professional service firms.
Prior to WIA, Mr. Adelstein was nominated to positions by both President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously for each by the U.S. Senate. Under President Obama, Mr. Adelstein headed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service as Administrator. There, he led the investment of nearly $7 billion under the Recovery Act in rural broadband and water infrastructure and oversaw a $60 billion loan portfolio in rural electric, telecommunications, and water infrastructure. Under President Obama, Mr. Adelstein was appointed to the White House National Science and Technology Council, which coordinates science and technology policy across the Federal government, and the White House Business Council, leading Council meetings with business leaders across America.
Mr. Adelstein was nominated by President Bush and served as Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2002 to 2009. At the FCC, he worked to achieve bipartisan progress on issues including spectrum auctions, broadband expansion, widening access to the Internet and media diversity.
Before the FCC, Mr. Adelstein served at the U.S. Senate, in a number of legislative staff positions, culminating as a senior policy advisor to the Senate Majority Leader.
Mr. Adelstein received an M.A. in History and a B.A., with Distinction, in Political Science from Stanford University. He instructed undergraduates in history as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and a Teaching Assistant at Stanford University. He is a graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover.
Senior Counsel Legal and Government Affairs, Sprint
Mr. Foster is a Senior Counsel, Government Affairs for the Sprint Corporation with a portfolio that includes Spectrum and International Regulatory matters. Prior to joining Sprint, Mr. Foster served for 11 years at the Federal Communications Commission in a variety of positions, the last of which being Assistant Bureau Chief of the International Bureau. Mr. Foster holds a B.S. from Syracuse University, a M.B.A. from The George Washington University and a J.D. from the Tulane School of Law.
Partner, Cooley
Rob McDowell advises telecommunications, media and technology clients on their most significant regulatory, legal and business matters. As a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a highly regarded industry leader, Rob has been at the forefront of the most complex and groundbreaking issues facing telecommunications.
Mr. McDowell was first appointed to the FCC by President George W. Bush in 2006 and again by President Obama in 2009. He was unanimously confirmed both times by the US Senate. During his tenure, Mr. McDowell led efforts to expand consumer access to spectrum through his work on the two largest wireless auctions in US history at the time, played a key role in the 2009 digital television transition and led efforts to establish the first federal civil rights rule in a generation by creating a ban on racially discriminatory practices in broadcast advertising. He also worked extensively on several large and complex mergers, including Sirius/XM and Comcast/NBC-Universal.
He is an advocate for internet freedom, serving on the US delegation to the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications and exposing an international bid to regulate vital aspects of the Internet through multilateral treaty-based organizations. Mr. McDowell authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opposing multilateral internet regulation that led to a resolution passed unanimously in the House and Senate, as well as the ultimate defeat of the international bid at a treaty negation in Dubai later that year.
Prior to the FCC, Mr. McDowell was senior vice president for CompTel, the Competitive Telecommunications Association, where he led advocacy efforts before several government agencies, the White House and Congress.
Mr. McDowell is often called upon for speaking engagements and frequently appears on TV and radio. He has written opinion pieces for many high-profile publications, including the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
General Counsel, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
Mr. Ramsay is the General Counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. NARUC was established in 1889 and is composed of the governmental agencies of the fifty states engaged in, inter alia, the regulation of telecommunications services. As General Counsel, Mr. Ramsay manages the NARUC Policy Advocacy Department covering all policy, regulatory, and legislative matters. He is also responsible for addressing all association-related legal issues – both general law and regulatory.
During his 27 years with the association, Mr. Ramsay has always had first-chair responsibility for all the association's telecommunications litigation-related activity. This includes representing NARUC's positions (1) before the Federal Communications Commission, other federal agencies, and in the courts, and (2) in discussions with, inter alia, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the European Community, and various industry associations. Mr. Ramsay also represents the association’s interests in other fora serving, e.g., as a member of both the Separations and Universal Service Federal-State Joint Board staffs and the Section 706 Federal State Joint Conference.
Before joining NARUC, Mr. Ramsay acquired significant experience in public utility regulation as an associate with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Grove, Jaskiewicz, Gilliam and Colbert. Prior to private practice, Mr. Ramsay was employed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for three years as a rates attorney.
Mr. Ramsay received his B.S. in Chemistry in 1978 from Mississippi College, his J.D. in 1985 from Louisiana State University, and is licensed to practice (1) in both civilian and common law jurisdictions, {including the District of Columbia and Louisiana} and (2) before the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States and the bars of 10 of the 13 United States Courts of Appeal.
Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor John C. Harrison is the James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He joined the faculty at University of Virginia in 1993 as an associate professor of law after a distinguished career with the U.S. Department of Justice. His teaching subjects include constitutional history, federal courts, remedies, corporations, civil procedure, legislation and property. In 2008 he was on leave from the Law School to serve as counselor on international law in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State.
A 1977 graduate of the University of Virginia, Harrison earned his law degree in 1980 at Yale, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal and editor and articles editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order. He was an associate at Patton Boggs & Blow in Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Robert Bork on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He worked with the Department of Justice from 1983-93, serving in numerous capacities, including deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (1990-93).
Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Gary Lawson joined the University of Florida Levin College of Law faculty on July 1, 2024, after twenty-four years at Boston University School of Law and eleven years at Northwestern University School of Law. While at Boston University, he was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in 2022 – the highest faculty honor within the university. He has authored or co-authored nine editions of a textbook on administrative law, a textbook on constitutional law, five university press books, one popular press book, and more than one hundred scholarly articles on topics ranging from aspects of constitutional theory and history to the proof of legal propositions. His works have been cited in more than twenty opinions of United States Supreme Court justices. He is a founding member, and serves on the Board of Directors, of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Chair in Law, Vanderbilt Law School
Kevin M. Stack is Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University Law School. He writes on administrative law, regulation, statutory interpretation, and separation of powers. He was recognized with the ABA's 2013 Annual Scholarship Award for the best published work in administrative law for his Michigan Law Review article, “Interpreting Regulations." He is co-author (with Lisa S. Bressman and Edward L. Rubin) of The Regulatory State (Aspen Publishers, second edition 2013), a casebook on statutes and administrative lawmaking. His work has appeared in numerous law reviews, including the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and George Washington Law Review. He joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 and served as associate dean for research from 2008 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2015. He also been on the faculty at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University, which he joined after practicing as an associate at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk for Judge Kimba M. Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and for Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before earning his J.D. at Yale Law School, he earned a master's degree in philosophy at Oxford University, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship, and a B.A. from Brown University.
Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor John C. Harrison is the James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He joined the faculty at University of Virginia in 1993 as an associate professor of law after a distinguished career with the U.S. Department of Justice. His teaching subjects include constitutional history, federal courts, remedies, corporations, civil procedure, legislation and property. In 2008 he was on leave from the Law School to serve as counselor on international law in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State.
A 1977 graduate of the University of Virginia, Harrison earned his law degree in 1980 at Yale, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal and editor and articles editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order. He was an associate at Patton Boggs & Blow in Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Robert Bork on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He worked with the Department of Justice from 1983-93, serving in numerous capacities, including deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (1990-93).
Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Gary Lawson joined the University of Florida Levin College of Law faculty on July 1, 2024, after twenty-four years at Boston University School of Law and eleven years at Northwestern University School of Law. While at Boston University, he was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in 2022 – the highest faculty honor within the university. He has authored or co-authored nine editions of a textbook on administrative law, a textbook on constitutional law, five university press books, one popular press book, and more than one hundred scholarly articles on topics ranging from aspects of constitutional theory and history to the proof of legal propositions. His works have been cited in more than twenty opinions of United States Supreme Court justices. He is a founding member, and serves on the Board of Directors, of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Chair in Law, Vanderbilt Law School
Kevin M. Stack is Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University Law School. He writes on administrative law, regulation, statutory interpretation, and separation of powers. He was recognized with the ABA's 2013 Annual Scholarship Award for the best published work in administrative law for his Michigan Law Review article, “Interpreting Regulations." He is co-author (with Lisa S. Bressman and Edward L. Rubin) of The Regulatory State (Aspen Publishers, second edition 2013), a casebook on statutes and administrative lawmaking. His work has appeared in numerous law reviews, including the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and George Washington Law Review. He joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 and served as associate dean for research from 2008 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2015. He also been on the faculty at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University, which he joined after practicing as an associate at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk for Judge Kimba M. Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and for Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before earning his J.D. at Yale Law School, he earned a master's degree in philosophy at Oxford University, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship, and a B.A. from Brown University.
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit
Judge Randolph was confirmed by the Senate and appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in July 1990.
Judge Randolph received his B.S. degree in 1966 from Drexel University, majoring in economics and basic engineering. At Drexel, he was president of the debate society, vice president of the Student Senate, and a member of the varsity wrestling squad. In 1969, he received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude. Judge Randolph ranked first in his law school class all three years and was managing editor of the Law Review.
After graduation, Judge Randolph served as a law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
Admitted to the California Bar in 1970 (and to the District of Columbia bar in 1973), Judge Randolph worked as Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C., 1970-1973.
After two years in private practice, Judge Randolph was named Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, a position he held from 1975-1977.
In 1979, Judge Randolph was appointed Special Counsel to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the Ethics Committee) of the United States House of Representatives, remaining in this position until 1980.
In the 1980s, Judge Randolph held a number of positions while in private practice, including Special Assistant Attorney General for the states of New Mexico (1985 90), Utah (1986-1990) and Montana (1983-1990). He also served as a Member of the Advisory Panel of the Federal Courts Study Committee.
From 1971-1990, Judge Randolph argued 23 times in the United States Supreme Court, winning 20 of his cases.
As an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center from 1974-1978 he taught courses in civil procedure and injunctions. In 1992 he taught a course in constitutional law. He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason School of Law and for the past ten years has been teaching First Amendment law. He also serves on the Judicial Advisory Board of the George Mason University Law and Economics Center.
From 1993 through 1995 Judge Randolph was a member of the Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and from 1995 to 1998 served as the Committee's chairman. He also served as the judicial liaison to the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law Section.
Judge Randolph is a member of the Board of Visitors at Drexel University Law School and was named to the “Drexel One Hundred” as a leading alumnus. In 2002 he was presented the James Wilson Award by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In November 2005 he delivered the Fifth Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Annual Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society. He has published numerous articles, the most recent of which is in the June 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Judge Randolph is married to the Honorable Eileen J. O’Connor, formerly Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. His son John Trevor Randolph is an investment banker in New York. His daughter Cynthia Lee Randolph is an artist living in San Francisco.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law; Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center; Executive Director, Project for Older Prisoners, The George Washington University Law School
Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. After a stint at Tulane Law School, Professor Turley joined the GW Law faculty in 1990, and in 1998, became the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history.
He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS). He has written more than three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals including those of Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, and Northwestern Universities, among others. He most recently completed a three-part study of the historical and constitutional evolution of the military system.
Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy; and four former U.S. Attorney Generals during the Clinton impeachment litigation. Professor Turley also has served as counsel in a variety of national security and terrorism cases, and has been ranked as one of the top 10 lawyers handling military cases.
He has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues, and is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He also is a nationally recognized legal commentator; he ranked 38th in the top 100 most cited ‘public intellectuals’ in a recent study by Judge Richard Posner and was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country.
He is a member of the USA Today board of contributors and the recipient of the “2005 Single Issue Advocate of the Year” – the annual opinion award for the Aspen Institute and The Week magazine. More than 400 of his articles on legal and policy issues regularly appear in national newspapers. He also has worked as the CBS and NBC legal analyst, respectively, during national controversies.
Professor of Government, Claremont Graduate University
Michael Uhlmann has been a professor in the Division of Politics & Economics at Claremont Graduate University since 2002. His research specializations include American presidency, executive–congressional relations, and the federal judiciary—namely, the federal administrative process and national security decision making. In addition to his regular coursework at CGU, Uhlmann teaches in and directs CGU’s Tribal Administration Certificate Program, made possible through a generous grant from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.
Uhlmann received his PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University after receiving his BA in History from Yale University and his LLB from the University of Virginia Law School. Immediately prior to joining the CGU faculty, Uhlmann served as a senior vice president of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Before that, he was a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He had also served for many years as a partner in the Washington office of Pepper, Hamilton, & Scheetz, a large international law firm, where he specialized in federal antitrust and administrative law. Concurrently held alongside his position at CGU, Uhlmann is an adjunct professor at Claremont McKenna College, teaching a variety of courses in the Department of Government.
In addition to his academic career, private legal practice, and philanthropic work, Uhlmann has had a distinguished career in government, beginning with service as a staff and committee counsel in the U.S. Senate and as assistant general counsel of the Federal Trade Commission. In 1974, following Senate confirmation, he was appointed by President Gerald Ford to be assistant attorney general for Legislative Affairs in the Department of Justice. From 1981 to 1984, he served as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and associate director of the White House Office of Policy Development. He directed legal and administrative policy for the Reagan presidential transition in 1980–1981 and chaired the Department of Justice transition team for President-Elect George H. W. Bush in 1988–1989.
Uhlmann has written for many leading newspapers and journals of opinion, including National Review, Weekly Standard, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, First Things, and Claremont Review of Books.
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit
Judge Randolph was confirmed by the Senate and appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in July 1990.
Judge Randolph received his B.S. degree in 1966 from Drexel University, majoring in economics and basic engineering. At Drexel, he was president of the debate society, vice president of the Student Senate, and a member of the varsity wrestling squad. In 1969, he received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude. Judge Randolph ranked first in his law school class all three years and was managing editor of the Law Review.
After graduation, Judge Randolph served as a law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
Admitted to the California Bar in 1970 (and to the District of Columbia bar in 1973), Judge Randolph worked as Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C., 1970-1973.
After two years in private practice, Judge Randolph was named Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, a position he held from 1975-1977.
In 1979, Judge Randolph was appointed Special Counsel to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the Ethics Committee) of the United States House of Representatives, remaining in this position until 1980.
In the 1980s, Judge Randolph held a number of positions while in private practice, including Special Assistant Attorney General for the states of New Mexico (1985 90), Utah (1986-1990) and Montana (1983-1990). He also served as a Member of the Advisory Panel of the Federal Courts Study Committee.
From 1971-1990, Judge Randolph argued 23 times in the United States Supreme Court, winning 20 of his cases.
As an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center from 1974-1978 he taught courses in civil procedure and injunctions. In 1992 he taught a course in constitutional law. He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason School of Law and for the past ten years has been teaching First Amendment law. He also serves on the Judicial Advisory Board of the George Mason University Law and Economics Center.
From 1993 through 1995 Judge Randolph was a member of the Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and from 1995 to 1998 served as the Committee's chairman. He also served as the judicial liaison to the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law Section.
Judge Randolph is a member of the Board of Visitors at Drexel University Law School and was named to the “Drexel One Hundred” as a leading alumnus. In 2002 he was presented the James Wilson Award by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In November 2005 he delivered the Fifth Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Annual Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society. He has published numerous articles, the most recent of which is in the June 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Judge Randolph is married to the Honorable Eileen J. O’Connor, formerly Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. His son John Trevor Randolph is an investment banker in New York. His daughter Cynthia Lee Randolph is an artist living in San Francisco.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law; Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center; Executive Director, Project for Older Prisoners, The George Washington University Law School
Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. After a stint at Tulane Law School, Professor Turley joined the GW Law faculty in 1990, and in 1998, became the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history.
He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS). He has written more than three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals including those of Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, and Northwestern Universities, among others. He most recently completed a three-part study of the historical and constitutional evolution of the military system.
Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy; and four former U.S. Attorney Generals during the Clinton impeachment litigation. Professor Turley also has served as counsel in a variety of national security and terrorism cases, and has been ranked as one of the top 10 lawyers handling military cases.
He has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues, and is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He also is a nationally recognized legal commentator; he ranked 38th in the top 100 most cited ‘public intellectuals’ in a recent study by Judge Richard Posner and was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country.
He is a member of the USA Today board of contributors and the recipient of the “2005 Single Issue Advocate of the Year” – the annual opinion award for the Aspen Institute and The Week magazine. More than 400 of his articles on legal and policy issues regularly appear in national newspapers. He also has worked as the CBS and NBC legal analyst, respectively, during national controversies.
Professor of Government, Claremont Graduate University
Michael Uhlmann has been a professor in the Division of Politics & Economics at Claremont Graduate University since 2002. His research specializations include American presidency, executive–congressional relations, and the federal judiciary—namely, the federal administrative process and national security decision making. In addition to his regular coursework at CGU, Uhlmann teaches in and directs CGU’s Tribal Administration Certificate Program, made possible through a generous grant from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.
Uhlmann received his PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University after receiving his BA in History from Yale University and his LLB from the University of Virginia Law School. Immediately prior to joining the CGU faculty, Uhlmann served as a senior vice president of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Before that, he was a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He had also served for many years as a partner in the Washington office of Pepper, Hamilton, & Scheetz, a large international law firm, where he specialized in federal antitrust and administrative law. Concurrently held alongside his position at CGU, Uhlmann is an adjunct professor at Claremont McKenna College, teaching a variety of courses in the Department of Government.
In addition to his academic career, private legal practice, and philanthropic work, Uhlmann has had a distinguished career in government, beginning with service as a staff and committee counsel in the U.S. Senate and as assistant general counsel of the Federal Trade Commission. In 1974, following Senate confirmation, he was appointed by President Gerald Ford to be assistant attorney general for Legislative Affairs in the Department of Justice. From 1981 to 1984, he served as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and associate director of the White House Office of Policy Development. He directed legal and administrative policy for the Reagan presidential transition in 1980–1981 and chaired the Department of Justice transition team for President-Elect George H. W. Bush in 1988–1989.
Uhlmann has written for many leading newspapers and journals of opinion, including National Review, Weekly Standard, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, First Things, and Claremont Review of Books.
Jamie Dodge is the founding director of Emory’s Institute for Complex Litigation and Mass Claims. Before teaching, Professor Dodge was in private practice with Paul Hastings and later Gibson Dunn, representing clients at any stage of the litigation process. After practicing privately, she held numerous faculty positions at Harvard Law School, the University of Georgia, and the Perking University School of Transnational Law before going to Emory. Her scholarship focuses on how the structure of procedural regimes, from aggregate litigation to alternative dispute resolution models, affects the exercise of rights and enforcement of substantive law. Her work has been published in many law review journals including Harvard Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Notre Dame Law Review. Professor Dodge graduated with a law degree from Harvard University, and received her bachelors at Dartmouth College.
Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown, Maria J. Glover specializes in civil procedure, complex litigation, and the interplay between private litigation and public regulation. She was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School before coming to Georgetown in 2012. Before teaching, she clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced in the Supreme Court Appellate practice group at Mayer Brown LLP in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt Law School. She was the recipient of the Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program Award.
Mary Nold Larimore’s primary practice concentration is in litigation, focusing on product liability litigation, the defense of pharmaceutical and drug and device manufacturers, chemical companies, toxic tort litigation and commercial litigation. Ms. Larimore has served as national, regional and local counsel in drug, device and chemical exposure litigation, as well as expert witness counsel. She regularly addresses scientific, epidemiologic and complex medical issues in multi-jurisdictional litigation. She is the first woman from Indiana to be a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, served as Chair of the Supreme Court Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, and two five-year terms by appointment of the Chief Justice. She was selected to be in The Best Lawyers® in America from 2007-2018 and in Indiana Super Lawyers from 2004-2017. Ms. Larimore received a juris doctorate from Indiana University Maurer School of Law.
Jamie Dodge is the founding director of Emory’s Institute for Complex Litigation and Mass Claims. Before teaching, Professor Dodge was in private practice with Paul Hastings and later Gibson Dunn, representing clients at any stage of the litigation process. After practicing privately, she held numerous faculty positions at Harvard Law School, the University of Georgia, and the Perking University School of Transnational Law before going to Emory. Her scholarship focuses on how the structure of procedural regimes, from aggregate litigation to alternative dispute resolution models, affects the exercise of rights and enforcement of substantive law. Her work has been published in many law review journals including Harvard Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Notre Dame Law Review. Professor Dodge graduated with a law degree from Harvard University, and received her bachelors at Dartmouth College.
Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown, Maria J. Glover specializes in civil procedure, complex litigation, and the interplay between private litigation and public regulation. She was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School before coming to Georgetown in 2012. Before teaching, she clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced in the Supreme Court Appellate practice group at Mayer Brown LLP in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt Law School. She was the recipient of the Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program Award.
Mary Nold Larimore’s primary practice concentration is in litigation, focusing on product liability litigation, the defense of pharmaceutical and drug and device manufacturers, chemical companies, toxic tort litigation and commercial litigation. Ms. Larimore has served as national, regional and local counsel in drug, device and chemical exposure litigation, as well as expert witness counsel. She regularly addresses scientific, epidemiologic and complex medical issues in multi-jurisdictional litigation. She is the first woman from Indiana to be a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, served as Chair of the Supreme Court Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, and two five-year terms by appointment of the Chief Justice. She was selected to be in The Best Lawyers® in America from 2007-2018 and in Indiana Super Lawyers from 2004-2017. Ms. Larimore received a juris doctorate from Indiana University Maurer School of Law.
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Partner, Butler Snow LLP
Brian Jackson has 25 years of experience representing clients in drug and medical device litigation, healthcare litigation, and mass torts. His experience includes serving as national coordinating counsel, national science counsel, and trial counsel in drug and medical device cases. He is currently serving as Co-Lead Counsel in federal multidistrict litigation for a leading medical device manufacturer. He had extensive responsibilities in the Tylenol MDL and related state litigation, including serving as trial counsel in the past three years in a case tried in Atlantic City, NJ that resulted in a defense verdict that CVN named one of its “Top 10 Defense Verdicts of 2015,” and in a case tried in the United States District Court for the Central District of California that resulted in a favorable outcome. Brian earned his J.D. from Vanderbilt University, and serves as the Assistant Leader of Butler Snow’s Pharmaceutical, Medical Device & Healthcare Litigation Group.
Partner, Seeger Weiss LLP
Chris is a founding partner of Seeger Weiss and one of the nation’s leading attorneys in the areas of complex and mass tort actions. He has earned leadership appointments from state and federal courts throughout the U.S. in many noteworthy multi-district litigations, including pharmaceutical actions involving Vioxx, Zyprexa, Gadolinium, and DePuy ASR, among others. In 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania appointed Chris to lead the multi-district litigation against the National Football League arising out of concussion-related injuries sustained by thousands of former NFL players. In the face of significant legal challenges, he was able to negotiate an uncapped global settlement with an estimated value of over one billion dollars. In 2016, he was appointed to the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee for the MDL concerning the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal, in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California. Chris served on the Settlement Committee and was one of the lead negotiators of a $14.7 billion settlement which includes a massive buyback program for consumers and billions of dollars for environmental remediation. He was also appointed Plaintiffs' Co-Lead Counsel for the Testosterone Replacement Therapy litigation in the Northern District of Illinois; as Co-Lead Counsel in the Proton Pump Inhibitor multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey; to the Executive and Settlement Committees for the National Prescription Opiate litigation in the Northern District of Ohio; to the Plaintiffs’ Settlement Committee, serving as Lead Negotiator, for the Syngenta GMO Corn litigation, resulting in a $1.5 billion nationwide settlement. Recent appointments include: Co-Lead Counsel in the 3M Combat Arms Earplug Products Liability Litigation, in the Northern District of Florida, where Chris represents thousands of U.S. military members who have suffered hearing loss and tinnitus; and Co-Lead Counsel in the Intel CPU Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability litigation in the District of Oregon. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute; a member of the Board of Advisors to the NYU School of Law, Center on Civil Justice; and serves on the Leadership Council to the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School.
Jonathan D. Selbin litigates consumer protection and defective products lawsuits as chair of Lieff Cabraser’s Economic Injury Product Defect Practice Group and member of the firm’s Executive Committee. He led a series of class actions under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and developed the legal strategy responsible for the largest settlements in TCPA history. By 2016, the settlements resulted in the recovery of over $200 million dollars. Mr. Selbin is also a member of the inaugural Board of Counselors for Equal Justice Works, author of the certiorari opposition papers in the Whirlpool and Sears cases in the Supreme Court, and a 1993 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.
Topics
Reflections on the Convention
Thank you to everyone who attended or tuned in to watch the 2017 National Lawyers...
Topics
As Bail Reform Progresses, Yes, Bail Is Constitutional
If you read the text of the Eighth Amendment excessive bail clause, you may be...
Wireless Broadband Infrastructure Policy: Balancing National Priorities
Jonathan Adelstein, Gardner H. Foster, Robert M. McDowell, James Bradford Ramsay
Telecommunications & Electronic Media Practice Group Teleforum
On April 20, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) initiated a proceeding to assess the...
Showcase Panel IV: Administrative Agencies and the Separation of Powers
Akhil Reed Amar, Philip A. Hamburger, John C. Harrison, Gary Lawson, Kevin C. Newsom, Kevin M. Stack
2017 National Lawyers Convention
This panel will examine the history of the emergence of the Administrative State and will...
Showcase Panel IV: Administrative Agencies and the Separation of Powers
Akhil Reed Amar, Philip A. Hamburger, John C. Harrison, Gary Lawson, Kevin C. Newsom, Kevin M. Stack
2017 National Lawyers Convention
This panel will examine the history of the emergence of the Administrative State and will...
The Administrative State and Its Discontents
Michael W. McConnell, A. Raymond Randolph, Stuart S. Taylor, Jonathan R. Turley, Michael Uhlmann
2017 National Lawyers Convention
How much leeway do agencies have in implementing federal law? What is the source of...
The Administrative State and Its Discontents
Michael W. McConnell, A. Raymond Randolph, Stuart S. Taylor, Jonathan R. Turley, Michael Uhlmann
2017 National Lawyers Convention
How much leeway do agencies have in implementing federal law? What is the source of...
General Reform Ideas and Pending Legislation
Jaime Dodge, Maria J. Glover, Mary Nold Larimore, Francis E. McGovern, Kate Comerford Todd
Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) Conference
Multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) accounts for nearly half of all civil cases in federal courts. Although...
General Reform Ideas and Pending Legislation
Jaime Dodge, Maria J. Glover, Mary Nold Larimore, Francis E. McGovern, Kate Comerford Todd
Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) Conference
Multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) accounts for nearly half of all civil cases in federal courts. Although...
Trying Cases and Settlement
John H. Beisner, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, G. Brian Jackson, Christopher A. Seeger, Jonathan D. Selbin
Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) Conference
Multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) accounts for nearly half of all civil cases in federal courts. Although...