Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Duncan received his B.A. from Louisiana State University in 1994, his J.D. from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1997, and his LL.M. from Columbia Law School in 2004.
After graduating from law school, he clerked for Louisiana-based Circuit Judge John Malcolm Duhé Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
From 2008–2012, Duncan served as Appellate Chief for Louisiana's Attorney General's office. From 2012–2014, he served as general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. From 2004-2008, he was an assistant professor of law at the University of Mississippi School of Law.
Before becoming a judge, Duncan practiced at the Washington, D.C. firm of Schaerr Duncan LLP, where he was a founding partner. He was appointed by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on May 1, 2018.
Senior Counsel, Compass Legal Group
Andrew Kloster is Senior Counsel at the nonprofit Compass Legal Group. He is a long-time fixture of the conservative movement, advising clients on the new right on a wide variety of matters criminal, civil, political / electoral, and administrative. Recently, he served as Chief of Staff to the Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel investigation into election administration. Prior to that, he served in the Trump administration, including concurrently as Associate Director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel and as Deputy General Counsel (and later, Acting General Counsel) in the United States Office of Personnel Management. He has also served in senior positions in regulatory and legal positions at the United States Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency, and was appointed by President Trump to serve a three-year term on the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States. Previously, he worked at the Heritage Foundation, the Scalia Law School, and other movement groups. He is a graduate of the University of Miami and the New York University School of Law, and he served as a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Director, Center for American Freedom, America First Policy Institute
James Sherk was born in Ontario, Canada, and immigrated with his family to Midland, Michigan while in middle school. He serves as AFPI’s Director of the Center for American Freedom. Sherk previously served as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy on the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Donald Trump. James served as the Administration’s top civil service reform and labor policy advisor from 2017 to 2021. At the White House, he was the principal author of and/or policy lead for approximately two dozen executive orders and presidential memoranda. Sherk also served as a member of the President’s Council on Improving Federal Civic Architecture. Prior to his White House service, Sherk was a Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he was a nationally recognized expert on the civil service and labor policy. Sherk received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Economics from Hillsdale College and an Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Rochester. Sherk and his wife, Jill, live in Northern Virginia with three beloved children who teach their parents to ponder inscrutable questions like “how much drawing can go on the walls before we have to repaint them?”
Professor of Law, University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law
Ariana R. Levinson is a nationally acclaimed and internationally recognized labor and employment law scholar and focuses her teaching on practical legal skills. She has often presented her research, including at Berkeley Law School, Fordham Law School, University of Leeds, and Universidad Carlos II de Madrid. Levinson’s work has been published in the Columbia Business Law Review and the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. She has a forthcoming student co-authored article in the Harvard Journal on Legislation and is working on a hornbook on arbitration.
Professor Levinson received a Corey Rosen Research Fellowship from the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations for the 2012-13 academic year, and a Michael W. Huber Fellowship for the 2013-14 academic year. In conjunction with the fellowships, she published "Founding Worker Cooperatives: Social Movement Theory and the Law" in the Nevada Law Journal and is working on a research project about the Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative. Her article "What the Awards Tell Us about Labor Arbitration of Employment Discrimination Claims", published in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform was selected by blind review by Vanderbilt Law School faculty for presentation at the Branstetter New Voices in Civil Justice Workshop in May 2012.
In addition to writing about worker ownership and arbitration, Professor Levinson has also written a number of articles about workplace technology and privacy. Her most recent publications on this topic include a book chapter in the Research Handbook on Electronic Commerce Law.
Professor Levinson is the faculty liaison to the Peggy Browning Fund and a co-planner of the Warns-Render Labor and Employment Law Institute, an annual labor and employment law continuing legal education program. She coaches the mock arbitration team and advises the Wagner moot court team. She is a Reviewer for the American Business Law Journal. Professor Levinson is admitted to practice in Indiana and California.
Prior to teaching at Brandeis School of Law, Professor Levinson taught at USC Gould School of Law and at UCLA School of Law. She clerked for the Honorable John G. Davies (United States District Court, Central District of California) and for the Honorable Myra C. Selby (Supreme Court of Indiana) and practiced labor law, including serving as a fellow for the AFL-CIO's Legal Department.
She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. During law school, she served as a contributing editor on the Michigan Law Review and was awarded the Robert S. Feldman Labor Law Award for the most outstanding work in that field. She also received a 2014-15 faculty favorite award from the University of Louisville Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning.
Vice President & Legal Director, National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation
Raymond J. LaJeunesse, Jr., is Vice President and Legal Director of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a non-profit legal aid organization. He was the first Staff Attorney employed by the Foundation and has more than forty-five years of experience helping workers in litigation in federal and state courts and administrative agencies over the abuses of compulsory unionism.
Mr. LaJeunesse has argued four cases in the United States Supreme Court. Those cases include Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Ass’n, 500 U.S. 507 (1991), which limited the purposes for which compulsory union fees collected from public employees may lawfully be spent; Air Line Pilots Ass’n v. Miller, 523 U.S. 866 (1998), which established that unions cannot compel nonmembers to exhaust union-established remedies before going to court to challenge compulsory union fees; and Marquez v. Screen Actors Guild, 525 U.S. 33 (1998), in which the Court recognized that unions must notify employees that they can satisfy the “membership” requirement of “union shop” agreements by just paying fees for union bargaining activities and need not join and pay full dues to keep their jobs. He also was lead attorney in Hohe v. Casey, 956 F.2d 399 (3d Cir. 1992), in which more than $8.3 million in compulsory agency fees was recovered from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees for a class of 57,000 nonmembers.
Mr. LaJeunesse is the author of several published articles about labor law, has testified before Congressional committees several times, and was an Advisor on the Transition Team for Labor- Related Agencies, Office of the President-Elect, in 1980-81 and a legislative aide to a member of the Virginia state legislature. He is a Vice Chairman of the Federalist Society’s Labor and Employment Law Practice Group and has spoken or debated at the Society’s National Lawyers Convention and at many Lawyers and Student Chapters on such topics as Right to Work laws, compulsory unionism arrangements, the misuse of union dues for politics, union organizing tactics (“card check” vs. secret-ballot elections), and the future of the union movement.
Senior Of Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP and Executive Chairma, The Chertoff Group
Michael Chertoff concentrates in the area of White Collar Defense and Investigations. In recent years, he has handled a series of federal investigations, including complex criminal and civil regulatory matters. He has advised major clients on SEC and Justice Department investigations and successfully served as the independent monitor of a major national healthcare company under criminal and civil investigation.
In addition to his legal work, Mr. Chertoff is Founder and Chairman of The Chertoff Group, a security and risk management firm, where he provides high-level strategic counsel to corporate and government leaders on a broad range of security issues, from risk identification and prevention to preparedness, response and recovery.
In April of 2012, Mr. Chertoff was elected as the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of BAE Systems, Inc. He also sits on the board of directors or board of advisors of a number of companies and nonprofits.
Previously, Mr. Chertoff served as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. As Secretary, he led a 218,000 person department with a budget of $50 billion. Mr. Chertoff developed and implemented border security and immigration policy; promulgated homeland security regulations; and spearheaded a national cyber security strategy. He also served periodically on the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, and on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Prior to his appointment to the Cabinet, Mr. Chertoff served from 2003 to 2005 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Before becoming a federal judge, Mr. Chertoff was the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In that position, he oversaw the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and formed the Enron Task Force, which produced more than 20 convictions, including those of CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay.
Mr. Chertoff’s career includes more than a decade as a federal prosecutor, including service as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Chertoff investigated and personally prosecuted significant cases of political corruption, organized crime, and corporate fraud.
From 1994-2001, Mr. Chertoff represented major corporations and individuals in numerous white collar investigations and trials. Among other matters, he successfully represented the nation’s largest hospital company in a four year, multi-jurisdictional criminal and civil investigation, represented major corporations in corruption scandals, and obtained acquittals at trial for individual criminal defendants.
Mr. Chertoff has received numerous awards including the Department of Justice Henry E. Petersen Memorial Award (2006); the Department of Justice John Marshall Award for Trial of Litigation (1987); NAACP Benjamin L. Hooks Award for Distinguished Service (2007); European Institute Transatlantic Leadership Award (2008); and two honorary doctorates. His trial experiences have been featured in over half a dozen books and many news articles.
Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law
Prior to joining the law faculty in 2008, Professor Childress was associated with the international law firm Jones Day in Washington, D.C., as a member of their Issues and Appeals practice, where he focused on Supreme Court litigation, general appellate litigation, and significant motions practice in trial litigation. While in private practice, his appellate representations included preparation of writs of certiorari, merits briefs, and amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Childress has briefed and argued appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and has briefed matters in numerous other trial and appellate courts in the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, and D.C. Circuits, as well as in various state courts. He has significant private practice experience in transnational litigation/arbitration, complex civil procedure, conflict of laws, constitutional law, immigration law, international dispute resolution, federal Indian law, and national security law, including cases related to the war on terror. He maintains an active pro bono practice. During his time in Washington, D.C., Professor Childress co-taught a Supreme Court Litigation course at the Georgetown University Law Center and served as a "Justice" in the Georgetown University Law Center Supreme Court Institute. Professor Childress is admitted to practice in Virginia, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Childress clerked for the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. While at Duke Law School, he served as editor-in-chief of the Duke Law Journal (Volume 53) and received the faculty award for outstanding achievement in international, transnational, and comparative law. While at Oxford Brookes University, he served as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in the United Kingdom, where his research focused, in part, on European constitutionalism and European Union law.
Professor Childress's primary research interests are international civil litigation and arbitration, private international law, comparative law, and ethics. His scholarship has appeared in the Duke Law Journal, the U.C. Davis Law Review, the Northwestern Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Virginia Journal of International Law, the William and Mary Law Review and the North Carolina Law Review. He has also published an edited volume with Cambridge University Press entitled "The Role of Ethics in International Law." He is working extensively on the role that international civil litigation and arbitration plays in an increasingly global world. He is the American co-editor of the private international law blog ConflictOfLaws.net.
Professor Childress teaches Civil Procedure, International Litigation, Comparative Law, Conflict of Laws, and Ethical Lawyering.
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