Executive Director of External Affairs and Senior Counsel, First Liberty Institute
Biography
Mike Berry serves as Executive Director of External Affairs and Senior Counsel at First Liberty Institute. Mike returned to First Liberty after serving as Chief Counsel to United States Senator Ted Cruz.
Prior to working on the Hill, Mike spent many years in public interest litigation including with First Liberty from 2013-2024. Prior to that, Mike served for seven years as an attorney with the U.S. Marine Corps, leaving active duty in 2013. Among his numerous positions within the Marine Corps, Mike deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 and he served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the United States Naval Academy. Mike continues to proudly serve our nation as a member of the Marine Corps Reserve.
Mike earned his bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University, and he earned his law degree from The Ohio State University.
Wendell H. Ford Professor of Law, University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law
Biography
Paul E. Salamanca graduated from Dartmouth College in 1983 and Boston College Law School in 1989, where he was a note editor for the Boston College Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.
Professor Salamanca served as a law clerk to Judge David H. Souter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and subsequently clerked for Justice Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. He practiced law with the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton in New York from 1991 to 1994 and was a visiting assistant professor of law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans before joining the faculty at the University of Kentucky College of Law in June 1995.
Professor Salamanca writes in the areas of separation of powers, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and privacy. He has published articles on these subjects in the University of Cincinnati Law Review, the Missouri Law Review, the Georgia Law Review and the Kentucky Law Journal, among other places.
From 2019 until 2021, Professor Salamanca served as a Senior Counsel and then as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) of the United States Department of Justice. His duties included supervision of the Natural Resources and Land Acquisition Sections of ENRD.
