High on Federalism: Marijuana’s Challenge to Federal and State Relations
Washburn Student Chapter
1700 SW College Ave
Topeka, KS 66621
Speakers:
- Ilya Shapiro, Cato Institute
- Professor Jeffery Jackson, Washburn Law
Speakers:
Professor of Law, Washburn University School of Law
Jeffrey D. Jackson comes to Washburn Law from the Kansas Supreme Court where he was staff attorney for Death Penalty and Constitutional issues. Prior to that, he was a law clerk for the Honorable Mary Beck Briscoe in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, law clerk to The Honorable Justice Robert E. Davis at the Kansas Supreme Court, an associate at Bennett & Dillon L.L.P., in Topeka and staff attorney for the Kansas Court of Appeals.
Jackson received his B.B.A. in economics from Washburn University in 1989, his J.D. from Washburn Law in 1992 and his LL.M. in Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center in 2003. At Washburn Law, Jackson was assistant editor for the Washburn Law Journal. Jackson is admitted to practice in Kansas, Missouri, U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He is a member of the Kansas Judicial Council Death Penalty Advisory Committee.
Professor Jackson teaches in the law school's Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing Program and he is Director of the Center for Excellence in Advocacy.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.