Texas Student Chapter
Speakers:
Speakers:
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Columnist, The Hill
Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., was for 25 years a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation. Prior to that he was Vice President of Domestic Policy at the National Center for Policy Analysis. He is a public policy analyst specializing in health care, entitlements and energy issues and is the author of numerous public policy studies. He is past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists.
For nine years Dr. Matthews was executive director of the Washington, DC-based Council for Affordable Health Insurance, a health insurance trade association. While he was executive director, National Journal recognized the Council as one of the most effective health policy organizations in Washington.
Dr. Matthews served for 10 years as a medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation. He is the co-author of On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff (2019) and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate, The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud). And for several years he co-authored a column on dental ethics for the Texas Dental Journal.
For several years he also served as chairman on the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
He is currently a weekly columnist for The Hill and has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, USA Today and the Washington Times.
Matthews is a frequent guest host on Point of View radio talk show, which airs nationwide. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network, and for several years had a daily one-minute commentary on Sirius-XM Radio. In 2008 and again in 2014, the BBC featured him in a television program on welfare reform in Great Britain, specifically Wales.
Dr. Matthews received a BBA in Economics from the University of Texas at Arlington, an M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has a Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. And he is an 8th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
