The Impact of COVID-19 on the Legal Profession
Pennsylvania Student Chapter
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Founder, Original Jurisdiction
David Lat is a lawyer turned writer. He publishes Original Jurisdiction, a newsletter on Substack about law and legal affairs, and he writes for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Prior to launching Original Jurisdiction, David founded Above the Law, one of the nation's most widely read legal news websites, and Underneath Their Robes, a popular blog about federal judges that he wrote under a pseudonym. He is also the author of a novel set in the world of the federal courts, Supreme Ambitions. Before entering the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Theodore Ruger brings fresh insight to the study of some of the oldest questions of American law – namely the theoretical justifications for, and empirical contours of, the application of judicial authority. In exploring these issues, Ruger supplements traditional legal analysis with the methods of other disciplines, including history and political science. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Northwestern Law Review, and as the centerpiece of a symposium in Perspectives on Politics, a leading peer-reviewed political science journal. In addition to his interests in constitutional law and legislation, Ruger also teaches and writes in the area of health law and pharmaceutical regulation. His current research in that field draws on his broader work on judicial power and constitutionalism, and addresses the manner in which American legal institutions – including the U.S. Supreme Court – have shaped the field of health law over the past two centuries.