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Author
EVAN THOMAS is the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestselling John Paul Jones, Sea of Thunder, and Being Nixon. Thomas was a writer, correspondent, and editor for thirty-three years at Time and Newsweek, including ten years as Washington bureau chief at Newsweek, where, at the time of his retirement in 2010, he was editor at large. He wrote more than one hundred cover stories and in 1999 won a National Magazine Award. He wrote Newsweek's election specials in 1996, 2000, 2004 (winner of the National Magazine Award), and 2008. He appears on many TV and radio talk shows, including Meet the Press and Morning Joe. Thomas has taught writing and journalism at Harvard and Princeton, where, from 2007-14, he was Ferris Professor of Journalism.
Partner, Dentons LLP
Former Florida Attorney General and Congressman Bill McCollum Co-Chairs Dentons' US State Attorney General Practice. His practice focuses on corporate compliance and investigations; complex state legal, regulatory and legislative matters; state anti-trust law enforcement; multi-state investigations and litigation; public policy; and advising and assisting companies with disruptive new technologies. He has represented and consulted for companies from a variety of industries with manufacturing and other business interests in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America
Bill served as the 36th Attorney General of Florida from 2007-2011. During his term of office he led the challenge by a large group of state attorneys general to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, positioned Florida as a national leader in the fight against child pornography and internet child predators, and championed a wide range of consumer protection causes from claims coming out of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to combatting mortgage fraud and Medicaid fraud. Since developing, advocating for and gaining enactment of a law in Florida capping contingency fees in state litigation outsourced to private attorneys, Bill has championed enactment of similar Transparency in Private Attorney Contracting legislation in many other states.
As a member of the Florida Cabinet, Bill was one of only four statewide elected officials who shared executive power over the state pension fund, the Financial Services Commission (insurance, banks and securities), the Division of Bond Finance, the Department of Revenue, the Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission, the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
A Republican, Bill represented Florida’s 8th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives from 1981-2001, serving on the Judiciary, Banking and Financial Services and Intelligence Committees. He held a number of leadership positions including Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime; Chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence; Vice Chairman of the Banking and Financial Services Committee; Ranking Member of the subcommittee overseeing the Federal Reserve; Founder and Chairman of the House Task Force on Terrorism; and served as Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference for three terms. He was one of 15 Members selected to serve on the House Committee to Investigate the Iran-Contra Affair and was a House Manager for President Clinton’s impeachment trial.
Since 2013, Bill has served as Chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee, a Section 527 organization dedicated to gaining and maintaining Republican control of state legislative bodies across the country and electing Republican lieutenant governors and secretaries of state.
Bill served on active duty in the US Navy from 1969-1972, and in 1992 retired from the Naval Reserve as a Commander, having served 23 years as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG). Prior to his election to Congress he was a litigation partner with the Orlando law firm Pitts, Eubanks & Ross. After retiring from Congress in 2001 until assuming office as Florida Attorney General in 2007 Bill was a partner with Baker & Hostetler, LLP. He was Chairman of Healthy Florida Foundation which in 2003 held a series of five professionally facilitated retreats with over 100 delegates representing a cross section of healthcare stakeholders who analyzed America’s health care delivery system, reached consensus and published 14 recommendations for reform. In 2005-2006, he served as a member of the State University System of Florida Board of Governors.
Senior Fellow, Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Peter J. Wallison holds the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Financial Policy Studies and is co-director of AEI’s program on Financial Policy Studies. Prior to joining AEI, he practiced banking, corporate and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. Mr. Wallison has held a number of government positions. From June 1981 to January 1985, he was General Counsel of the United States Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan Administration's proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan, and between 1972 and 1976, he served first as Special Assistant to New York's Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller as vice president of the United States.
Mr. Wallison was admitted to practice before the courts of New York and the District of Columbia, and is retired from practice in New York. He continues to be a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1963 and law degree from Harvard Law School in 1966.
Mr. Wallison is the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, published in December 2002 by Westview Press. On campaign finance, he is the author (with Joel Gora) of Better Parties, Better Government, (AEI Press 2009). On financial or regulatory matters, he is the author of Back From the Brink, a proposal for a private deposit insurance system, and co-author of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Internet Age; Competitive Equity: A Better Way to Organize Mutual Funds; Bad History, Worse Policy: How a False Narrative about the Financial Crisis Led to the Dodd-Frank Act (AEI Press 2013); and Hidden In Plain Sight: What Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why it Could Happen Again (Encounter Books 2015). His most recent book is Judicial Fortitude: The Last Chance to Rein in the Administrative State, published by Encounter Books in October 2018.
He testifies frequently before committees of Congress, and is a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and other print and online journals. He has also been a speaker at many conferences on financial services, housing, the causes of the financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act, accounting, and corporate governance, and was a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee between 1995 and 2015. He was a member of the SEC Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (2008), co-Chair of the Pew Financial Reform Task Force (2009), and a member of the congressionally- appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2009-2011). In May 2011, for his work in financial policy, Mr. Wallison received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Colorado.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Austin E. Owen Research Scholar & Professor of Law, The University of Richmond School of Law
Dean Kristen Jakobsen Osenga teaches and writes in the areas of patent law, antitrust, and legislation and regulation. Some of her recent scholarship focuses on standard development organizations, patent eligible subject matter, patent licensing firms, litigation and remedies for patent infringement, and patent law reform. She has written numerous law review articles on these and other topics, as well as book chapters and op eds on various aspects of patent law. Additionally, she has spoken on these issues at many academic conferences and bar events. Dean Osenga is Chief Policy Counselor for the Inventors Defense Alliance, as well as an active member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
Dean Osenga received a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, and a J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she graduated magna cum laude. After law school, she practiced at the law firm of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, & Dunner LLP, (now Finnegan) where she did patent prosecution and litigation. She then clerked for the Judge Richard Linn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. After clerking, she entered academia, teaching first at Chicago-Kent College of Law and then at the University of Richmond, where she has been since 2006. She has also been a Visiting Professor at Emory University School of Law and at William & Mary School of Law.
Professor of Law, Southern Illinois University School of Law
Professor Mark F. Schultz joined the faculty in 2003. He teaches and writes primarily in the area of intellectual property.
Professor Schultz is a frequent author and speaker known for his work on the law and economics of the global intellectual property system. In one of his most influential projects, he worked with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to construct a groundbreaking global trade secret protection index (the TSPI). The TSPI is influencing policy discussions on this cutting-edge topic in capitals around the world. Other recent projects have included an empirical study that quantified for the first time the backlogs in patent offices worldwide, a report on how patented innovation is meeting global health challenges, and the construction of a new global index of copyright strength.
Professor Schultz is an influential voice in public policy debates regarding intellectual property. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on copyright law at the invitation of the House Judiciary Committee and has briefed the staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on trade secret legislation. He speaks frequently around the world about the connection between secure and effective intellectual property rights and flourishing national economies and individual lives, with invitations from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the U.S. Copyright Office, as well as numerous academic institutions, think tanks, and industry groups. He served as an NGO delegate to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for several years during the WIPO Development Agenda talks. He is also one of the organizers of an ongoing multilateral diplomatic dialogue on best practices in national trade secret laws, and is co-founder of the Center for Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) at George Mason University in Washington, D.C.
Among the awards and recognition he has received for his scholarship was the School of Law's Outstanding Scholar of the Year award in 2008. He has been a distinguished visiting scholar at the University of Botswana and a visiting professor at DePaul University College of Law.
Professor Schultz graduated with honors from the George Washington University School of Law. Following law school, he was a judicial clerk for the Hon. Daniel M. Friedman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., and the Hon. Eric G. Bruggink of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Prior to joining academia, he practiced law for a decade, serving as outside general counsel to several tech startups and helping technology companies to expand their businesses and commercialize their intellectual property in dozens of countries. He holds a B.A. in International Economics from George Washington University and has done PhD level coursework in development economics at Southern Illinois University.
He is active in leadership roles in local and national organizations. He has served as chair of the Federalist Society's Intellectual Property Practice Group and the AALS Section on Internet and Computer Law. He is an officer of the American Bar Association's International IP Committee of the International Law Section and the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Trade Secret Law Committee. He currently is chair of the Academic Advisory Board of the Copyright Alliance.
Professor Schultz teaches Copyright Law, Trade Secret Law, Trademark Law, and a senior seminar on Intellectual Property and Global Development. He established and directs both the Specialization in Intellectual Property Law and the IP Semester in Practice Externship Program. He also co-founded a Legal Globalization Class, offered every other year, that takes students to South Africa and Botswana after spending a semester learning about the legal system, culture, history, and politics of southern Africa. The popular course is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that introduces students to leading lawyers, judges, government officials, and human rights advocates, taking them from Cape Town to Johannesburg to Gaborone as well as many popular destinations including game reserves, national parks, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Cradle of Humankind.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
John Hampton Baumgartner, Jr. Professor of Real Property Law; Faculty Director, Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Program; Faculty Director, Georgetown Climate Resource Center, Georgetown Law Center
Professor Byrne joined the Law Center faculty in 1985. After graduation from the University of Virginia law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Frank Coffin and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and then worked as an associate with the D.C. firm of Covington & Burling. He teaches and writes in the areas of Property, Land Use, Constitutional Law, and Higher Education Law and Policy. He served as Associate Dean for the JD Program from 1997 to 2000. He was John Carroll Research Professor in 1996-97.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. Liptak’s column on legal affairs, “Sidebar,” appears every other Tuesday.
A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Liptak practiced law at a large New York City law firm and in the legal department of The New York Times Company before joining the paper’s news staff in 2002.
Liptak was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2009 for “American Exception,” a series of articles examining ways in which the American legal system differs from those of other developed nations. He received the 2010 Scripps Howard Award for Washington reporting for a five-part series on the Roberts Court.
He is the author of “To Have and Uphold: The Supreme Court and the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Business Week and Rolling Stone, and he has published articles in The Arizona Law Review, The Michigan Law Review and The New York University Annual Survey of American Law.
Liptak has taught courses at Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Southern California and U.C.L.A. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Elizabeth Papez is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and a member of the firm’s litigation group. Her practice focuses on high-stakes class actions, complex commercial litigation, and related government investigations and appeals.
As a seasoned litigator and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Papez has substantial experience representing clients in the financial services, pharmaceutical, consumer, and product sectors. She regularly handles federal class actions, multidistrict litigation (MDLs) and other complex commercial disputes under federal and state antitrust statutes, banking and securities laws, and false claims acts, as well as parallel regulatory investigations with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Ms. Papez has been repeatedly recognized as one of Benchmark USA’s Top 250 Women in Litigation nationwide, which named her a “client favorite” who is “extremely smart and practical and very charismatic,” and is praised by peers as a “fierce, dynamic, bright, powerhouse of a litigator.” Ms. Papez is also recognized in The Legal 500 for her antitrust and appellate work, and by The Best Lawyers in America 2019 for her appellate practice.
Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship, Yale Law School
Professor George L. Priest passed away on Dec. 17, 2024. Please read his obituary here.
George L. Priest is the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship at Yale Law School. An internationally recognized expert, Professor Priest has focused his research over the past two decades on antitrust, the operation of private and public insurance, and the role of the legal system in promoting economic growth. He joined Yale Law School in 1981 and is co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy, which facilitates the scholarly work of the Yale law and economics faculty and supports student interest and research in the field. Before coming to Yale, Professor Priest taught law at the University of Chicago, SUNY/Buffalo, and UCLA. His subject areas are antitrust; capitalism; regulated industries; torts; and insurance and public policy. Professor Priest holds a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Syndicated Columnist, The Washington Post
George F. Will's newspaper column has been syndicated by The Washington Post since 1974. Today it appears twice weekly in more than 300 newspapers. In 1976 he became a regular contributing editor of Newsweek magazine, for which he provided a bimonthly essay until 2011. In 1977 he won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in his newspaper columns.
In June 2019, Mr. Will released The Conservative Sensibility. Altogether nine collections of Mr. Will's Newsweek and Washington Post columns have been published, the most recent being his 16th book, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020, published in 2021. Mr. Will has also published two other books on political theory, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does (1983) and Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and The Recovery of Deliberative Democracy (1992). In 1990, Mr. Will published Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball, which topped The New York Times bestseller list for two months. In 1998, Scribner published Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose and Other Reflections on Baseball, a best-selling collection of new and previously published writings by Mr. Will on baseball. Mr. Will's most recent book on baseball is A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred (2014). Mr. Will was a member of Major League Baseball's Blue Ribbon Panel, examining baseball economics, 1999-2000.
In 1981, Mr. Will became a founding panel member on ABC television’s "This Week" and spent over three decades providing regular commentary. Then followed three years with Fox News where he appeared regularly on "Special Report" and "Fox News Sunday," and four years with NBC/MSNBC.
Mr. Will was born in Champaign, Illinois, educated at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, Oxford University and Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. and he later served as a trustee. He has taught political philosophy at Michigan State University, the University of Toronto, Harvard University, and Princeton. Mr. Will served as a staff member in the United States Senate from 1970 to 1972. From 1973 through 1976, he was the Washington editor of National Review magazine. Today, Mr. Will lives and works in the Washington, D.C., area.
U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (1983-1989); U.S. Solicitor General (1989-1993)
Kenneth Starr is a former United States Federal Court of Appeals Judge, U.S. Solicitor General, and Independent Counsel. He is the former President and Chancellor of Baylor University where he held the Louise L. Morrison Chair of Constitutional Law at Baylor University Law School.
Associate Professor of Law, Cumberland School of Law, Samford University
Brannon P. Denning is Associate Professor of Law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama. Prior to joining the Cumberland School of Law in 2003, Professor Denning taught at the Southern Illinois University School of Law in Carbondale, Illinois for four years. At Cumberland, Professor Denning teaches Constitutional Law I & II, the First Amendment, and Professional Responsibility. During the Summer of 2005, he was a visiting professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
Professor Denning has written extensively on the Commerce Clause, the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine, the constitutional amending process, the confirmation process, the Second Amendment, and on foreign affairs matters. His articles have appeared in the American Journal of International Law, Constitutional Commentary, Foreign Affairs, the Minnesota Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review, and the Wisconsin Law Review, among other journals and periodicals. He has also collaborated with Yale law professor Boris I. Bittker on a treatise on the Commerce Clause and is co-editor of a one-of-a-kind coursebook on gun control and gun rights.
Professor Denning earned a B.A. in political science, magna cum laude, from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He received a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Tennessee in 1995, and an LL.M. from Yale University in 1999.
The University of Tennessee College of Law, Visiting Professor, 2005. Taught Constitutional Law during the Summer Term.
Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, Associate Professor, 2003-present. Tenure awarded Spring, 2005.
Southern Illinois University School of Law, Assistant Professor, 1999-2003.
Taught constitutional law, legal ethics, Illinois constitutional law, and Introduction to Legislative and Administrative Process. Tenure awarded Spring, 2003.
Yale Law School, Research Associate & Senior Fellow, 1997-1998.
Collaborated with Professor Boris I. Bittker researching and writing Bittker on the Regulation of Interstate and Foreign Commerce (Aspen Law & Business).
Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell, P.C., Associate, 1995-1997.
Member of health law group in the Memphis, Tennessee office of the state’s largest law firm.
Yale Law School, LL.M., 1999
The University of Tennessee College of Law, J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, 1995
The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, B.A., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1992
Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee College of Law
Professor Reynolds is one of the most prolific scholars on the UT faculty. His special interests are law and technology and constitutional law issues and his work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Columbia Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Wisconsin Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, The Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Law and Policy in International Business, Jurimetrics, the Journal of Space Law, and the High Technology Law Journal. Professor Reynolds has also written in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, Road & Track, Urb, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as other popular publications. He was for many years a contributing editor at Popular Mechanics magazine, and today writes a regular column for USA Today. He is the co-author of Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy, and The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society. His most recent books are The Social Media Upheaval, The Judiciary’s Class War, and The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.
Professor Reynolds has testified before Congressional committees on space law, international trade, and domestic terrorism. He has been executive chairman of the National Space Society and a member of the White House Advisory Panel on Space Policy. A member of the UT faculty since 1989, Professor Reynolds has received the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Faculty Scholarship Award in W. Allen Separk Outstanding Faculty Scholarship Award, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Scholarship.
A songwriter and producer for such bands as Mobius Dick, The Nebraska Guitar Militia, and The Defenders Of The Faith, Professor Reynolds is a member of the American Society of Composers and Performers and a former member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Professor Reynolds blogs at InstaPundit.com.
