CEO, President, and General Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Biography
As the CEO, president, and general counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, Kristen Waggoner leads the faith-based organization in advancing every person’s God-given right to live and speak the truth in the U.S. and around the world. She oversees more than 450 ADF team members in 10 global offices.
Since 2011, ADF has won 15 cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, three of which were argued by Waggoner: Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Uzuebgunam v. Presczewski, and 303 Creative v. Elenis. ADF also has a strong record of international success at the European Court of Human Rights, United Nations, and other leading courts and tribunals and has secured the release of more than 1,000 imprisoned Christians.
After clerking with Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard B. Sanders, Waggoner practiced law for over 16 years at a Seattle firm before joining ADF in 2013. She is Peer Review Rated AV® Preeminent™ in Martindale-Hubbell. Waggoner is a sought-after public speaker who often appears in national and international media outlets.
Tony Francois is experienced in Water and Real Property Law, Land Use and Zoning, Environmental Regulation, Natural Resources Development, Agricultural Law, and Constitutional Law. He has represented homeowners, builders, farmers and ranchers, trade associations, and water districts in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies and state and federal trial and appellate courts. He is a member of the California State Bar and the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California and the Districts of New Mexico and North Dakota, and has litigated cases in federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has appeared before the Supreme Courts of California, Idaho, Nevada, and the United States.
Prior to attending law school, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in the former West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tony was an Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation from 2012 to 2021. He was a lobbyist for 10 years, first with California Farm Bureau Federation from 2003 to 2007, and then with KP Public Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was an attorney at McQuaid, Bedford & Van Zandt in San Francisco from 1999 – 2003.
Steve Marshall was sworn in as the forty-eighth attorney general of the state of Alabama on February 10, 2017.
Marshall received his undergraduate education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his legal education at the University of Alabama School of Law, graduating from both with academic honors.
Prior to taking office as attorney general, Marshall was the district attorney for Marshall County, a post he held for sixteen years. As district attorney, Marshall helped draft and pass the Brody Act—a law that makes it a homicide to kill an unborn child during an attack on the unborn child’s mother. Marshall later became the first prosecutor to secure a death sentence under the Brody Act (in a case where a man murdered his pregnant wife and was charged with the homicide of both her and her unborn child). Five years later, when this landmark case was on appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court, Marshall—now attorney general—had the privilege of defending that conviction.
As attorney general, Marshall has embraced his role as the state’s chief law-enforcement officer and has committed himself to making Alabama a safer place to live. In January 2018, Marshall launched the Initiative on Violent Crime with the mission to “help cities reclaim their streets, restore the rule of law, and . . . see their communities revived.” Since its launch, the initiative has resulted in the arrests of hundreds of violent offenders.
Marshall was recently elected to the executive committee of the Republican Attorneys General Association, a nod to his demonstrated expertise and leadership on a variety of national policy issues including the opioid crisis, illegal immigration, and religious liberty.
Marshall is a man of deep faith with an impeccable reputation. He is known as a standout in law-enforcement circles. On the day of his swearing-in, nearly every district attorney in the state came to the capital to show their support for him. He has one daughter, Faith, and attends Church of the Highlands in Montgomery, Alabama.
Fellow, Catholic Studies Program at Ethics and Public Policy Center
Biography
Mary Rice Hasson, J.D., is the Kate O’Beirne Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. She directs the Catholic Women’s Forum, a network of Catholic professional women and scholars, and co-founded the Person and Identity Project, a new initiative that equips parents and faith-based institutions to counter gender ideology and promote the truth of the human person. An attorney and policy expert, Mary served as keynote speaker for the Holy See during the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, addressing education (2018), women and work (2017), caregiving (2019), and gender ideology (2019). She currently serves as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family, Life and Youth.
Mary speaks frequently in national and international venues on topics related to gender ideology, parental rights, religious liberty, and culture. She is frequently called upon to provide expert counsel on federal and state legislation and, in 2021, testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee against the Equality Act and before the Australian Parliament, New South Wales, in support of parental rights legislation.
She has co-authored several books on education, including Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child From Public School Before It’s Too Late (Regnery 2018), and her writing has appeared in a variety of policy journals, scholarly publications, and traditional media includings The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, First Thing, National Review Online, and the National Catholic Register, among others. She is a frequent media commentator in both religious and secular media.
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Notre Dame Law School, Mary and her husband Seamus Hasson have seven grown children and two grandchildren.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Biography
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Biography
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
Kannon is the head of our Supreme Court & Appellate practice. He has argued 39 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has argued more than 150 appeals in courts across the country, including every federal court of appeals and numerous state courts.
Kannon is ranked as a “Star Individual” in appellate law by Chambers USA, where a client notes, “It’s hard to think of enough superlatives to describe his talent, his judgment, his ability, his experience – he is as good as it gets.” Legal 500 U.S. recognizes Kannon in its Hall of Fame for appellate work. A client shares, “His work is the best in the business, and he is a wonderful human being in addition to being a world-class appellate litigator.”
In 2024 and 2022, Kannon was a finalist for the American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Year” award. He was named “Appellate Litigator of the Year” by Benchmark Litigation in 2021 and was a 2026 finalist for that recognition.
Before entering private practice, Kannon served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Biography
Hon. Jennifer Mascott served as Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Separation of Powers Institute at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law before her appointment to the federal bench. On July 16, 2025, President Donald J. Trump nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Delaware), and she was confirmed on October 9, 2025.
Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mascott wrote extensively in administrative and constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and the separation of powers. Her scholarship—published in leading journals including the Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Supreme Court Review—was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal courts. She also contributed Supreme Court commentary for NBC Universal.
Before joining Catholic Law, she was an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of The C. Boyden Gray Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. In 2022 she became co-author of Beermann, Cass & Diver’s Administrative Law: Cases and Materials (9th ed.). In 2023 she received the Justice Joseph Story Award for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and advancing the rule of law.
Judge Mascott also served as a Council Member of the ABA’s Administrative Law Section and as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. She frequently testified before Congress on executive power, regulatory reform, and judicial jurisdiction, and participated in multiple Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
From 2019 to 2021, she took leave from academia to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and later as Associate Deputy Attorney General, where she argued federal cases and assisted with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation. Earlier in her career, she clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and for then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit.
Judge Mascott earned her J.D. summa cum laude from the George Washington University Law School and her B.A. from the same institution.
