Darpana Sheth joined CIR as General Counsel in May 2025. She is a nationally recognized constitutional litigator with over two decades of experience serving in in leadership roles at other nonprofit organizations.
Before joining CIR, Darpana served for four years as Vice President of Litigation for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Prior to that, Darpana was a Senior Attorney with the Institute for Justice, where she also served as Director of the Institute’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse.
Before finding her calling as a public-interest attorney, Darpana served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York and worked in private practice as a litigation associate at the Manhattan law firm of Chadbourne & Parke, LLP. She also served as law clerk to the Honorable Jerome A. Holmes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
A native of Philadelphia, Darpana graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History. She earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
Welpton & Wise Professor of Law, University of Nebraska College of Law
Biography
Professor Rick Duncan is the Welpton & Wise Professor of Law at the University Of Nebraska College Of Law. He is a graduate of the Cornell Law School and served as an editor of the Cornell Law Review. He teaches Constitutional Law with a special emphasis on the law of religious freedom, free speech, and federalism. Duncan has written numerous books, articles, and commentaries on a wide variety of legal topics. His recent publications include an article on Justice Scalia’s legacy, another on Kermit Gosnell and Roe v. Wade, a piece on the Electoral College and Federalism, a 2019 piece on Masterpiece Cakeshop and the First Amendment, and three recent articles on the “no compelled speech” doctrine as a First Amendment defense against authoritarianism and tyranny. His most recent article, on School Choice and the First Amendment, will be published in 2023 in Case Western Law Review. He is also the co-author of a book on Secured Transactions under Article 9 of the UCC. He served as Chairman of the Nebraska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights during the Reagan Administration. He also loves to speak at Federalist Society meetings around the country on life, liberty, and the pursuit of federalism.
Duncan has five children, five grandchildren, and a wonderful wife who help him pursue happiness. He loves lifting weights (particularly going heavy on the incline bench press), attending Broadway musicals and plays, including Hamilton: An American Musical which he has seen 12 times (possibly a Nebraska record). He regularly reads both the Bible and the New York Times because it is important to keep up with what both sides have to say. He loves following major league baseball, especially the San Diego Padres. And his favorite legal aphorism is “first come rights then comes government to secure those rights.”
Shareholder, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart
Biography
Chris Murray is Co-Chair of the firm’s Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Practice Group. In this role, he assists attorneys throughout the firm and clients nationwide to create, roll out, and enforce effective employment arbitration agreements and other ADR programs. Mr. Murray has extensive experience with class/collective action waivers in employment arbitration. Mr. Murray was part of the Ogletree team that successfully defended the use of such waivers in the Fifth Circuit’s landmark decision in D.R. Horton, Inc. v. N.L.R.B. Since then, he has successfully defended the enforceability of class action waivers in numerous subsequent cases and submitted an amicus brief on the subject on behalf of several major employers’ associations in the Supreme Court’s Murphy Oil case. Mr. Murray assists clients and the Firm’s attorneys to draft or revise arbitration programs focused on a client’s specific needs and goals and in light of changing law and evolving best practices.
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
Biography
Hans A. von Spakovsky is a leading national expert on a wide range of legal and constitutional issues, including civil rights, elections, the First Amendment, immigration, executive authority, the rule of law, and government reform.
He is the former Senior Legal Fellow and Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
He is a former member of President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. From 2006 to 2007, von Spakovsky was a member of the Federal Election Commission. He served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2002 to 2005. Prior to entering public service, Hans von Spakovsky worked for 17 years as a government affairs consultant, in a corporate legal department, and in private practice.
He is a 1984 graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Law and received a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981, which he attended on a National Merit Scholarship. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
He is the 2016 winner of the Drs. W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award from the Heritage Foundation and received Meritorious Service Awards from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2003, 2004, and 2005.
von Spakovsky is the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” (Encounter 2012) and “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department” (HarperCollins/Broadside 2014). His 2011 series “Every Single One” at PJ Media was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and his articles have appeared in Fox News, National Review Online, and the Wall Street Journal.
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas
Biography
Hon. Charles Eskridge, Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and arrived in Houston, Texas, at the age of 11 with his parents in 1974.
Judge Eskridge received a B.S. from Trinity University and a J.D. from Pepperdine University School of Law. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Charles Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, as a law clerk to Justice Byron White of the Supreme Court of the United States, and as a special assistant to the Hon. Howard Holtzmann of the Iran/U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague.
From 1994 to 2019, Judge Eskridge was in private practice in Houston, Texas, litigating complex commercial disputes. He teaches Origins of the Federal Constitution at the University of Houston Law Center and has served as the Distinguished Visiting Practitioner of Law at the Pepperdine University School of Law.
President Donald J. Trump nominated him to the federal bench on May 3, 2019. Following confirmation by the Senate, Judge Eskridge took his seat on October 22, 2019.
Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Professor of Law; Director, Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism, University of San Diego School of Law
Biography
Michael Rappaport is the Hugh & Hazel Darling Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where he is also the Director of the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism. Rappaport teaches Constitutional Law and Administrative Law. His research interests include originalism, administrative law, the separation of powers, federalism, the constitutional amendment process, and supermajority rules. He is the author (with John McGinnis) of Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) as well as of numerous law review articles. He also blogs at The Originalism Blog. He has taught at the Sorbonne and at Paris 2 Law School in Paris, France, at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, and at Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Before joining the academy, Rappaport worked in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice and practiced appellate law with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C. He received a JD and a DCL (political theory) from the Yale Law School, and served as a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal.
