Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
Biography
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland). Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Biography
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Deputy Chief Counsel of General Civil Section, United States Attorney's Office, Central District of California
Biography
Geoff Wilson is currently a Deputy Chief in the General Civil Section of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys. Since joining the USAO in 2007, he has prosecuted and defended law enforcement in the tort and civil rights contexts and currently supervises and litigates cases in several areas including the Federal Tort Claims Act, employment, and constitutional torts. Geoff has received the Inspector General’s Award from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys Director’s Award for Superior Performance as an AUSA for the successful prosecution of a complex mortgage fraud scheme, and the Council of the Inspectors General Award for Excellence for combating mortgage fraud. Prior to becoming an AUSA he worked at Universal Pictures in Feature Film Business Affairs. He graduated in 2005 from Loyola Law School, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughters.
Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Biography
Amy Wax's work addresses issues in social welfare law and policy as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. By bringing to bear her training in biomedical sciences and appellate practice as well as her interest in economic analysis, Wax has developed a uniquely insightful approach to problems in her areas of expertise.
Wax's career has been stellar. As an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wax argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court. She taught for seven years at the University of Virginia Law School before joining the Penn Law faculty in 2001.
Wax has published widely in law journals, including Chicago, Virginia, Villanova, Indiana, Emory, the Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law, Yale Journal on Regulation and the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. Papers in press address liberal theory and welfare work requirements as well as the economics of federal disability laws. Current work in progress includes articles on law and evolutionary psychology, the political psychology of social security reform, and economic models of the family-friendly workplace. Wax has also received the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course.
Director, Climate & Clean Air Program, Natural Resources Defense Council
Biography
David Doniger has been at the forefront of the battle against air pollution and global climate change since he joined NRDC in 1978. He helped formulate the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement designed to stop the depletion of the earth's ozone layer, as well as several essential amendments to the Clean Air Act. In 1993, he left NRDC to serve on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, followed by key posts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He rejoined NRDC in 2001 and has since been working to defend the Clean Air Act from assaults in Congress. He is based in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Lorenzen is a partner in Crowell & Moring's Washington, D.C. office and is a member of the Environment & Natural Resources and Government Affairs groups. He works with clients seeking to successfully navigate the federal environmental rulemaking process.
With a decade of Justice Department experience managing the legal defense of all EPA rules, Mr. Lorenzen has a unique ability to help clients shape environmental policy, provide vital input on proposed federal environmental regulations through written comment and direct interaction with regulators, and mount effective judicial challenges to EPA actions that adversely affect his clients' interests. He also helps clients ensure compliance with existing environmental regulations. In addition, he is a noted appellate lawyer who has briefed, argued, or supervised hundreds of petitions for review of EPA regulations and other final EPA actions.
While he was at the Department of Justice, Mr. Lorenzen oversaw many of the seminal environmental cases of the last decade. These include Massachusetts v. EPA, in which the Supreme Court affirmed EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and Entergy v. Riverkeeper, in which the Court held that EPA has discretion under the Clean Water Act to consider or decline to consider costs in determining how to regulate cooling water intake structures. In the D.C. Circuit and the other federal courts of appeals, he oversaw the government's defense in Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, in which the court upheld EPA's first suite of greenhouse gas regulations (largely upheld by the Supreme Court in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA); EME Homer City Generation, L.P. v. EPA and North Carolina v. EPA, in which the court reviewed EPA's various attempts to address interstate transport of air pollutants; numerous cases challenging EPA regulations governing emissions of hazardous air pollutants; and National Cotton Council v. EPA, in which the Sixth Circuit reviewed EPA's Clean Water Act regulations governing the application of pesticides over waters of the United States.
Mr. Lorenzen is a frequent lecturer and commentator in print, on the internet, and on television regarding federal environmental law, climate change regulation, administrative law, federal policymaking, and effective appellate brief-writing and argument.
An experienced appellate lawyer, Tim Bishop has argued five cases and briefed more than 60 before the US Supreme Court and has successfully handled dozens of appeals in federal and state appellate courts. He also represents clients in dispositive dismissal, summary judgment, and class certification motions in federal and state trial courts. Tim is co-author of the leading treatise, Supreme Court Practice(9th ed., 2007), a contributor to Federal Appellate Practice (2008), and a prolific author and speaker in the areas of appellate practice, environmental law, and securities law.
Tim has substantial experience in environmental and land use litigation (especially under the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, federal and state Takings Clauses, and nuisance law), securities and antitrust litigation, class certification, federal and state tax controversies, labor and employment law, and constitutional appeals and litigation. In the securities area, he has submitted successful party or amicus briefs in most of the Supreme Court’s recent cases, including Dabit, Dura, Tellabs, Billing, Stoneridge, andAmchem, as well as in leading lower-court cases such as In re IPO Securities Litigation and Newton. He has broad experience in defeating class certification in complex litigation.
In the environmental law area Tim has been ranked as a top practitioner by Chambers, Best Lawyers in America, Euromoney's Best of the Best USA, and other publications, which have called him "the go-to guy if you have a serious environmental issue on appeal - he is excellent at spotting issues and is a great appellate advocate" (Chambers 2009). Tim is ranked Band 1 in ChambersUSA 2012 in Environmental Law ("sources unanimously consider Bishop to be an exceptionally strong appellate lawyer") and Legal 500 2012 comments, "Bishop is 'superb and provides exemplary service.'" Tim successfully argued Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County in the Supreme Court, in which the Court struck down the Corps of Engineer’s "migratory bird rule." One leading environmental law professor and practitioner has written that Tim is "industry’s leading Supreme Court lawyer in environmental cases."
Since 1995, Tim has been a partner in Mayer Brown LLP’s 60-strong Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation Practice (which "stands head and shoulders above its competitors," according to Chambers USA 2008). Previously, he served as Law Clerk to US Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., and to Judge James L. Oakes, US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and was Staff Counsel and Skadden Fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union. Recently, Tim was named one of Benchmark’s 2013 Appellate Illinois Litigation Stars.Chambers USA (2007) notes Tim’s “high visibility” and “incredible reputation for appellate law,” and he has been described in theLawdragon 500 as "a high court superstar" and a "top advocate" (2006).
Northwestern University School of Law, JD, magna cum laude 1985 Articles Editor, Northwestern University Law Review Order of the Coif; John Henry Wigmore Scholar
University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College 1986 Diploma in Law
University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MA 1983
University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College 1979 BA, Law with First Class Honors
Professor of Law, University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco
Biography
Professor Dave Owen teaches courses in environmental, natural resources, water, land use, and administrative law. His interest in the subject area began when he was about six years old and his parents denied him access to all television except for PBS wildlife specials. He then became inordinately interested in poachers. He went on to study geology in college, primarily because the labs were outside, and became an environmental consultant. During one hot summer day of hazardous waste site sampling, while sweating miserably in a Tyvek suit and inhaling aniline fumes, he decided graduate school sounded like a nice idea. So he became an environmental lawyer. He went to Berkeley Law, where he served as editor-in-chief of Ecology Law Quarterly and was selected for the Order of the Coif.
Professor Owen went on to clerk at federal district court and then work for a small law firm in San Francisco, where his practice focused primarily on water law. He worked on Colorado River allocation, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta litigation, and federal state disputes over the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, among other matters. In 2007, he began teaching at the University of Maine School of Law. He joined the Hastings faculty in 2015.
His research focuses primarily on water resource management, and some recent projects have addressed taxation of water consumption, the roles of federal regional offices, stream protection under the Clean Water Act, policies to expedite dam removals and hydropower upgrades, and the intersection of groundwater use regulation and the takings clause. Four of his articles have been recognized by his peers as among the top environmental law articles of their respective years; another article has won the Morrison Prize as the top sustainability law article of its year, and he has presented three articles at the Harvard Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum. He also contributes frequently to the Environmental Law Prof Blog.
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.
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).
Senior fellow, Manhattan Institute; Columnist, Wall Street Journal
Biography
Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he worked for more than 20 years writing opinion pieces on politics, economics, education, immigration and race, among other subjects. He’s also a commentator for Fox News, where he’s appeared for more than a decade.
After joining the Journal in 1994, he was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000 and a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. He joined the Manhattan Institute in 2015. In 2008 he published Let Them In, which argues for a more free-market oriented U.S. immigration policy. His second book, Please Stop Helping Us, which is about the track record of government efforts to help the black underclass, was published in 2014. His most recent book, False Black Power?, is an assessment of why black political success has not translated into more black economic success and was published in June.
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Mr. Riley earned a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has also worked for USA Today and the Buffalo News. He lives in suburban New York City.
Vice President of Copyright and Legal Affairs, Motion Picture Association
Biography
Jennifer Pariser is the Vice President, Copyright and Legal Affairs at the Motion Picture Association. She provides counsel on a wide range of intellectual property and other legal issues for the association, oversees the studios’ relationship with academic institutions and runs its anti-piracy notice program. Jenny previously served as head of litigation at the RIAA and at Sony Music. Prior to that she was an associate with the firms Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler and Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and also served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Charles Tenney in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She graduated from New York University Law School in 1989 where she was a member of the Law Review. She lectures extensively on copyright topics including at the Copyright Society of the USA, the American and New York Bar Associations, PLI and various law schools.
Maria Schneider’s music has been hailed by critics as “evocative, majestic, magical, heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and beyond categorization.” She and her orchestra became widely known starting in 1994 when they released their first recording, Evanescence. There, Schneider began to develop her personal way of writing for what would become her 18-member collective, made up of many of the finest musicians in jazz today, tailoring her compositions to distinctly highlight the uniquely creative voices of the group. The Maria Schneider Orchestra has performed at festivals and concert halls worldwide. She herself has received numerous commissions and guest-conducting invites, working with over 90 groups from over 30 countries.
Schneider’s music blurs the lines between genres, making her long list of commissioners quite varied, stretching from Jazz at Lincoln Center, to The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, to collaborating with David Bowie. She is among a small few to have received GRAMMYS in multiple genres, have received the award in both jazz and classical categories, as well as for her work with David Bowie.
Schneider and her orchestra have a distinguished recording career with twelve GRAMMY nominations and five GRAMMY awards. Unique funding of projects has become a hallmark for Schneider through the trend-setting company, ArtistShare. Her album, Concert in the Garden (2004) became historic as the first recording to win a GRAMMY with Internet-only sales, even more significantly, it blazed the "crowd-funding" trail as ArtistShare’s first release. She’s been awarded many honors by the Jazz Journalists Association and DOWNBEAT and JAZZTIMES Critics and Readers Polls. In 2012, her alma mater, the University of Minnesota, presented Schneider with an honorary doctorate, and in 2014, ASCAP awarded her their esteemed Concert Music Award.
Schneider has become a strong voice for music advocacy and in 2014, testified before the US Congressional Subcommittee on Intellectual Property about digital rights. She has also appeared in CNN, participated in round-tables for the United States Copyright Office, and has been quoted in numerous publications for her views on Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Google, digital rights, and music piracy. Most recently, she and concerned colleagues in New York have launched a widespread campaign on behalf of music-makers, MusicAnswers.org.
Her recent collaboration with her orchestra and David Bowie resulted in his single called, "Sue (Or In A Season of Crime),” and brought her a 2016 GRAMMY (Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals). Schneider and her orchestra also received a 2016 GRAMMY for their latest work, The Thompson Fields (Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album).
Professor of Law, Southern Illinois University School of Law
Biography
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.
Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law
Biography
Michael D. Ramsey is Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where he teaches and writes in the areas of Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and International Law. He is the author of The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs (Harvard University Press), co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (Cambridge University Press), and co-author of two casebooks, Transnational Law and Practice (2d ed., Aspen) and International Business Transactions: A Problem-Oriented Coursebook (14th ed., West). His scholarly articles have appeared in publications such as the Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal and the American Journal of International Law. He received his B.A. magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and his J.D. summa cum laude from Stanford Law School. Prior to teaching, he served as a judicial clerk for Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court, and practiced law with the law firm of Latham & Watkins, where he specialized in international finance and investment. He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego, in the Department of Political Science and at the University of Paris – Sorbonne, in the Department of Comparative Law.