Carrie Campbell Severino is the president of the JCN, and co-author with Mollie Hemingway of the bestselling book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court. As a go-to expert on the confirmation process, Mrs. Severino has been extensively quoted in the media. She regularly appears on television, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and ABC’s This Week.
Severino writes and speaks on a wide range of judicial issues, including the constitutional limits on government, the federal nomination process, and state judicial selection. She has testified before Congress on constitutional questions and briefed Senators on judicial nominations, and regularly files briefs in high-profile Supreme Court cases. She was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.), Duke University (B.A., Biology), and Michigan State University (M.A., Linguistics).
H.H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics, Clemson College of Business
Biography
Thomas Hazlett is the Hugh H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics at Clemson University. He has previously held faculty positions at George Mason University, the University of California, Davis, and the Wharton School, and served as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission. A noted expert in regulatory economics and information markets, his research has appeared in academic forums such as the Journal of Law & Economics, RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Financial Economics, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the Columbia Law Review. He has also written for such popular periodicals as the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Slate, the N.Y. Times, N.Y. Daily News, Reuters.com, Business Week, The New Republic and the Financial Times. His most recent book, The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone, (Yale, 2017), was featured as one of the top tech books of the year at CES 2018.
Don Willett serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Before joining the federal bench, Judge Willett served 13 years on the Supreme Court of Texas. His career spans decades of public service, including roles as legal counsel to a Texas Attorney General, a Texas Governor, a U.S. Attorney General, and the President of the United States.
Raised by a heroic widowed mom in a doublewide trailer in a town of 32, Judge Willett is his family’s first college graduate. He earned a triple-major B.B.A. from Baylor University—where he serves on the Board of Regents—and three degrees from Duke University—where he serves on the Board of Visitors: a J.D. with honors, an A.M. in political science, and an LL.M. in judicial studies. After law school, he clerked on the Fifth Circuit and practiced at Haynes and Boone before entering public service.
Judge Willett publishes widely in both leading law reviews and national media, including The Yale Law Journal, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Wall Street Journal. The longtime editor-in-chief of Judicature—the Scholarly Journal for Judges, he holds academic appointments at various law schools and has received more than a dozen Green Bag honors for “exemplary legal writing.” He was named Distinguished Jurist of the Year by the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and he is a member of the American Law Institute and a Life Fellow of the American, Texas, and Austin Bar Foundations.
A onetime bull rider and professional drummer, Judge Willett was named “Tweeter Laureate of Texas” in 2015. He is the namesake of Don R. Willett Elementary School—home of mighty Willett Wranglers—located just a mile from where he grew up. He and his radiant wife, Tiffany have three children—Jacob, Shane-David, and Geneviève—plus the family pup, Amicus.
Senior Counsel & Director of the Center for Religious Schools, Alliance Defending Freedom
Biography
Gregory S. Baylor serves as senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, where he is the director of the Center for Religious Schools and senior counsel with the Center for Public Policy.
Since joining ADF in 2009, Baylor has focused on defending and advancing the religious freedom of faith-based educational institutions through advice, education, legislative and public advocacy, and representation in disputes. He has testified about religious liberty issues three times before congressional committees and numerous times before state legislative committees.
Greg serves on the board of directors of the International Alliance for Christian Education, the board of directors of the Association for Biblical Higher Education, the board of directors of the Association for Christian Schools International, the board of advisors of the Museum of the Bible, and advisory board of the Center for Academic Faithfulness and Flourishing.
Greg earned his Juris Doctor in 1990 from Duke University School of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif, with high honors, and served on the editorial board of the Duke Law Journal. He received his bachelor’s degree in Honors English in 1987 from Dartmouth College. Following graduation from law school, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Jerry E. Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He practiced labor and employment law at two large international law firms for three years before joining the staff of Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom, where he served for 15 years prior to joining ADF. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife (a medical doctor) and two daughters.
Ken Paxton is the 51st Attorney General of Texas. He was elected on November 4, 2014, and sworn into office on January 5, 2015.
As the state's top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Paxton leads more than 4,000 employees in 38 divisions and 117 offices around Texas. That includes nearly 750 attorneys, who handle more than 30,000 cases annually – enforcing child support orders, protecting Texans against consumer fraud, enforcing open government laws, providing legal advice to state officials, and representing the state of Texas in court, among other things.
His first major initiative as attorney general was the formation of a special unit dedicated to combating human trafficking in Texas. During its first year of existence, the Human Trafficking and Transnational Organized Crime (HTTOC) section helped arrest the chief executive officer of Backpage.com, the largest online sex-trafficking marketplace in the United States.
Under Attorney General Paxton's leadership, the agency's Child Support Division is recognized as the most successful and cost-effective program in the nation. In fiscal year 2016, the division collected $4.096 billion for Texas families – an unprecedented amount in one year by any state. This success helped spare the state and Texas taxpayers over $1 billion in public assistance costs.
Attorney General Paxton is focused on protecting Texans and upholding Texas laws and the Constitution. Fighting federal overreach, he filed 22 lawsuits against the Obama administration during a two-year stretch, of which five were heard in the U.S. Supreme Court. During his tenure in office, Attorney General Paxton has won major cases for Texas on immigration, school rights, EPA rules and religious freedom. Stopping the Environmental Protection Agency's “Regional Haze” rule averted higher energy rates for Texans. Businesses were protected and jobs preserved in Texas when Attorney General Paxton prevailed against the Department of Labor's “Overtime Rule.”
In 2016, Attorney General Paxton secured a final settlement of $50 million in the state's lawsuit against VW over its emissions cheating scandal. Texas also stands to benefit from as much as $191 million from VW for projects designed to mitigate environmental harm done by the carmaker. Attorney General Paxton has been aggressive in his approach to protecting the health and safety of Texans from illegal synthetic drugs. His office has filed more than a dozen lawsuits to block the sale of synthetic cannabinoids (known as Kush and Spice) in Texas. A special section on the agency's website provides Texans with the information and resources they need to become fully informed about the dangers of synthetic drugs.
Attorney General Paxton graduated from Baylor University, where he served as student body president, earning a B.A. in psychology and an M.B.A. After receiving a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, he worked as an attorney at Strasburger & Price, LLP, in-house counsel for J.C. Penney Company, and headed up his own law firm for 14 years in McKinney.
First elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 2002, Attorney General Paxton represented House District 70 for 10 years, one of the fastest-growing regions in the state. In 2012, he was elected to the Texas state Senate, representing Senate District 8 in Collin and Dallas counties.
He met his wife Angela, a guidance counselor at Legacy Christian Academy in Frisco, while they were students at Baylor. The Paxtons have four children: Tucker, Abby, Mattie, and Katie. They are members of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (ret.)
Biography
The Honorable Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8, 2005. She retired from the court in 2017. From 1996 to 2005, she was an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Prior to this, she served as associate justice of the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento and as legal affairs secretary to California Governor Pete Wilson. Earlier in her career, she served as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency after having worked in the criminal appellate and civil trial divisions of the California Attorney General’s Office. She currently chairs the Advisory Board of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and serves on the Board of the Coolidge Foundation and the Association of College Trustees and Alumni. She is the Darling Foundation Jurist-in-Residence and visiting professor of Law at the University of California Boalt School of Law. Brown has been honored with the Jurisprudence Award of Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, the Baroness Thatcher Award of the Pacific Research Institute, the Edwin Meese III, Originalism and Religious Liberty Award from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the James Wilson Institute Leadership and the Law Award, and the 2019 Bradley Award. She earned her law degree from the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, and a Master of Laws in judicial process from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Marcia Madsen was Chair of the Government Contracts practice and co-chair of the National Security Practice at Mayer Brown. She represented contractors in regulatory, policy, transactional, litigation, and investigative matters involving virtually every federal agency. Her clients included defense contractors, information technology and systems integrators, telecommunications companies, engineering firms, insurers, and manufacturing companies. Ms. Madsen's practice included defense of False Claims Act matters, internal investigations, audits, bid protests, claims and disputes before administrative forums and in the federal courts. She was a former Chair of the American Bar Association Section of Public Contract Law and currently co-chairs the Section’s Procurement Fraud Committee. She also is a member of the Federalist Society Administrative Law and Regulation Executive Committee. In addition, Marcia was a member of the Court of Federal Claims Advisory Council - Emeritus, and a recipient of the Court's Golden Eagle award. She was a Past President of the Board of Contract Appeals Bar Association. She was appointed by the Executive Office of the President to chair the Section 1423 Panel which recommended revision of the acquisition laws. She spoke and wrote frequently on government contracts and litigation topics.
Georgetown University Law Center, LL.M., 1980 American University - Washington College of Law, J.D., 1976 University of Utah, B.A., 1972
Brian D. Miller is a shareholder in the Washington, D.C. office, of Rogers Joseph O’Donnell, where he represents clients in False Claims Act investigations and other investigations, audits, and reviews. He also serves as a corporate monitor for defense and other federal contractors in criminal and other matters. With over 27 years of experience as a federal prosecutor, Senate-confirmed inspector general, and civil litigator, Mr. Miller’s experience is unique. For example, he has represented a federal magistrate judge and the Attorney General in civil litigation. He has also personally issued grand jury subpoenas, signed inspector general subpoenas, and received testimony from civil investigative demands—something very few, if any, other attorneys have done. For nearly the last decade, Mr. Miller served as the Inspector General for the U.S. General Services Administration where he led over 300 auditors, special agents, attorneys, and support staff in conducting nationwide government audits and high profile investigations. As Inspector General, Mr. Miller is well known for his report on the excesses at a GSA conference in Las Vegas. Mr. Miller frequently testified before Congress regarding his investigations and audits. Earlier in Mr. Miller’s career, he held several high level positions within the U.S. Department of Justice, including senior counsel to the deputy attorney general and special counsel on healthcare fraud. He served as an Assistant United States Attorney for over a decade, where he prosecuted terrorists, fraudsters, and drug kingpins.
