Founder and Director, James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding
Biography
Hadley Arkes joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1966. He became the Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence in 1987, and held that chair until he retired officially in July 2015. But he has not retired from writing and speaking. He has carried that teaching into a new phase; he has become the Founder and Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding in Washington, D.C. He has written eight books, mostly with Princeton and Cambridge University Presss. Among the books at Princeton have been: The Philosopher in the City (1981), First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990), and The Return of George Sutherland (1994). With Cambridge Press he has done Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (2002), and Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law (2010). His most recent book, with Regnery Press is Mere Natural Law (2023) His articles have appeared in professional journals, but apart from his writing in more scholarly formats, he has become known to a wider audience through his writings in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Civitas and First Things, a journal that took its name from his book of that title.
He was the main advocate, and architect, of the bill that became known as the Born-Alive Infants’ Protection Act. The account of his experience, in moving the bill through Congress, is contained as an epilogue or memoir in his book, Natural Rights & the Right to Choose. Arkes first prepared his proposal as part of the debating kit assembled for the first George Bush in 1988. The purpose of that proposal was to offer the “most modest first step” of all in legislating on abortion, and opening a conversation even with people who called themselves “pro-choice.” Professor Arkes proposed to begin simply by preserving the life of a child who survived an abortion–contrary to the holding of one federal judge, that such a child was not protected by the laws. Professor Arkes led the testimony on the bill before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House in July 2000, then again in July 2001. The legislative calendar was upended in the aftermath of September 11th, but in March 2002, the bill was brought to the floor of the House, where it passed unanimously. To the surprise of Professor Arkes, the bill was brought to the floor of the Senate on July 18 by the Deputy Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and passed in the same way. On August 5, President Bush signed the bill into law with Professor Arkes in attendance.
Professor Arkes was the founder, at Amherst, of the Committee for the American Founding, a group of alumni and students seeking to preserve, at Amherst, the doctrines of “natural rights” taught by the American Founders and Lincoln. That interest has been carried over now to the founding of a new center for the jurisprudence of natural law, in Washington, D.C.: the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, named for one of the premier minds among the American Founders. Professor Arkes has drawn to this project a cluster of accomplished federal judges who have wanted to get a firmer hold on the natural law, and brought them together with some gifted teachers of philosophy and law. The new institute will be sponsoring lectures and seminars in Washington and other parts of the country. The purpose of this new James Wilson Institute is to teach anew, to lawyers, judges, and students those principles of law that furnished the guide to the American Founders as they set about framing a Constitution. And the hope is to restore, to a new generation, the furnishings of mind of the men who formed this regime.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Biography
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Tom Cotton is a United States Senator from Arkansas. Tom’s committees include the Banking Committee, where he chairs the Economic Policy Subcommittee, the Intelligence Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, where he chairs the Air Land Power Subcommittee.
Tom grew up on his family’s cattle farm in Yell County. He graduated from Dardanelle High School, Harvard, and Harvard Law School. After a clerkship with the U.S. Court of Appeals and private law practice, Tom left the law because of the September 11th attacks. Tom served nearly five years on active duty in the United States Army as an Infantry Officer.
Tom served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne and in Afghanistan with a Provincial Reconstruction Team. Between his two combat tours, Tom served with The Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. Tom’s military decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, and Ranger Tab.
Between the Army and the Senate, Tom worked for McKinsey & Co. and served one term in the House of Representatives.
Tom and his wife Anna have two sons, Gabriel and Daniel.
Michael E. Rosman is CIR’s General Counsel. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rochester in 1981, majoring in economics and political science. He received his J.D. in 1984 from Yale Law School. Mr. Rosman worked as an associate at Rosenman & Colin in New York City from 1984-93.
Mr. Rosman joined CIR in March 1994. Mr. Rosman is the author of several articles, including: “Ambiguity and the First Amendment: Some Thoughts On All-White Advertising,” 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 289 (1993); and “Standing Alone: Standing Under The Fair Housing Act,” 60 Mo. L. Rev. 547 (1995), “Thoughts on Bakke and Its Effect on Race- Conscious Decision-Making,” 2002 U. Chi. Legal F. 45 Book Review of Kent Greenawalt’s Fighting Words, 13 Constitutional Commentary 317 (1996)
Mr. Rosman has litigated throughout the federal court system, and has argued many times in the federal courts of appeals. He also successfully argued on behalf of CIR client Tony Morrison in the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case of United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000).
Emeritus Dean and Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School
Biography
Professor Huffman joined the law school faculty in 1973, was appointed Acting Dean in 1993 and Dean in 1994, and returned to full time teaching in 2006. Born in Fort Benton, Montana, Jim graduated from Montana State University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the University of Chicago Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, the University of Oregon, the University of Athens in Greece and Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala. He was also a fellow at the Humane Studies Institute and a Distinguished Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation. Jim serves on the boards of the National Crime Victims Law Institute, the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Classroom Law Project, and the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. He is a member and former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Environment and Property Rights Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is a member of the Montana Bar Association and is admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. He is the author of more than 100 articles and chapters on a wide array of legal topics.
Christopher Bowen is an attorney with a Arent Fox LLP where he focuses on government contractor litigation and counseling, including bid protests, contract claims, audits, individual and company debarments and suspensions, security clearances, NISPOM compliance during mergers and acquisitions, and False Claims Act lawsuits. Prior to joining the law firm, Mr. Bowen was an attorney with the United States Department of Justice, where he handled government contract litigation, as well as Fifth Amendment Takings Clause and smuggling claims. He has argued before the United States Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit, the United States Court of Federal Claims, and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He has filed briefs with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the United States District Courts for the District of Colorado and the Northern District of California, and the United States Court of International Trade. Mr. Bowen attended Dartmouth College and the George Washington University Law School, and clerked for the Honorable Diane S. Sykes on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Super Lawyers has recognized Christopher Bowen as a “Rising Star” for both 2014 and 2015.
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
Mark Brnovich served as Arizona's 26th Attorney General from 2015 to 2023. He was first inaugurated in 2015, and again in 2019 after winning re-election. Mark has spent most of his professional life serving as a prosecutor at the local, state, and federal levels. Mark met his wife Susan while they both worked as prosecutors for the Maricopa County Attorney's office. Mark worked in the Gang/Repeat Offender Unit and prosecuted many difficult and high profile cases from 1992 to 1998. He then went on to work as an Assistant Attorney General with the Arizona Attorney General's Office from 1998 to 2003, where he developed an expertise in gambling law. Brnovich later went on to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Arizona where he prosecuted public integrity crimes, as well as crimes occurring in Indian Country.
Brnovich has also been a Judge Pro Tem of Maricopa County Superior Court, a Command Staff Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army National Guard, the Director for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, and the Director of the Arizona Department of Gaming, a law enforcement agency that investigates illegal gambling activity, as well as working with tribal regulators to ensure the integrity of tribal gaming.
Brnovich is known for restoring public confidence in the office of "Arizona's Top Cop" and for assembling some of the nation's most talented public servants for his administration. Mark argued at the United States Supreme Court in defense of the "one-person, one-vote" principle, was featured on 60 Minutes in defense of capital punishment, and has initiated national public education efforts to combat human sex trafficking.
Brnovich has been recognized by the National Federation of Independent Business as a "Champion of Small Business." and was elected by his bi-partisan colleagues to serve as the Chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General.
Mark's wife Susan was recently appointed by the United States Senate to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Arizona. He has two teenage daughters and lives in Phoenix.
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.
Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Biography
Josh Blackman is a national thought leader on constitutional law and the United States Supreme Court. Josh’s work was quoted during two presidential impeachment trials. He has testified before Congress and advises federal and state lawmakers. Josh regularly appears on TV, including NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the BBC. Josh is also a frequent guest on NPR and other syndicated radio programs. He has published commentaries in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and leading national publications.
Since 2012, Josh has served as a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. He holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law. Josh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Josh has written more than seven dozen law review articles that have been cited more than a thousand times. Josh was selected as the Jurist of the Year by the Texas Journal of Law & Public Policy, received the inaugural Meese III Originalism Award, and was awarded the Inaugural Joseph Story Award. Josh was selected by Forbes Magazine for the “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy. Josh is the President of the Harlan Institute, and founded FantasySCOTUS, the Internet’s Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracyand posts@JoshMBlackman.
