Dranias serves as NeWay Capital LLC’s General Counsel, handling all corporate legal matters. Prior to this, he was Senior Litigation Counsel with the Government Accountability & Special Litigation Unit of the Arizona Attorney General. He also serves as Policy Advisor and Research Fellow with the Heartland Institute, as an expert and Speaker’s Bureau member with the Federalist Society, a Law and Civil Liberties Speaker for Students for Liberty, a Council of Scholars member with Compact for America Educational Foundation, as well as an Adjunct Instructor teaching Business Ethics and Law at Grand Canyon University.
Previously, Dranias served as President & Executive Director of Compact for America Educational Foundation where he led national efforts to organize the states to propose and ratify a federal Balanced Budget Amendment. Prior to that, Dranias was General Counsel, Policy Development Director and Constitutional Policy Director at the Goldwater Institute. Dranias led the Institute’s successful challenge to Arizona’s system of government campaign financing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he was an attorney with the Institute for Justice for three years and an attorney in private practice in Chicago for eight years, where he served as Young Lawyers Section co-editor of the Chicago Bar Association Record and earned the Oliver Wendell Holmes Award for his service.
Wendell H. Ford Professor of Law, University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law
Biography
Paul E. Salamanca graduated from Dartmouth College in 1983 and Boston College Law School in 1989, where he was a note editor for the Boston College Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.
Professor Salamanca served as a law clerk to Judge David H. Souter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and subsequently clerked for Justice Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. He practiced law with the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton in New York from 1991 to 1994 and was a visiting assistant professor of law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans before joining the faculty at the University of Kentucky College of Law in June 1995.
Professor Salamanca writes in the areas of separation of powers, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and privacy. He has published articles on these subjects in the University of Cincinnati Law Review, the Missouri Law Review, the Georgia Law Review and the Kentucky Law Journal, among other places.
From 2019 until 2021, Professor Salamanca served as a Senior Counsel and then as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) of the United States Department of Justice. His duties included supervision of the Natural Resources and Land Acquisition Sections of ENRD.
Wendell H. Ford Professor of Law, University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law
Biography
Paul E. Salamanca graduated from Dartmouth College in 1983 and Boston College Law School in 1989, where he was a note editor for the Boston College Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.
Professor Salamanca served as a law clerk to Judge David H. Souter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and subsequently clerked for Justice Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. He practiced law with the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton in New York from 1991 to 1994 and was a visiting assistant professor of law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans before joining the faculty at the University of Kentucky College of Law in June 1995.
Professor Salamanca writes in the areas of separation of powers, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and privacy. He has published articles on these subjects in the University of Cincinnati Law Review, the Missouri Law Review, the Georgia Law Review and the Kentucky Law Journal, among other places.
From 2019 until 2021, Professor Salamanca served as a Senior Counsel and then as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) of the United States Department of Justice. His duties included supervision of the Natural Resources and Land Acquisition Sections of ENRD.
Jack Kress has published more than 15 books and 70 articles on various issues of justice and ethics. He is perhaps best known for his early work co-originating the very concept of sentencing guidelines and directing the research projects that developed and implemented the first sentencing guidelines systems in America; he has been called the "father of sentencing guidelines" by ABC News. He helped establish the sentencing guidelines systems now in place in more than half the states, and also worked with Congress and the Department of Justice in first bringing the United States Sentencing Commission into existence. An elected life member of the American Law Institute, Professor Kress lectures broadly on criminal justice and sentencing reform; he is presently consulting with the ALI's Reporter in revising the Model Penal Code's sentencing provisions.
Professor Jack Kress holds degrees from Columbia University and Cambridge University; he has been tenured and taught at several law and other graduate schools. A former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney, his more recent work has been in ethics and bioethics.
In 1990, Professor Kress was named Special Counsel for Ethics and Designated Agency Ethics Official for the United States Department of Health and Human Services, where he worked with the Office of White House Counsel and the U. S. Office of Government Ethics in formulating the federal government's ethics policies; he concurrently directed the largest federal ethics and bioethics program, encompassing all components of HHS, including the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2001, Jack Kress was selected as the first Executive Director of the HHS Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation, and led that group in promulgating and implementing more than forty recommendations for reform in America’s donation and transplantation system, including the establishment of the national breakthrough collaborative. From 2004-2009, Professor Kress was a core faculty member of the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College. His most recent peer-reviewed article was published in the prestigious American Journal of Transplantation. He presently directs the Ethics and Justice Center in Saratoga Springs, New York. See www.ethicsandjustice.org
Peter focuses his legal practice on representing management in employment-related litigation and in contract negotiations, NLRB proceedings, EEO matters and arbitration.
Peter Kirsanow is a partner with Benesch’s Labor & Employment Practice Group. He returned to Benesch in January 2008 after serving as a presidential appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington D.C. for two years. While serving on the NLRB, he was involved with significant decisions including Oakwood Healthcare, Inc., Dana/Metaldyne and Oil Capital Sheet Metal, Inc. In addition, Peter testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. He also continues to testify before and advise members of the U.S. Congress on employment law matters, most recently on November 18 before the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight regarding disparate impact theory.
Peter was recently reappointed by the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives to his fourth consecutive six-year term on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. This is a part-time position which will expire in December 2025.
Recently, Peter and a team of Benesch attorneys served as lead counsel to the National Association of Manufacturers in litigation before the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia against the NLRB, challenging the Board’s Notice of Employer Rights Posting Rule. The court ruled in favor of Benesch’s client, striking down the NLRB’s Rule in its entirety. This ruling impacts over 6,000,000 employers nationwide which would have been subject to the posting requirement.
Additionally, Peter is past chair of the board of directors of the Center for New Black Leadership and is a member of Benesch’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee. This committee helps ensure that the firm promotes an environment in which differences are respected, employees are treated fairly, and individual skills and talents are valued.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
Biography
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Before coming to MSU College of Law, Professor Kalt worked at the Washington D.C. office of Sidley and Austin in one of the top appellate law practices in the country. He earned his juris doctor from Yale Law School, where he was an editor on the Yale Law Journal. After law school, he served as a law clerk for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Professor Kalt’s research focuses on structural constitutional law and juries. At MSU Law, Professor Kalt teaches Constitutional Law, Torts, and Administrative Law.
J.D. Yale Law School, 1997; A.B., with Highest Distinction, University of Michigan, 1994