President and General Counsel, Public Interest Legal Foundation
Biography
J. Christian Adams is the President and General Counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. He served from 2005 to 2010 in the Voting Section at the United States Department of Justice Voting Section. President Trump appointed Adams to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. President Trump also appointed Adams as a Commissioner to the United States Commission on Civil Rights where he also now serves with a term through 2025. He has been involved in election law lawsuits in 33 states and the territory of Guam. He has represented multiple presidential campaigns in election litigation. He has a law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law. He is a member of the South Carolina and Virginia Bars.
Timothy P. Carney is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on economic competition, cronyism, civil society, localism, and religion in America. He is concurrently the commentary editor at the Washington Examiner.
In addition to his Washington Examiner columns, Mr. Carney’s work has been published in a variety of magazines, websites, and newspapers, including The Atlantic, New York Post, The New York Times, Reason Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. His television appearances include CNBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the “PBS NewsHour.”
Mr. Carney has a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s College in Annapolis.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Biography
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Senior Legal Fellow, the Meese Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
Biography
Paul J. Larkin is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Meese Institute for the Rule of Law at Advancing American Freedom. Paul has held various positions in the federal and state governments throughout his career, such as being an attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, Special Agent-in-Charge and Acting Director of the Criminal Investigation Division at the Environmental Protection Agency, and a member of the Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform Commission and of the Juvenile Justice Reform Commission in the Office of Virginia Governor George Allen.
He has also worked at Verizon Communications and two law firms in Washington, D.C. His current research is principally in the fields of drug policy, criminal justice policy, and administrative law and policy. He has published numerous articles in law and public policy journals, both in print and online.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Times. Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University.
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