Discussion & Book Signing with Justice Antonin Scalia
New York Athletic Club 180 Central Park SouthNew York, New York 10019
Here are the latest events.
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, was born in Trenton, New Jersey, March 11, 1936. He married Maureen McCarthy and has nine children- Ann Forrest, Eugene, John Francis, Catherine Elisabeth, Mary Clare, Paul David, Matthew, Christopher James, and Margaret Jane. He received his A.B. from Georgetown University and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School, and was a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University from 1960-1961. He was in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio from 1961-1967, a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia from 1967-1971, and a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago from 1977-1982, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University and Stanford University. He was chairman of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law, 1981-1982, and its Conference of Section Chairmen, 1982-1983. He served the federal government as General Counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy from 1971-1972, Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 1972-1974, and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1974-1977. He was appointed Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982. President Reagan nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat September 26, 1986.
Director of Public Policy, Parents Television Council
As Director of Public Policy for the Parents Television Council, Dan Isett is responsible for advancing the PTC’s mission to federal, state and local elected and appointed officials, as well as the Federal Communications Commission. In addition, Mr. Isett is responsible for promoting PTC’s goals with allied organizations including family and parent organizations, media reform groups, entertainment industry representatives and trade groups involved in media and indecency issues in Washington, DC and around the country.
Mr. Isett is an expert on children’s education and has extensive government relations experience, having served as director of external affairs for The Center for Education Reform and executive director of the Texas Home School Coalition. Also prior to joining the PTC, he was chairman of the Lubbock County Republican Party in Texas.
Mr. Isett has been a guest on a variety of television and radio talk shows and has been quoted in publications such as the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, The Hill, Congressional Quarterly, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, Education Week, Congressional Quarterly, Multichannel News, and Television Week.
He is a graduate of Texas Tech University and has a degree in History and Mass Communications. Mr. Isett is a native of Lubbock, Texas, and currently resides in Alexandria, Virginia.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Solicitor General, Kansas, and Professor of Law, University of Kansas School of Law
Stephen R. McAllister is a native Kansan who grew up in Lucas, Kansas and graduated from Lucas-Luray High School. Growing up, he also lived in Hiawatha and Chanute, Kansas. He received both his B.A. and his J.D. degrees from the University of Kansas.
Following his graduation from law school, Steve clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, and then for Justices Byron White and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. After his clerkships Steve worked in the Washington, D.C. office of the Los Angeles law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
In 1993, Steve returned to his alma mater as a visiting professor of law. In 1999 he received tenure and promotion to the rank of full Professor. He served as Dean of the KU Law School from 2000 – 2005.
As a professor, Steve teaches constitutional law, constitutional litigation and torts. He won the Frederick J. Moreau Award for student advising in 1997, and a W.T. Kemper Award for excellence in teaching in 1999. As a scholar, Steve has written on a variety of constitutional topics, including affirmative action, capital punishment, federalism, and sex offender laws. Steve is an elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society.
Steve also has appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States several times. From 1999 – 2003, he served as the first State Solicitor for Kansas, assisting the Kansas Attorney General’s office in state cases raising important constitutional issues. In both 2001 and 2002, Supreme Court briefs that Steve authored for the State of Kansas won Best Brief Prizes at the annual summer meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General.
From May 2006 until March 2007, Steve served as Legislative Counsel for Kansas, advising the legislature regarding legal issues. In that capacity, Steve participated in the Kansas school finance litigation in the Kansas Supreme Court, filing a brief on behalf of the Kansas Legislature and presenting oral argument on behalf of the State as a special assistant attorney general. Since May 2007, Steve has served as Solicitor General of Kansas in the office of the Kansas Attorney General, briefing and arguing important cases involving abortion, the death penalty, freedom of speech, and right to a jury trial.
Steve speaks regularly on a variety of constitutional topics, as well as judicial confirmation and the Supreme Court as an institution.
Clerk, Judge Richard Posner, U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit 1988-89; Clerk, Justice Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court 1989-91; Clerk, Justice Clarence Thomas, U.S. Supreme Court 1991-1992; Associate, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, DC, 1992-93; Visiting Associate Professor, Kansas 1993-95, Associate Professor, Kansas 1995-98, Professor since 1999; Associate Dean of Academic Affairs 1999-2000; Dean 2000-2005; Interim Director, Dole Institute of Politics 2003-04.
J.D. 1988, Kansas, Articles Editor, University of Kansas Law Review; B.A. 1985, Kansas
Wendell H. Ford Professor of Law, University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law
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.
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Executive Director, Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, The Ohio State University
Professor Lee J. Strang serves as the inaugural executive director of the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at The Ohio State University.
Initiated in 2023 by the state of Ohio, the Chase Center will be an academic home at Ohio State for teaching, research, and programing on the foundations of the American constitutional order and its impact on society. As executive director, Professor Strang is responsible for organizing the center, overseeing the hiring and appointment of the center’s faculty, developing curriculum, and delivering student and academic programming. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State.
Professor Strang is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has published dozens of articles in leading journals in the fields of constitutional law and interpretation, property law, and religion and the First Amendment. He co-edits the textbook Federal Constitutional Law, and his most recent book, Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution is the first book-length, natural law justification for originalism. He currently is writing on civic thought and leadership, and he is finalizing a book on the history of American Catholic legal education (with John M. Breen).
Before joining Ohio State, Professor Strang served as the inaugural director of the University of Toledo’s Institute of American Constitutional Thought & Leadership. He joined the Toledo College of Law faculty in 2008, was granted tenure in 2010, and was named John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values in 2015. The University of Toledo awarded Professor Strang its Outstanding Faculty Research and Scholarship Award in 2017. Before that, he was a visiting professor at Michigan State University College of Law. A graduate of the University of Iowa, where he was articles editor of the Iowa Law Review and Order of the Coif, Professor Strang holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School.
Professor Strang has been a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. In 2016, he was appointed to the Ohio Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and reappointed as chair in 2023.
Prior to teaching, Professor Strang served as a judicial clerk for Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was also an associate for Jenner & Block LLP in Chicago, where he practiced in general and appellate litigation.
Professor Strang is a frequent presenter at scholarly conferences. He is the president of the Board of Trustees of Northwest Ohio Classical Academy, Ohio’s first classical charter school. He is also a regular participant in debates at law schools across the country, a contributor to the media, and a speaker to political, civic, and religious groups.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
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 is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
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.