Judging and the Rule of Law
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Chief Justice, Florida Supreme Court
Justice Charles Canady was born in Lakeland, Florida, in 1954. He is married to Jennifer Houghton, and they have two children. He received his B.A. from Haverford College in 1976 and his J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1979.
Justice Canady practiced law with the firm of Holland and Knight in Lakeland from 1979 through 1982. He practiced with the firm of Lane, Trohn, et al., from 1983 through 1992.
From November 1984 to November 1990, Justice Canady served three terms in the Florida House of Representatives, and from January 1993 to January 2001, he served four terms in the United States House of Representatives. Throughout his service in Congress, Justice Canady was a member of the House Judiciary Committee. For three terms, from January 1995 to January 2001, Justice Canady was the Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Upon leaving Congress, Justice Canady became General Counsel to Governor Jeb Bush. He was appointed by Governor Bush to the Second District Court of Appeal for a term beginning November 20, 2002.
On August 28, 2008, Justice Canady was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Charlie Crist and took office on September 8, 2008. He served as Chief Justice from July 2010 through June 2012. In March 2018, he was elected by his colleagues to serve as Chief Justice for a second time, with his two-year term starting July 1, 2018, and a third time starting July 1, 2020.
Author and FoxNews.com Contributor
John R. Lott, Jr. is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. He has published over 100 articles in academic journals. He also is the author of six books including More Guns, Less Crime, Freedomnomics, The Bias Against Guns, and Are Predatory Commitments Credible? He has just released another book entitled "Debacle: Obama's war on jobs and growth and what we can do now to regain our future." Lott is a FoxNews.com contributor and a weekly columnist for them. Opinion pieces by Prof. Lott have appeared in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune. He has appeared on such television programs as the ABC and NBC National Evening News broadcasts, Fox News, "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," and the "Today Show." He received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1984.
Associate Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School
Professor O'Meara re-joined the Marquette Law School faculty in the fall of 2002. He was a visiting faculty member from the fall of 1997 until the spring of 1999. In 1999 and 2005, Professor O'Meara was the recipient of the James D. Ghiardi Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. During the interim between 1999 and 2002, Professor O'Meara completed his Master of Divinity degree from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. Greg is also a member of the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus. Professor O'Meara's prior legal experience includes working as an Assistant District Attorney in Milwaukee County, serving as a staff attorney with the Legal Defense Project at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and teaching at Creighton University School of Law. In addition to criminal law, evidence, and the legal theory seminar, Greg also teaches legal ethics and criminal procedure.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Jacob Huebert is Senior Litigation Counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He previously served as President and Director of Litigation of the Liberty Justice Center, where he successfully litigated cases to protect constitutional rights, including the landmark Janus v. AFSCME case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld government employees’ First Amendment right to choose for themselves whether to pay money to a union. Jacob was also previously a Senior Attorney at the Goldwater Institute, where he litigated cases on free speech, property rights, and the Second Amendment.
Jacob and his work have appeared in numerous national media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Fox News Channel. He is also the author of a book, Libertarianism Today.
Jacob holds a B.A. in economics from Grove City College and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, he served as a clerk to Judge Deborah Cook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Jacob has served as an adjunct law professor at several law schools, teaching courses in advanced appellate advocacy, the law of payments, legal writing, and jurisprudence. Before working in public interest law, Jacob was a litigator in private practice.
Professor at Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville
Professor Russell L. Weaver graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri School of Law in 1978. He was a member of the Missouri Law Review, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and won the Judge Roy Harper Prize. After law school, Professor Weaver was associated with Watson, Ess, Marshall & Enggas in Kansas City, Missouri, and worked for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of General Counsel in Washington, D.C.
Professor Weaver began teaching at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law in 1982, and holds the rank of Professor of Law and Distinguished University Scholar. He teaches Constitutional Law, Advanced Constitutional Law, Remedies, Administrative Law, Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure. He has received the Brandeis School of Law's awards for teaching, scholarship, and service, including the Brown Todd & Heyburn Fellowship. He has been awarded the President's Award (University of Louisville) for Outstanding Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in the Field of Social Science, the President's Award for Outstanding Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in the Career Achievement Category, and the President's Award for Distinguished Service. He is the Executive Director and past president of the Southeastern Conference of the Association of American Law Schools. He is an Honorary Associate of Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia).
Professor Weaver is a prolific author who has written dozens of books and articles over the last twenty-five years. He was named the Judge Spurgeon Bell Distinguished Visiting Professor at South Texas College of Law (affiliated with Texas A & M University) during the 1998-99 academic year, and he held the Herbert Herff Chair of Excellence at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis, during 1992-93. In addition, he has been asked to speak at law schools and conferences around the world, and has been a visiting professor at law schools in France, England, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada.
Professor Weaver is particularly noted for his work in the constitutional law area. He has served as a consultant to the constitutional drafting commissions of Belarus and Kyrghyzstan and as a commentator on the Russian Constitution. His constitutional law writings have focused on free speech issues, particularly those relating to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, and include a constitutional law case-book and two anthologies (The First Amendment Anthology and The Constitutional Law Anthology). He has a First Amendment casebook in progress.
Professor Weaver is also noted for his writings on legal education and his work in the administrative law area. In 1992 and 1993, he served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States. His writings have focused on agency interpretations of statutes and regulations, and he is co-author of one of the leading administrative law casebooks.
Professor Weaver has served on many community and professional committees. He served on the Louisville Bar Association's (LBA) Professional Responsibility Committee, and as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools' (AALS) Criminal Justice Section and serves on the AALS Planning Committee for the New Law Teacher's Workshop. He has also served on the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky's Legal Panel and Board of Directors.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (ret.)
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Columnist, The Hill
Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., was for 25 years a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation. Prior to that he was Vice President of Domestic Policy at the National Center for Policy Analysis. He is a public policy analyst specializing in health care, entitlements and energy issues and is the author of numerous public policy studies. He is past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists.
For nine years Dr. Matthews was executive director of the Washington, DC-based Council for Affordable Health Insurance, a health insurance trade association. While he was executive director, National Journal recognized the Council as one of the most effective health policy organizations in Washington.
Dr. Matthews served for 10 years as a medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation. He is the co-author of On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff (2019) and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate, The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud). And for several years he co-authored a column on dental ethics for the Texas Dental Journal.
For several years he also served as chairman on the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
He is currently a weekly columnist for The Hill and has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, USA Today and the Washington Times.
Matthews is a frequent guest host on Point of View radio talk show, which airs nationwide. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network, and for several years had a daily one-minute commentary on Sirius-XM Radio. In 2008 and again in 2014, the BBC featured him in a television program on welfare reform in Great Britain, specifically Wales.
Dr. Matthews received a BBA in Economics from the University of Texas at Arlington, an M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has a Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. And he is an 8th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Professor of Law (Ret.), Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.