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.
Vice President for Litigation, Institute for Free Speech
Biography
Alan joined the Institute for Free Speech as Vice President for Litigation in February 2021. In this role, Alan directs the Institute’s litigation and legal advocacy, leads our in-house legal team, and manages and works to expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
Prior to joining the Institute, Alan litigated complex federal matters for twenty years, in his own practice and as a partner in various Washington-area firms. He argued and won landmark constitutional cases in the United States Supreme Court and has appeared before numerous appellate and district courts throughout the country. Alan often speaks at law schools and continuing legal education seminars. He also teaches strategic/public interest litigation as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Alan began his career clerking for the Hon. Terrence W. Boyle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley Austin, and as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Alan earned his J.D. at Georgetown (1995) and his B.A. at Cornell University (1992). He is an active member in good standing of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and California bars, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and various federal appellate and district court bars.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Biography
In 1994, Professor of Law Michael I. Krauss became the law school's first recipient of the university's "Teacher of the Year" award for his engaging and challenging approach in the classroom. Born in the United States but raised in Canada, Professor Krauss speaks legalese in two languages. He earned his B.A. cum laude from Carleton University, his LL.B. summa cum laude from the Université de Sherbrooke, and his LL.M. from Yale Law School, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He was Columbia University's Law and Economics Fellow in 1981. He has been teaching at George Mason since 1987 and also has taught at the law schools of Seattle University, the University of Toronto, and the Université de Sherbrooke.
Hired as a law clerk by Justice Louis-Philippe Pigeon of Canada's Supreme Court, Professor Krauss practiced law for Quebec City's largest law firm before entering academia. He also served for five years on Québec's Human Rights Commission. A Salvatori Fellow of the Heritage Foundation and an academic fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Professor Krauss sits on the advisory boards of several think tanks. He served as president of the Virginia Association of Scholars and on the Board of Governors of the Education Section of the Virginia State Bar, and is currently a member of the Board of Governors of the National Association of Scholars.
Professor Krauss teaches Torts, Legal Ethics and Jurisprudence, and has a strong interest in national security issues. His research on torts and ethics is nationally known. He co-authored the first edition of Legal Ethics in a Nutshell in May 2003. This book digests the Model Rules in an engaging and often critical fashion. The second edition was published in 2006. Professor Krauss is now under contract with West Publications to produce an innovative textbook on Products Liability in late 2008.
Professor Krauss received his B.A. cum laude from Carleton University, his LL.B. summa cum laude from the Université de Sherbrooke, and his LL.M. from Yale Law School.
Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Biography
Professor Gary Lawson joined the University of Florida Levin College of Law faculty on July 1, 2024, after twenty-four years at Boston University School of Law and eleven years at Northwestern University School of Law. While at Boston University, he was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in 2022 – the highest faculty honor within the university. He has authored or co-authored nine editions of a textbook on administrative law, a textbook on constitutional law, five university press books, one popular press book, and more than one hundred scholarly articles on topics ranging from aspects of constitutional theory and history to the proof of legal propositions. His works have been cited in more than twenty opinions of United States Supreme Court justices. He is a founding member, and serves on the Board of Directors, of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
Associate Professor of Economics and Law, University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law
Speaker Information
John Kunich
Adjunct Professor, Belmont Abbey College
Biography
Speaker Information
Bradley A. Smith
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Biography
Bradley Smith is one of the nation’s foremost experts on campaign finance law. He served as a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, resigning as of Aug. 21, 2005. Smith was elected as Vice Chairman of the Commission in 2003 and Chairman of the Commission in 2004.
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Biography
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Vice President for Litigation, Institute for Free Speech
Biography
Alan joined the Institute for Free Speech as Vice President for Litigation in February 2021. In this role, Alan directs the Institute’s litigation and legal advocacy, leads our in-house legal team, and manages and works to expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
Prior to joining the Institute, Alan litigated complex federal matters for twenty years, in his own practice and as a partner in various Washington-area firms. He argued and won landmark constitutional cases in the United States Supreme Court and has appeared before numerous appellate and district courts throughout the country. Alan often speaks at law schools and continuing legal education seminars. He also teaches strategic/public interest litigation as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Alan began his career clerking for the Hon. Terrence W. Boyle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley Austin, and as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Alan earned his J.D. at Georgetown (1995) and his B.A. at Cornell University (1992). He is an active member in good standing of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and California bars, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and various federal appellate and district court bars.
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.