Professor of Law, Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law
Biography
Scott Gerber clerked for U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres of the District of Rhode Island and practiced with the Boston-based law firm Bingham, Dana & Gould. He is a member of the Massachusetts, Colorado and Virginia bars as well as the U.S. Supreme Court bar. He is the 2002, 2009, 2011 and 2012 winner of the Fowler V. Harper Award for excellence in legal scholarship and the 2004, 2013 and 2016 recipient of the Daniel S. Guy Award for excellence in legal journalism. He held the Ella & Ernest Fisher chair in law at Ohio Northern University from 2008-10. He has served on the Ohio Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights since 2008 and was appointed to the Association of American Law Schools Committee to Review Scholarly Papers for the 2018 Annual Meeting. He is an associated scholar at Brown University's Political Theory Project. StateStats.org named him one of the top law professors in Ohio. He was on sabbatical as a visiting professor at Brown University's Political Theory Project during the 2018-19 academic year.
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Biography
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
Biography
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.
Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Health Law & Policy, Georgetown University
Biography
David A. Hyman, M.D., J.D., is the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Health Law & Policy at Georgetown University. Professor Hyman focuses his research and writing on the regulation and financing of health care. He teaches or has taught health care regulation, civil procedure, insurance, medical malpractice, law & economics, professional responsibility, and tax policy.
While serving as Special Counsel to the Federal Trade Commission, Professor Hyman was principal author and project leader for the first joint report ever issued by the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, “Improving Health Care: A Dose of Competition” (2004). He is also the author of Medicare Meets Mephistopheles, which was selected by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce/National Chamber Foundation as one of the top ten books of 2007, and the co-author (with Charles Silver) of Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care (2018). He has published widely in student-edited law reviews and peer-reviewed medical, health policy, law, and economics journals.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
Biography
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.
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.
Cramer’s work has been cited in Justice Scalia’s opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2795 (2008), in Justice Alito’s opinion in McDonald v. Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3040 n.21, 3041 n.25, 3043, and Justice Breyer’s dissent in McDonald v. Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3132. Cramer’s website is http://www.claytoncramer.com.
Speaker Information
David B. Kopel
Research Director, Independence Institute
Biography
David B. Kopel is Research Director at the Independence Institute; Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute; and Senior Fellow at the University of Wyoming College of Law, Firearms Research Center. He received his B.A. in history with Highest Honors from Brown University and his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School.
He is the author of over 20 books, including the textbook Firearm Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy (Aspen Pubs. 4th ed. forthcoming 2026). His scholarship and briefs have been cited 7 Supreme Court cases--including Heller, McDonald, and Bruen--and in 140 lower courts opinions. He is the author of 120 scholarly articles. His shorter articles often appear on The Volokh Conspiracy blog, hosted by Reason magazine. His topics of interest include the right to arms throughout history, the Colorado Constitution, and law enforcement policy.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Biography
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
Provost & Chief Academic Officer, Bryant University
Biography
An acclaimed international law and national security expert experienced in academic, law, and government service settings, Provost Glenn M. Sulmasy brings a distinguished record of Higher Education leadership and academic achievement to his position as Bryant’s first university Provost and Chief Academic Officer.
Sulmasy previously served as Deputy University Counsel and later led the Humanities Department atthe United States Coast Guard Academy (USCGA), in New London, CT. Additionally, he served as Professor of Law at USCGA and has been involved in higher education since 1997.
In addition to serving on the faculties of the Academy and the U.S. Naval War College, Sulmasy has lectured in the fields of International Law, U.S. Constitutional Law, and National Security at numerous universities and think tanks. He has also served as a National Security and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
A former fellow in Homeland Security and National Security Law for the Center for National Policy in Washington D.C., Sulmasy lectures extensively on the law of armed conflict, international law, and national security matters. He is widely published internationally on national security matters, and as an expert has been featured in the LA Times, on CBS News Radio, National Public Radio, CNN International, US News & World Report, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, Al-Jazeera America, MSNBC, Fox News and numerous other national media outlets. He is the author of The National Security Court System – A Natural Evolution of Justice in an Age of Terror (Oxford University Press) and Co-Editor of International Law Challenges – Homeland Security and Combating Terrorism (2005).
Sulmasy was educated at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, University of Baltimore School of Law (cum laude), UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) and the Harvard Kennedy School.
Provost Sulmasy, his wife Marla, andseven children hail from Old Lyme, CT and Smithfield, RI.