Constitutional Scholarship Director and Senior Legal Analyst, Pacific Legal Foundation
Biography
Anastasia Boden is Director of Constitutional Scholarship at Pacific Legal Foundation, where she leads the organization’s Supreme Court commentary and directs scholarly analysis in support of the firm’s litigation. She has represented entrepreneurs and small businesses nationwide in challenges to onerous licensing regimes, anti-competitive titling restrictions, Certificate of Need (“competitor’s veto”) laws, and other forms of unnecessary red tape that block economic opportunity.
Prior to this role, Anastasia developed nearly a dozen constitutional challenges to Certificate of Need laws across the country, helping spur legislative reform in Montana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Her victories include a ruling invalidating Houston’s busking restrictions, multiple appellate decisions expanding access to the courts for civil rights plaintiffs, and the legislative repeal of Virginia’s happy-hour advertising ban.
Her writings on law and liberty have been featured in USA Today, TheWashington Post, TheWall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more, and she has appeared on Headline News, CBS News, Fox News, ReasonTV, Newsmax, and John Stossel. In 2020, she was featured on Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s Supreme Court shortlist.
Anastasia earned her BA with dean’s honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was research assistant to Professor Randy E. Barnett—the “intellectual godfather” of the constitutional challenge to Obamacare. She is the co-creator of the podcast Dissed, about infamous Supreme Court dissents. She authors the biweekly newsletter SCOTUS Scoop and the column, “In Dissent” for SCOTUSblog.
Sworn in by Governor Bill Haslam in September 2014, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Holly Kirby is the first graduate of the University of Memphis ever to sit on Tennessee’s highest court. A career jurist, Justice Kirby has authored well over a thousand opinions from appeals all across the state.
Prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Kirby served for almost 19 years on the Tennessee Court of Appeals, Tennessee’s intermediate appellate court for civil cases. She represented a gender milestone on the Court of Appeals—when she was appointed in 1995, she became the first woman ever to sit on that Court.
A lifelong Tennessean, Justice Kirby was born in Memphis and graduated from high school in Columbia, Tennessee. As an undergraduate at the University of Memphis, she held a number of student leadership positions and graduated in 1979 with high honors, with a B.S. in mechanical engineering.
In 1982, Justice Kirby graduated from the University of Memphis School of Law with high honors. Upon graduation, she served as a judicial law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
After her clerkship, Justice Kirby joined the Memphis law firm of Burch, Porter & Johnson, where she was active in politics and community service. When she was selected as partner in 1990, she became the firm’s first female partner.
From the time of her appointment to the Court of Appeals in 1995 to the present, Justice Kirby has won 5 statewide elections, in 1996, 1998, 2006, 2014, and 2016.
Justice Kirby was chosen as Outstanding Young Alumna for the University of Memphis in 1996, Outstanding Alumna for the University of Memphis College of Engineering in 2002, and Special Distinguished Alumna for the School of Law in 2016. She is married to Memphis businessman Russell Ingram and has two grown children. The family belongs to Idlewild Presbyterian Church.
Benjamin Mazur Summer Research Professor of Law Affiliated Faculty, Ford Motor Company Center for Global Citizenship, Northwestern University School of Law
Biography
Jide Nzelibe joined Northwestern's faculty as an assistant professor in 2004 became a full Professor in 2008. He served as the Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago before joining Northwestern Law. In addition to his JD from Yale Law School, he also holds an MPA in international relations from Princeton University, where he was awarded a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Ford Foundation. His research and teaching interests include international trade, foreign relations law, public and private international law and contracts.
Senior Counsel & Director of Litigation, Liberty Justice Center
Speaker Information
Mollie Hemingway
Editor-in-Chief, The Federalist
Biography
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist, Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College, and a Fox News Contributor. She is a New York Times best-selling author of three books, including "Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution.” Hemingway is a recipient of The Bradley Prize, awarded for extraordinary contributions to American scholarship and debate, as well as the Dao Grand Prize for Journalism for her series on the Russia Collusion Hoax.
On August 1st, Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced the appointment of R. Matthew Price as United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri and he was sworn into office by Chief Judge Phillips that same day.
Price served as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Jefferson County Missouri and later as an Assistant Circuit Attorney in the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office. In 2008, Price joined the United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of Tennessee as a Criminal AUSA. After several years with DOJ, Price left to become a Senior Attorney for a Fortune 100 Company, later serving as the Lead Counsel for Compliance, Investigations & Government Litigation, overseeing internal investigations and managing global compliance projects.
In 2014, Price joined the City of Germantown, Tennessee as the Chief Prosecuting Attorney. Later, he worked at another Fortune 100 Company as a Senior Counsel, later promoted to Managing Counsel, where he directed complex investigations and led workstreams related to government inquiries. Most recently, Price has served as the Chief Legal Officer for a large Missouri corporation.
Carrie Campbell Severino is the president of the JCN, and co-author with Mollie Hemingway of the bestselling book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court. As a go-to expert on the confirmation process, Mrs. Severino has been extensively quoted in the media. She regularly appears on television, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and ABC’s This Week.
Severino writes and speaks on a wide range of judicial issues, including the constitutional limits on government, the federal nomination process, and state judicial selection. She has testified before Congress on constitutional questions and briefed Senators on judicial nominations, and regularly files briefs in high-profile Supreme Court cases. She was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.), Duke University (B.A., Biology), and Michigan State University (M.A., Linguistics).
Ms. Wyrick represents clients in a variety of matters involving constitutional law, administrative law, congressional and other government investigations, and commercial litigation.
Prior to joining Consovoy McCarthy, Ms. Wyrick served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where she prosecuted cases involving domestic and international narcotics trafficking and money laundering, white collar crime, material support of terrorism, and export control and sanctions violations. Previously at the Department of Justice, she was a Counselor to the Attorney General. Her portfolio included issues arising from the National Security Division, the Civil Division, and the Civil Rights Division. Before joining the Department, she served as Senior Counsel of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, where she led a number of congressional investigations. Ms. Wyrick also previously served as Deputy Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts.
Ms. Wyrick earned her J.D. from the University of Alabama School of Law and B.A. from Auburn University. Ms. Wyrick is a member of the Virginia and Alabama bars.
David N. Wecht is a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice. Wecht is one of three Democrats elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in November 2015. He was sworn in to office on January 7, 2016, for a term that expires on January 4, 2026.
Speaker Information
Joshua D. Wolson
United States District Judge, Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Biography
Judge Wolson was nominated to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in May 2018 and was confirmed in May 2019. Judge Wolson earned his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from law school, he served as a law clerk for Hon. Jan E. DuBois of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He then maintained a complex commercial litigation practice, first as an associate with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., and then as a partner with Dilworth Paxson in Philadelphia.
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Biography
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Director of the Program on Environmental and Energy Law, Assistant Dean of Adjunct Faculty Affairs, and Fellow in Environmental Law, American University Washington College of Law
Biography
William Snape has litigated a number of environmental and related cases in federal court, and argued Center for Biological Diversity v. Interior at the DC Circuit, which rejected the federal government’s plan for oil and gas drilling off the coast of Alaska in part because of climate change concerns. Snape is the author of numerous articles on natural resource issues, including the book Biodiversity and the Law published by Island Press. His public interest work currently focuses upon environmental justice advocacy at the state level, serving as board general counsel to the United States Climate Action Network, and litigating an active federal docket under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In Summer 2020, Snape was named director of WCL’s Program on Environmental and Energy Law (PEEL).
Vice President of Law & Policy, Property and Environment Research Center
Biography
Jonathan Wood is vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). An attorney, Jonathan has litigated environmental and property-rights cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, federal and state appellate courts, and trial courts across the country. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, Reason, and other outlets. And his research has been published in journals such as Environmental Law Reporter, Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Pace Environmental Law Review, and California Western Law Review.
Prior to coming to PERC, Jonathan was a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he litigated cases concerning the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal environmental laws. He was co-counsel for forest landowners in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that private land could not be arbitrarily regulated as critical habitat under the ESA. He also led a successful effort to reform regulation of threatened species to better align the incentives of private landowners with the interests of rare species.
Jonathan has testified before several congressional committees on wildlife conservation and endangered species topics. He has also appeared on national television and radio, including NPR’s All Things Considered, C-Span’s Washington Journal, Stossel, Fox News, and Hill.TV.
Jonathan has a law degree from the New York University School of Law, a masters degree in economic policy from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Texas. He is on the executive committee for the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group and a steering committee member for the Environmental Law Institute’s Emerging Leaders Initiative.
