Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Biography
Britt C. Grant is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Grant was appointed to the federal bench in August 2018 after serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Prior to her judicial appointment, she served as the Solicitor General of Georgia and practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Grant served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She earned her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School, where she was the Co-Founder of the Stanford National Security and the Law Society, and the President of the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Before enrolling in law school, Judge Grant served in The White House in a variety of domestic policy roles as well as on the staff of Congressman Nathan Deal. Judge Grant earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three children.
Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large, Syndicated Columnist, Host of "The Josh Hammer Show," Article III Project Senior Counsel, Newsweek, Salem Media, Article III Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center
Biography
Josh Hammer is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek and host of "The Josh Hammer Show," a podcast, a syndicated radio show, and TV program on Salem News Channel. A syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, Josh is a frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues. He is also senior counsel for the Article III Project and Internet Accountability Project, as well as a Shillman Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a fellow with the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
An outspoken conservative, Josh opines on conservative intellectual trends, contemporary domestic and foreign policy debates, constitutional and legal issues, and the intersection of law, politics and culture. He has been published by many leading outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, National Affairs, American Affairs, The New Criterion, The National Interest, National Review, RealClearPolitics, First Things, City Journal, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, Tablet Magazine, Deseret Magazine, Compact Magazine, Chronicles Magazine, The Spectator, The American Mind, The American Conservative, The European Conservative, American Greatness, American Compass, The Federalist, Blaze Media, TomKlingenstein.com, Townhall, The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller, The Epoch Times, Anchoring Truths, Fortune, Fox Business, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Journal. He has also had legal scholarship published by the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
Josh is a college campus speaker through Young America's Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and clerked for the Hon. James C. Ho on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and as a Fellow with the James Wilson Institute. He is the former host of "America on Trial with Josh Hammer," a one-season daily podcast with The First that covered the unique legal issues surrounding the 2024 presidential election.
Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
Jamieson Greer is a partner in King & Spalding's International Trade practice group where he specializes in trade remedy litigation, export / import compliance, and international trade policy and negotiations. Prior to joining King & Spalding, he served as the Chief of Staff to the U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer. At USTR, he oversaw the development and implementation of U.S. trade policy for the executive branch. He also was deeply involved in the negotiations of the Phase One trade deal with China and the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Before working at USTR, Jamieson spent several years in private practice working on trade-related matters and served in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps.
Stephen P. Vaughn is a Partner in the International Trade Team of King & Spalding who works primarily on international trade litigation and policy matters. In April 2019, Stephen completed more than two years of service as the General Counsel for the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In that position, he managed a team of government attorneys representing U.S. interests in both trade negotiations and trade litigation. During two months in early 2017, Stephen also served as the acting U.S. Trade Representative. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on current U.S. trade policy, as well as one of the most talented U.S. trade remedy litigators.
Ken Klukowski is senior counsel at the law firm Schaerr Jaffe, focusing on constitutional, administrative, and election law, and the federal courts. He has served in politically appointed positions in the U.S. government, including senior counsel in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and prior to that in the White House as special counsel in the Office of Management and Budget. He was also the constitutional rights advisor on the Presidential Transition Team of President Donald J. Trump. In the private sector, he has worked as a senior fellow of the American Constitutional Rights Union, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, and a legal journalist. He litigates constitutional cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and contributes to media coverage of the nation’s highest court and legal issues. Earlier in his career, Klukowski served as special deputy attorney general of Indiana, and worked on faculty at Liberty University School of Law. His academic works have been published by journals such as the Federalist Society’s Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and his columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and other national publications. His amicus briefs and nine law review articles have been cited by various federal courts and top legal journals. He has participated in numerous Supreme Court cases, and lectured and debated at 100 law school events nationwide. Klukowski received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, studied history at Arizona State University, earned his law degree from Scalia Law School at George Mason University, and served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Alice Batchelder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
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 and election law, having served as a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission from 2000 to 2005, including as Vice Chairman of the Commission in 2003 and Chairman in 2004. While serving as FEC Commissioner, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.”
His articles on election law have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Georgetown Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and other top journals, and he contributes regularly to popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal and National Review.
In her book on the history of campaign finance reform, "Big Money Unleashed" (Univ. Of Chicago Press 2024), legal historian Ann Southworth writes, "Smith has done more than any other scholar since the 1970s to advance the legal theories that ultimately prevailed in the Roberts Court."
Smith has been the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor of Law at Capital University Law School, and has also held appointments at West Virginia University and Princeton University. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College.
Executive Vice President and Director of Litigation, EdChoice Legal Advocates
Biography
Before founding a public interest law firm at EdChoice, Tom Fisher served as Indiana’s first Solicitor General from 2005-2023. Fisher has argued dozens of high-profile cases before both the Indiana Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and five cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. A two-time recipient of the National Association of Attorneys General Best Brief Award, Fisher is a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and a Sagamore of the Wabash. Fisher is a graduate of Wabash College and Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where he serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law.
Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives & Special Counsel to the President, Alliance Defending Freedom
Biography
Ryan Bangert serves as senior vice president for strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president at Alliance Defending Freedom. He oversees ADF’s Blackstone Legal Fellowship and Research & Innovation Team. He also advises executive leadership on strategic initiatives.
Before joining ADF, Bangert served as deputy first assistant attorney general and deputy for legal counsel in the office of the Texas attorney general, and as deputy for civil litigation for Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley. Prior to his government service, Bangert was a litigation partner at Baker Botts L.L.P., where he was a member of the firm’s commercial litigation and appellate practice sections.
Bangert has been published at First Things, Civitas Outlook, Law & Liberty, National Review, Daily Wire, The Hill, Washington Examiner, The Federalist, Fox News, and the American Reformer. He speaks nationally on constitutional, cultural, and religious liberty issues. He also serves as Visiting Faculty in Law at the University of Austin.
He earned his J.D. from Southern Methodist University, where he was a Hatton Sumners scholar and graduated first in his class. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
James Burnham is the General Counsel of xAi and X. Before his current role, James served as Managing Partner of King Street Legal, PLLC (which he founded), and recently served for six months as the General Counsel for the Department of Government Efficiency. In his role at DOGE, James designed the legal structure of DOGE, advised DOGE personnel on policy initiatives across the Executive Branch, and supervised dozens of DOGE-related lawsuits against the Executive Branch – many of which DOGE won at the United States Supreme Court. Before founding King Street Legal, James was a litigation partner at Jones Day, a senior official in the Department of Justice's Civil Division and Office of the Attorney General, and a Senior Associate Counsel to the President. James also clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He graduated with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School and earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Texas at Austin. James is also the President of Vallecito Capital, LLC, a mission-driven litigation fund that ensures meritorious litigation does not falter due to lack of resources.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Biography
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
New York Alumni Chancellor's Chair in Law, Vanderbilt University Law School
Biography
Ganesh Sitaraman teaches and writes about constitutional law, the regulatory state, economic policy, democracy and foreign affairs. He joined the Vanderbilt Law faculty in 2011 and was named to the New York Alumni Chancellor's Chair in Law in 2021.
Sitaraman’s most recent book is The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America (Basic Books, 2019). He is also the co-author, with Anne Alstott, of The Public Option (Harvard Univ. Press, 2019), and the author of The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), which was one of The New York Times’ 100 notable books of 2017, and The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars (Oxford University Press, 2012), which won the 2013 Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.
Sitaraman is a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a member of the American Law Institute, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a co-founder of the Great Democracy Initiative. He serves on the boards of The American Prospect, the American Constitution Society, and Foreign Policy for America. Sitaraman was also a longtime adviser to Elizabeth Warren, including serving as a senior adviser on her 2020 presidential campaign, her senior counsel in the Senate, and her policy director during her 2012 Senate campaign. He has been profiled in The New York Times and Politico for his work at the nexus of politics and ideas.
In 2018, Sitaraman was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and at Vanderbilt, he has been awarded a Chancellor’s Award for Research and a Chancellor’s Faculty Fellowship. In 2016, he was a visiting assistant professor at Yale Law School. Before joining Vanderbilt, Sitaraman was the Public Law Fellow and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, a research fellow at the Counterinsurgency Training Center – Afghanistan in Kabul, and a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
An Eagle Scout and a Truman Scholar, he earned his A.B. in government magna cum laude from Harvard College, a master’s degree in political thought from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Zephyr Teachout is a Professor at Law at Fordham Law School where she focuses on the intersection of corporate power and political power. She teaches corporations, election law, antitrust, and prosecuting white collar crime. Her most recent book, Break 'em Up (2020), makes a case for reimagining the relationship between democracy and antimonopoly law. Her prior book, Corruption in America (2014), argued that the American constitutional system has an embedded anti-corruption principle that has been discarded by the modern Court. Her public writings have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, New York Review of Books, Washington Post, The Nation and The New Republic. In 2021, she took a leave to work as Special Advisor and Senior Counsel for Economic Justice at the New York Attorney General's Office. Before Law School, Zephyr Teachout had a career as a digital consultant and nonprofit entrepreneur, and represented clients on death row in North Carolina. She was a Law Clerk to then-Chief Judge Edward R. Becker., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Biography
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Judge, United States District Court, Eastern District of Missouri
Biography
Stephen R. Clark the chief United States district judge for the Eastern District of Missouri. He was appointed to the bench by President Trump in 2018 and became the chief judge in 2022. Prior to serving on the court, Judge Clark was the founder and managing partner of the Runnymede Law Group in St. Louis, Missouri, from 2008 to 2019. He also served as the president of the Federalist Society’s St. Louis Lawyers Chapter.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Biography
Lawrence VanDyke serves as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to that appointment in January 2020, he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice. Before that, he served consecutively as the Solicitor General of two western states – Nevada and Montana. At the beginning of his legal career, he worked as an attorney in the Appellate and Constitutional Issues practice group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.
Judge VanDyke received his law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He has engineering and theology undergraduate degrees and a masters degree in engineering management. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge VanDyke and his wife Cheryl live in Reno, Nevada, and they have three children.