Judge, United States District Court, Northern District of Ohio
Biography
Judge J. Philip Calabrese was confirmed to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in December 2020. Previously, he served on the State trial court in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. Before taking the bench, he had a complex litigation practice for nearly two decades and was a partner at what is now Squire Patton Boggs and at Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur, LLP, where he co-chaired the firm’s class action practice. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Judge Calabrese began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, where he teaches an advanced course on expert evidence and at the University of Akron School of Law where he teaches the First Amendment’s Speech Clause.
Assistant Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law
Biography
Alexander "Sasha" Volokh is an assistant professor of law, joining the Emory Law faculty in Fall 2009.
Professor Volokh earned his B.S. from UCLA and his J.D. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit and for Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Samuel Alito. Before coming to Emory, he was a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a visiting assistant professor at University of Houston Law Center.
His interests include law and economics, administrative law and the regulatory process, environmental law and policy, and legal history. His current research topics include the private management of government services, medieval law, judicial decisionmaking and statutory interpretation.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Biography
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
Justin Herdman, a former United States Attorney, is a trial lawyer who represents businesses and individuals involved in high-stakes government investigations, criminal litigation, and civil actions. Justin's practice is focused on obtaining favorable results in matters arising from alleged violations of state and federal laws, including fraud, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and the False Claims Act (FCA). He has successfully tried numerous cases in state and federal courts throughout his two decades in public service and private practice.
Prior to rejoining Jones Day in 2021, Justin served as the chief federal law enforcement officer for the Northern District of Ohio. Justin was nationally recognized for his effort in developing strategic responses to controlled substances, terrorism, and violent crime. While U.S. Attorney, Justin served as vice chair of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee (AGAC), where he provided national-level guidance on the management and operations of the Justice Department. Justin was also named co-chair of the Attorney General's Prescription Interdiction and Litigation Task Force and was chair of AGAC's Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee.
Justin also maintains an active pro bono practice. In 2022, his trial work with the Ohio Innocence Project led to the acquittal of a wrongfully convicted man who had spent 15 years in state prison.
Justin previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting national security offenses, including terrorism, money laundering, and export control violations. He is a former assistant district attorney in New York City and currently serves as a judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Biography
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Biography
Michael B. Brennan was confirmed and sworn in as a Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in May 2018.
He previously worked as a partner in the Milwaukee law firm of Gass Weber Mullins LLC, where he tried cases and handled appeals in federal and state courts, as a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit, where he presided over a variety of criminal and civil calendars, and as an assistant district attorney in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office.
Brennan’s undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame, and his law degree from Northwestern University School of Law, where he was an editor on the law review and the moot court champion. He served as a law clerk on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
James Wilson Endowed Professor, Pepperdine University
Biography
In law school, Robert Pushaw served as Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal and received an Olin Foundation Fellowship. After graduation, he clerked for Judge James Buckley of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, then worked as an employment lawyer for Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle.
Joining the University of Missouri School of Law faculty in 1992, Professor Pushaw taught Constitutional Law, Federal Courts and Contracts. In 1998, he won the Blackwell Sanders Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award as the law school's top teacher. In 2000, Pushaw received the William Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence, the University of Missouri's highest teaching honor. He came to Pepperdine in 2001, and won the School of Law's Annual Teaching Award in 2007.
Former Adjunct Professor of Law; former Special Counsel to the President; former federal prosecutor, Georgetown Law (ret.)
Biography
Bill Otis is a former Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, a one-time federal prosecutor, and a former Special White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he started his career in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, then became chief of appeals for the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. In the 1980's he served on the Department's "Train the Trainer" team, which taught US Attorneys Offices across the county how to implement the then-new Sentencing Reform Act. He has held several posts in the federal government, including Special Assistant to the Secretary of Energy and Counselor to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in addition to the White House post. He has testified before Congress on issues in criminal procedure, illegal drugs, the US Sentencing Commission, and the death penalty, and has given numerous media interviews on those and other subjects. He currently teaches a seminar at Georgetown Law titled "Conservatism in Law in America" with his wife, Federalist Society co-founder Lee Liberman Otis.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Biography
Professor Nicholas Bagley teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law, regulatory theory, and health law. Prior to joining the Law School faculty, he was an attorney with the appellate staff in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he argued a dozen cases before the U.S. Courts of Appeals and acted as lead counsel in many more. Professor Bagley also served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and to the Hon. David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. Professor Bagley holds a BA in English from Yale University and received his JD, summa cum laude, from New York University School of Law. Before entering law school, he joined Teach For America and taught eighth-grade English at a public school in South Bronx. Professor Bagley's work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Law School's L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is a frequent contributor to The Incidental Economist, a prominent health policy blog.
Eli Nachmany is an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in the Washington, DC, office. He clerked for Judge Steven J. Menashi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Eli graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Prior to law school, Eli served as the speechwriter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and as a domestic policy aide in the White House Office of American Innovation. He graduated summa cum laude from New York University with a B.S. in Sports Management. Eli’s scholarship on administrative law and executive power has appeared in the BYU Law Review, George Mason Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, and Yale Law Journal Forum.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Biography
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of a casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2024). He is also the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). His next book, The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction, is also forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.