New York political commentor Deroy Murdock is a Fox News Contributor, a Contributing Editor with National Review Online, an emeritus Media Fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University; and a Senior Fellow with the Atlas Network, which supports and connects some 500 free-market think tanks in the USA and some 95 countries world-wide. Mr. Murdock’s weekly column — “This Opinion Just In…” — appears in the New York Post, the Washington Times, the New Hampshire Union-Leader, and other newspapers across America. He has appeared on radio shows across America and presents commentaries on Fox News Radio’s podcast, The Rundown. He is a veteran of the 1980 and 1984 Reagan for President campaigns and Steve Forbes’ 2000 White House bid.
As a popular public speaker, he has lectured or debated at the Cato Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations; Harvard Medical School, the Heritage Foundation; the National Academy of Sciences; Dartmouth, Stanford, and Tulane universities; and various fora, from Bogotá to Buenos Aires to Budapest. He is a native of Los Angeles, a graduate of Georgetown University, and a resident of Manhattan, where he earned an MBA from New York University. His program included a semester of study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Deroy Murdock hopes that someday the free society will bring him — and every American — more leisure time to experience fine dining, motion pictures, skiing, live music, and the priceless joys of family, friends, and loved ones.
Ben Flowers, a partner at Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC, is an accomplished litigator with experience briefing, arguing, and winning high-stakes cases in courts throughout the country.
Before joining the law firm, Ben served as Ohio's 10th Solicitor General. In that role he regularly represented the State of Ohio before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of Ohio. Most prominently, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Ben led a multi-state challenge to OSHA's vaccine mandate, ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court.
Ben is a graduate of The Ohio State University and the University of Chicago Law School. Following law school, Ben clerked for Judge Sandra Ikuta of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of this United States. Ben lives in Upper Arlington, Ohio with his wife Denise and their three very active children.
Senior Associate Chief Counsel, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center
Biography
Jonathan Urick is senior associate chief counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Urick handles a variety of litigation matters for the Chamber.
Urick rejoined the Chamber after helping launch the national litigation boutique Lehotsky Keller LLP, where he represented large corporations and trade associations as one of the firm’s early partners. He previously served as senior counsel for the Chamber Litigation Center, primarily covering arbitration and class-action issues.
Before his first stint at the Chamber, Urick practiced law at McGuireWoods LLP on the firm’s appeals and issues team. With a diverse commercial-litigation practice focused on appeals and dispositive motions, Urick represented a variety of businesses across federal and state courts.
Urick served as a law clerk at all three levels of the federal judiciary: For Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Judge Amul Thapar, then a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
Urick graduated Order of the Coif from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Articles Development Editor of the Virginia Law Review. He received his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Delaware.
Lauren Willard is a partner in Covington’s Antitrust/Competition and Appellate practices. Drawing on her deep substantive antitrust experience in both the government and private practice, Lauren represents and advises clients on a variety of antitrust matters. She defends clients in complex civil litigation and class actions, counsels on mergers and acquisitions, and represents clients before federal regulators. She also represents clients in appellate matters before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals.
Lauren rejoined Covington after spending four years at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) working on antitrust and appellate matters, with a particular focus on competition in the digital economy. She served as a Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division, where she worked on a range of merger and conduct matters and served as the Front Office liaison to the International and Appellate sections. She also drafted several amicus briefs and statements of interest and coordinated with the Office of the Solicitor General and Civil Division on appellate matters involving antitrust issues. Lauren accepted a career detail to the Office of the Attorney General to lead the DOJ’s review of market-leading online platforms. In that role, she advised the Attorney General on the application of antitrust to technology platforms, managed antitrust investigations related to technology platforms, and coordinated with the States Attorneys General. Lauren also chaired the DOJ’s working group on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and drafted legislation that was cleared through the interagency process and presented to Congress. Following her detail, Lauren returned to the Antitrust Division, where she worked directly on the DOJ’s trial team in US v. Google, one of the biggest government antitrust monopolization litigations in the past 20 years.
After graduating from the University Virginia School of Law, she served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Senior Counsel and VP, Appellate Advocacy, Alliance Defending Freedom
Biography
John Bursch is senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy with Alliance Defending Freedom. Bursch has argued 12 U.S. Supreme Court cases and more than 30 state supreme court cases since 2011, and a recent study concluded that among all frequent Supreme Court advocates who did not work for the federal government, he had the 3rd highest success rate for persuading justices to adopt his legal position.
Bursch served as solicitor general for the state of Michigan from 2011-2013. He has argued multiple Michigan Supreme Court cases in eight of the last ten terms and has successfully litigated hundreds of matters nationwide, including six with at least $1 billion at stake. As part of his private firm, Bursch Law PLLC, he has represented Fortune 500 companies, foreign and domestic governments, top public officials, and industry associations in high-profile cases, primarily on appeal. He was inducted into the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and serves as a member of the American Law Institute. His work has resulted in repeated listings in Michigan Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers.
Before entering private practice, Bursch served as a law clerk to the Honorable James B. Loken on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1997 from the University of Minnesota Law School, where he served as Chief Note & Comment Editor for the Minnesota Law Review. Prior to that, he attended Western Michigan University, where he received degrees in mathematics and music performance summa cum laude.
Eli Savit serves as the elected Prosecuting Attorney for Washtenaw County. Eli’s 4-year term began on January 1st, 2021.
Eli has dedicated this career to public service. He formerly served as a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was a civil-rights and public-interest attorney, and started his career as a public-school teacher. Most recently, Eli served as the City of Detroit’s senior legal counsel, where he led criminal-justice reform work for Michigan’s largest city. Eli is also a nationally recognized attorney who has led public-interest lawsuits against some of the country’s toughest adversaries—adversaries such as banks, the opioid industry, slumlords, and corporate polluters. Eli continues to teach at the University of Michigan as a Lecturer.
Throughout his career in public service, Eli has witnessed first-hand the cascading consequences of a broken criminal-justice system. He ran for Washtenaw County Prosecutor to ensure equitable justice for all Washtenaw County residents and he is humbled by the faith and trust that the voters of Washtenaw County have placed in him.
A Washtenaw County native, Eli grew up in Ann Arbor and graduated from Ann Arbor Pioneer High School (where he captained the basketball team). He graduated from Kalamazoo College, where he played college basketball and was voted senior class commencement speaker. Eli started his career as a public school teacher, teaching special-education and general-education 8th grade American history. He then returned home to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan Law School.
After law school, Eli worked for two federal judges, then as an appellate and Supreme Court lawyer. In private practice, he dedicated significant time to pro bono matters—representing children with disabilities, victims of consumer fraud, and asylum applicants fleeing domestic violence and spousal abuse.
Eli was then selected to work as a law clerk for United States Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor (ret.). Following his time at the Supreme Court, Eli turned down lucrative opportunities with major D.C. law firms. Instead, he returned home to Michigan, settling in Ann Arbor and accepting an appointment as the City of Detroit’s senior legal counsel.
During his time with the City of Detroit, Eli earned a reputation as a fighter who is unafraid to take on powerful interests. He led the City’s efforts to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for the opioid epidemic. He sued banks, slumlords, and corporations whose housing policies were hurting Detroit residents. And he led the City’s landmark legal efforts to establish that all children have a constitutional right to learn how to read and write.
At the City of Detroit, Eli was also a steadfast fighter for criminal-justice reform. He spearheaded the City’s efforts to make it easier for people to expunge criminal records. He served as the City’s liaison to Michigan’s statewide task force on jail and pretrial incarceration. And he led a team of lawyers, statisticians, and trauma-informed professionals to craft city and state policies that will reduce the prison population, and promote rehabilitation and workforce-development for returning citizens.
Eli also earned a reputation as a staunch advocate for children and families. He worked with the Detroit Public Schools, teachers, and parents to prevent the closure of 24 neighborhood schools. He worked with the ACLU and community partners to craft a program that saved thousands of Detroit residents from home foreclosures. He secured millions of dollars in funding for trauma-informed wraparound services for Detroit schoolchildren. And he led the negotiating team which reached an historic deal with the Canadian government to provide nearly $60 million in community benefits related to the Gordie Howe International Bridge project—including $10 million for workforce development, and $35 million for health monitoring and air-pollution remediation in Southwest Detroit.
In addition to serving as Washtenaw County's Prosecuting Attorney, Eli is a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School. In his academic capacity, he has published scholarly articles on topics such as state and local government, educational equity, campaign-finance reform, and environmental law. His work has also been published in popular publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, Slate, The Hill, and MLive.com.
Eli has also been an integral part of several major, successful civil rights and environmental initiatives in Michigan and across the country. Representative matters on which he has worked include a successful legal effort to have the Michigan Civil Rights Commission recognize discrimination claims against LGBTQ Michiganders, and assisting the States of New Jersey and Maryland and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in their efforts to hold corporate polluters responsible for PFAS and MTBE contamination in the state’s waterways.
Eli serves, or has served, on a number of youth-focused boards of directors, including the Detroit’s Hope Starts Here Early Childhood Initiative Stewardship Board, the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren, the Board of Directors at Ypsilanti’s FLY Children's Art Center. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Michigan Democratic Party, and on the Executive Board of the Washtenaw County Democratic Party. He is a proud union member, as part of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization (American Federation of Teachers-Michigan Local 6244).
Keith Neely is an attorney with the Institute for Justice. He joined IJ in 2019 and works on cases involving each of IJ’s Four Pillars.
Before joining IJ, Keith worked as an associate in the Tax Controversy practice of the D.C. office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. While employed at Skadden, he also spent six months seconded to the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, where he specialized in eviction defense. Prior to joining Skadden, Keith clerked for Judge Danny Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Keith received his law degree in 2016 from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he also served as an editorial board member of the Virginia Law Review. He has an undergraduate degree in History from Vanderbilt University.
Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute
Biography
Matthew Cavedon is the Director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. He focuses on reforming plea-driven mass adjudication, ensuring police accountability, and defending constitutional criminal originalism. Cavedon’s scholarship has been published (or is forthcoming in) publications including the Arizona State Law Journal, Cato Supreme Court Review, Seattle University Law Review, and Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. Formerly a Georgia public defender and fellow at the Institute for Justice, Cavedon has taught law school courses on criminal law and procedure, as well as the First Amendment. Cavedon clerked for a U.S. district court and the Supreme Court of Georgia. He came to Cato following a fellowship at the Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion.
Interim Executive Director, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism
Biography
Maud Maron is the interim Executive Director of FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. Maron previously worked as the Director of Training at the Legal Aid Society, where she began her legal career as a public defender, practicing in both the Manhattan and the Bronx offices. She taught in the clinical criminal defense practicum at the Cardozo School of Law from 2003-2005. She is a co-founder and the current co-President of PLACE NYC, a parent-led education advocacy group supporting rigorous education standards and merit-based admissions in NYC public schools. Maron ran for New York City Council in 2021 and for Congress in 2022.
Public Policy Director, Southern Center for Human Rights
Biography
Tiffany Williams Roberts is Director of the Public Policy Unit at Southern Center for Human Rights. She joined the organization in April 2018 as the Community Engagement & Movement Building Counsel. She has practiced criminal defense since 2008, first as a public defender with the Atlanta Judicial Circuit Public Defender and later as a solo practitioner. As a public defender, Tiffany represented hundreds of indigent clients facing felony prosecution and graduated from Gideon’s Promise trial advocacy training program. She expanded her private practice to include civil rights litigation for victims of police abuse.
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.