Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Biography
Judge Sykes was nominated to the Seventh Circuit by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2004. Prior to her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Sykes served as a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Governor Tommy G. Thompson appointed her in September 1999 to fill a mid-term vacancy on the state supreme court, and she was elected to a full ten-year term in April 2000. From 1992-1999, Judge Sykes served on the state trial bench in Milwaukee County (elected in 1992 and re-elected in 1998). From 1985-1992, Judge Sykes practiced law with the Milwaukee firm of Whyte & Hirschboeck, S.C., and from 1984-1985, was a law clerk to Federal Judge Terence T. Evans.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee area, Judge Sykes earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1980 and a law degree from Marquette University Law School in 1984. Between college and law school, Judge Sykes worked as a reporter for The Milwaukee Journal.
Michael Huston is co-chair of the Appeals, Issues & Strategy practice at Perkins Coie LLP, where he counsels some of the World’s leading companies on appellate matters and all aspects of litigation strategy.
Michael is a former Assistant to the Solicitor General at the United States Department of Justice. In that role, he represented the federal government before the Supreme Court of the United States. Michael has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court and briefed hundreds more. He is a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court.
Michael previously practiced appellate and administrative law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in Washington, DC. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States, and to the Honorable Raymond M. Kethledge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Michael graduated first in his class from the University of Michigan Law School, where he received the Henry M. Bates Memorial Scholarship Award—the law school's highest honor. He served as an editor on the Michigan Law Review.
Michael graduated summa cum laude from the University of Arizona with a bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy. He was elected Phi Beta Kappa.
Ajit Pai, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on issues pertaining to technology and innovation, telecommunications regulatory policy, and market-based incentives for investment in broadband deployment. Concurrently, he is a partner at Searchlight Capital Partners, a global investment firm.
Mr. Pai’s distinguished career at the FCC includes two leadership roles following presidential appointments. He was appointed commissioner by President Barack Obama in 2012, designated chairman by President Donald Trump in 2017, and twice confirmed by the US Senate. While at the helm of the FCC, Mr. Pai had a transformative impact on the future of US technology and communications policy, implementing major initiatives to help close the digital divide; advance US leadership in 5G and other wireless technologies; promote innovation; protect consumers, public safety, and national security; and make the agency itself more open, transparent, and data-driven.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Pai served in various public-sector positions in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel, the US Department of Justice, the US Senate Judiciary Committee, and the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He also worked as a partner at Jenner & Block and associate general counsel at Verizon Communications.
Mr. Pai graduated with honors from Harvard University, where he received a bachelor’s degree, and from the University of Chicago Law School, where he received a law degree and was an editor on the University of Chicago Law Review.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Biography
Judge Nelson was confirmed to the Ninth Circuit in October 2018,as the youngest Circuit Judge to serve from Idaho and he has chambers in his hometown of Idaho Falls.Prior to his confirmation, Judge Nelson served for nine years as General Counsel of Idaho Falls-based Melaleuca, Inc., a consumer goods company. He previously worked in Washington, DC, where he served in all three branches of the federal government, including as Special Counsel for Supreme Court nominations to the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Deputy General Counsel to the White House Office of Management and Budget; Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice; and a law clerk to Judge Henderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has argued in most of the federal courts of appeals and worked on dozens of Supreme Court briefs. He started in the Washington, DC office of Sidley Austin as an appellate lawyer, after clerking for Judges Mosk and Brower of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague, and fornow-Judge Tom Griffith, then-Senate Legal Counsel, during the impeachment trial of President Clinton. Judge Nelson earned his B.A. from Brigham Young University and his J.D., with honors, from BYU Law School. Judge Nelson has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1998.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
Biography
Judge William Duane Benton is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He joined the court in 2004 after being nominated by former President George W. Bush. Prior to his appointment, Judge Benton served as the chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court. During his service on the court he received his masters of laws from the University of Virginia, completed the senior executives program at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, and completed a post-graduate appellate judges course at New York University’s Institute of Judicial Administration.
Prior to serving on the Supreme Court of Missouri, Judge Benton was appointed by then-Governor John Ashcroft as director of the state’s department of revenue. Judge Benton also worked as a judge advocate general for the United States Navy, during which time he received his master’s degree in business administration and accountancy from the University of Memphis.
Judge Benton earned his law degree from Yale Law School and was the managing editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Biography
Professor Gary Lawson joined the University of Florida Levin College of Law faculty on July 1, 2024, after twenty-four years at Boston University School of Law and eleven years at Northwestern University School of Law. While at Boston University, he was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in 2022 – the highest faculty honor within the university. He has authored or co-authored nine editions of a textbook on administrative law, a textbook on constitutional law, five university press books, one popular press book, and more than one hundred scholarly articles on topics ranging from aspects of constitutional theory and history to the proof of legal propositions. His works have been cited in more than twenty opinions of United States Supreme Court justices. He is a founding member, and serves on the Board of Directors, of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
Jessica Silbey teaches and writes in the areas of intellectual property, constitutional law, and law and the humanities.
In addition to a law degree, she has a PhD in comparative literature and draws on her studies of literature and film to better account for law’s force, both its effectiveness and failing as socio-political regulation. In 2018, she was a Guggenheim Fellow and has recently completed a book supported by that fellowship called Against Progress: Intellectual Property and Fundamental Values in the Internet Age (Stanford University Press, 2022). In Against Progress, Professor Silbey considers intellectual property debates in law and culture as a bellwether of changing social justice needs in the 21st century. The book argues that intellectual property law is becoming a central framework through which to discuss essential socio-political issues, extending ancient debates over our most cherished constitutional values, refiguring the substance of “progress” in terms that demonstrate the urgency of art and science to social justice today.
Professor Silbey’s last book, The Eureka Myth: Creators, Innovators and Everyday Intellectual Property (Stanford University Press, 2015), altered the national conversation about creativity and invention. Based on a qualitative empirical analysis of interviews with authors, artists, inventors and lawyers, the book challenges the traditional notion of intellectual property as merely creating financial incentives necessary to spur innovation. Professor Silbey continues her qualitative empirical study of intellectual property in on-going research on practices of digital photography and design.
In addition to her research on intellectual property and constitutional law, Professor Silbey writes and speaks about the use of film as a legal tool (body cams, surveillance video, medical imaging) and the representations of law in popular culture (courtroom dramas, reality television). She is the co-editor of several books, including Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book (Vandeplas 2020) (with Michael Asimow), Trial Films on Trial (University of Alabama Press, 2019) (with Austin Sarat and Martha Umphrey) and Law and Justice on the Small Screen (Bloomsbury, 2012) (with Peter Robson). She is an affiliate fellow at Yale’s Information Society Project and was a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She was previously chair of the Association of American Law School’s (AALS) national Section on Intellectual Property and served on the AALS Presidential Conference Film Committee from 2012-2020. She was co-chair of the New England Chapter for the Copyright Society of the United States from 2015 through 2018. She has been a distinguished lecturer and visiting fellow at the Willson Center for the Humanities and the Arts at the University of Georgia and was honored to give the 56th Robert D. Klein Lecture at Northeastern University in 2020. Before joining Boston University School of Law, Professor Silbey was a faculty member at Northeastern University School of Law where she was the faculty director of the Center for Law, Innovation, and Creativity, an affiliate professor in English, and Core Faculty at Northeastern’s NuLab for Maps, Texts, and Networks.
Professor Silbey was honored to clerk for Judge Robert E. Keeton on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and Judge Levin Campbell on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Before becoming a law professor, she practiced law in the disputes department of the Boston office of Foley Hoag LLP focusing on intellectual property, bankruptcy, and reproductive rights.
Cary Fields Professor of Law; Co-Director, Center for Law and Religion, St. John's University School of Law
Biography
Professor DeGirolami has research interests in law and religion, freedom of speech, constitutional law, tort law, and criminal law. His book, The Tragedy of Religious Freedom, was published by Harvard University Press in 2013. His papers have been or will be published in various law journals including Notre Dame Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Stanford Law and Policy Review, Constitutional Commentary, Legal Theory, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Boston College Law Review, San Diego Law Review, Alabama Law Review, and St. John's Law Review, among others. He has written for The New York Times, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, First Things, Commonweal, and The Library of Law and Liberty. He is the Cary Fields Professor of Law and the Co-director of the Center for Law and Religion.
Following law school, Professor DeGirolami clerked for Judge William E.Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island and Judge Jerome Farris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His professional experience includes service as an Assistant District Attorney in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to joining the St. John's faculty, he was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, and Visiting Assistant Professor and Scholar in Residence at Catholic University's Columbus School of Law. He was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 2019, in the Department of Politics’ James Madison Program. He was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 2019, in the Department of Politics' James Madison Program, and a Visiting Professor at Notre Dame Law School in Spring 2020.
At St. John's, he teaches or has taught Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Criminal Law, courses in Law and Religion, Professional Responsibility, and Torts.
