New Legal Tools to Combat Emerging Foreign Threats
Tyler Lawyers Chapter
Willow Brook Country Club3205 W Erwin St
Tyler, TX 75702
Here are the latest events.
Counsel, Debevoise & Plimpton
Carter Burwell is a litigation counsel based in the Washington, D.C. office of Debevoise & Plimpton and a member of the firm’s White Collar & Regulatory Defense practice. His practice focuses on white collar criminal defense, government investigations and internal investigations, and national security matters.
Mr. Burwell joins Debevoise with more than 15 years of experience in senior roles across the federal government. Most recently, Mr. Burwell served as Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Finance Intelligence, where he advised on matters involving financial sanctions and illicit finance, international corruption and human rights abuses and digital assets. At Treasury, Mr. Burwell worked directly with the National Security Council, other senior executive branch officials, foreign leaders and the private sector to develop and implement policies to protect domestic and international financial systems from national security threats. He also participated in the CFIUS review process and advanced anti-money laundering reforms under the Bank Secrecy Act.
Prior to his role at the Treasury Department, Mr. Burwell served as one of the top lawyers on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, including as Chief Counsel to former Assistant Majority Leader and U.S. Senator John Cornyn and as Counsel to former Chairman and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. In the Senate, Mr. Burwell worked on bipartisan efforts to modernize national security and technology laws, reform the criminal justice system and conduct rigorous oversight of government officials and the private sector on matters of national consequence. Mr. Burwell also served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Violent Crime and Terrorism Unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) and in the National Security and International Crimes Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). As a federal prosecutor at EDNY and EDVA, Mr. Burwell supervised and participated in a wide variety of investigations and prosecutions involving international and domestic terrorist groups, international cartels and racketeering organizations, as well as financial and cyber crimes. He successfully tried numerous cases to verdict and briefed and argued appeals in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Earlier on in his career, Mr. Burwell served as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Gleeson, now a Debevoise litigation partner, before going on to clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for the Hon. Judge Karen Henderson. Mr. Burwell was also a litigation associate at another international law firm.
He received his J.D. from the University Virginia School of Law in 2002, an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge in 1998, and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1996.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Eric R. Claeys is Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has written widely in the fields of property, private law, and constitutional law. Professor Claeys’s current research interests focus on flourishing- and labor-based natural rights justifications for property—in American property theory, in intellectual property, and in contemporary regulation of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing. He is a member of the American Law Institute, he serves on the ALI’s Members’ Consultative Group for the first Restatement of Copyright, and he also serves as an adviser to the Restatement (Fourth) of the Law of Property.
Professor Claeys received his JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He received his AB from Princeton University, and he is a former visiting fellow and current member of Princeton’s Politics Department’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. After law school, Professor Claeys clerked for the Hon. Melvin Brunetti, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Hon. William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.
Professor Claeys’s main teaching interests include Property, Torts, Jurisprudence, and Intellectual Property. In recent years, he has also taught Water Law, Remedies, Estates and Trusts, Trade Secrecy, Constitutional Law, Torts, and Oil and Gas law. Spring 2018, he is teaching Torts and Jurisprudence as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
General Counsel, xAI and X
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
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.
President and Executive Director, Electronic Privacy Information Center
Marc Rotenberg is President and Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. He teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and frequently testifies before Congress on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues. He testified before the 9-11 Commission on "Security and Liberty: Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism." He has served on several national and international advisory panels, including the expert panels on Cryptography Policy and Computer Security for the OECD, the Legal Experts on Cyberspace Law for UNESCO, and the Countering Spam program of the ITU. He chairs the ABA Committee on Privacy and Information Protection. He is a founding board member and former Chair of the Public Interest Registry, which manages the .ORG domain. He is editor of "The Privacy Law Sourcebook," and co-editor of "Information Privacy Law" (Aspen Publishing 2006) and "Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws" (EPIC 2010). He is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School. He served as Counsel to Senator Patrick J. Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee after graduation from law school. He is the recipient of several awards, including the World Technology Award in Law, the American Lawyer Award for Top Lawyers Under 45, the Norbert Weiner Award for Social and Professional Responsibility, and the Vicennial medal from Georgetown University.
Multifamily Real Estate Investor
Grant Starrett is a real estate investor, movement conservative, and terrible cartoonist. Grant has led the acquisition of over $100M worth of apartments in Tennessee. He also leads the local Federalist Society chapter, through which he organizes a monthly lunch and annual dinner for conservatives and libertarians interested in the law. And Grant sends out an email every couple weeks with a book review and jokes (GrantReadsBooks.com). Grant received his JD from Vanderbilt Law School, during which time he worked for the U.S. Senate Steering Committee, the upper chamber's Freedom Caucus. He earned his BA at Stanford, where he founded the Conservative Society and worked in the White House and for the Fox News Channel. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, etc. and he speaks regularly about the Founders’ views on monetary policy. Most importantly, Grant is married to his best friend Ashley, with whom he homeschools his three children.
Executive Vice President, Goldwater Institute
Christina Sandefur is the Executive Vice President at the Goldwater Institute. She develops policies and litigates cases advancing healthcare freedom, free enterprise, private property rights, free speech, and taxpayer rights.
Christina is a co-drafter of the Right to Try initiative, now federal law, which protects terminally ill patients' right to try safe investigational treatments that have been prescribed by their physician but are not yet FDA-approved. She has won important victories for property rights in Arizona and works nationally to promote the Institute's Private Property Rights Protection Act, a state-level reform that requires government to pay owners when regulations destroy property rights and reduce property values.
Christina is the co-author of the book Cornerstone of Liberty: Private Property Rights in 21st Century America (2016). She is a frequent guest on national television and radio programs, has provided expert legal testimony to various legislative committees, and is a frequent speaker at conferences. She is the recipient of the 2018 Buckley Award in recognition of her leadership in the freedom movement, and she is an Advisory Board Member of the Network of enlightened Women. Christina serves on the board of the Phoenix Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society and is a member of the executive committee for the Federalist Society's Regulatory Transparency Project: FDA & Health.
Christina is a graduate of Michigan State University College of Law and Hillsdale College.
Senior Fellow, Independent Institute
Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute. He has taught legal and political philosophy at George Mason University, Howard University, and Tuskegee Institute, and he received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and Ph.D. in social philosophy from Florida State University.
The winner of three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court (Printz v. United States, United States v. Thompson/Center Arms Company, and Castillo v. United States), he has testified before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Subcommittee on Crime of the House Judiciary Committee, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and House Committee on the District of Columbia.
A contributor to numerous scholarly volumes, he is the author of the books, Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance; Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State”; The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms; That Every Man Be Armed: Evolution of a Constitutional Right; A Right to Bear Arms; Firearms Law Deskbook: Federal and State Criminal Practice; Securing Civil Rights: Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms; State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees; and Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II. Dr. Halbrook’s scholarly articles have appeared in such journals as the Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, Drug Law Report, George Mason University Law Review, Journal of Air Law and Commerce, Journal of Law and Policy, Law & Contemporary Problems, National Law Journal, Northern Kentucky Law Review, St. John’s Journal of Legal Commentary; Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal, Tennessee Law Review, University of Dayton Law Review, Valparaiso University Law Review, Vermont Law Review, and William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal.
Dr. Halbrook's popular articles have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, National Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Kansas City Star, Washington Examiner, Shreveport Times, Sacramento Bee, Providence Journal, Tampa Tribune, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, History News Network, San Antonio Express-News, The Daily Caller, Detroit News, Honolulu Star Advertiser, Birmingham News, Environmental Forum, USA Today, and Washington Times. He has also appeared on numerous national TV/radio programs on CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Court TV, NewsMax TV, CBN, Voice of America, and C-SPAN.
Associate Professor & Director, Constitutional Government Initiative, Wheatley Institute, Brigham Young University
James C. Phillips is the Constitutional Government Initiative Director and an associate professor at BYU’s Wheatley Institute. He is also a fellow with the UC-Berkeley School of Law’s Public Law and Policy Program and an academic affiliate with the D.C.-based law firm Schaerr|Jaffe. His scholarship has been cited by judges around the country, including at the U.S. Supreme Court, and has been covered in various media outlets, including the New York Times Magazine, USA Today, Reuters, CNN, and Fox News. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society's Religious Liberty Practice Group and the J. Reuben Clark Law Society Religious Liberty Committee.
Prior to joining Wheatley, Phillips was associate professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, where he taught Constitutional Law, Religion and the Constitution, Civil Procedure, Family Law, and Professional Responsibility and was named 1L Professor of the Year. Dr. Phillips has taught Administrative Law at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he also helped conceive and design the Corpus of Founding-Era American English. He was also a Non-resident Fellow with Stanford Law School’s Constitutional Law Center.
Dr. Phillips has published dozens of academic articles, primarily in law journals, but also communications, business, and history journals. His longer pieces have been published in, for example, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and his shorter articles have been published in journals such as the Yale Law Journal Forum and the Duke Law Journal Online. Dr. Phillips has also written op-eds on constitutional issues for Newsweek, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, Deseret News, and National Review.
Prior to his university posts, Dr. Phillips practiced law as a Constitutional Law Fellow for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and an associate for Kirton | McConkie. He has worked on dozens of cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as cases in federal and state courts throughout the country. He is a member of the bar in Utah and D.C. He clerked for Judge Thomas B. Griffith on the U.S. Court of Appeal for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thomas R. Lee on the Utah Supreme Court. Dr. Phillips earned his JD, Order of the Coif, from UC-Berkeley’s School of Law, where he was a member of the California Law Review. He also has a PhD in Jurisprudence & Social Policy from UC-Berkeley, an M.A. in Mass Communication from BYU, and a B.A. in History from Arizona State University.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Amul R. Thapar serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. His judicial career began in 2007 when President George W. Bush nominated him to serve on the Eastern District of Kentucky, making him the first South Asian Article III judge in American history. In 2017, he became President Donald J. Trump’s first appellate court nominee.
Before joining the bench, Judge Thapar served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. While United States Attorney, Judge Thapar worked on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (“AGAC”) and chaired the AGAC’s Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture subcommittee. He also served on the Terrorism and National Security subcommittee, the Violent Crime subcommittee, and the Child Exploitation working group.
Judge Thapar has worked in private practice, at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cincinnati, Ohio. He also served as an Assistant United States Attorney in both the Southern District of Ohio and the District of Columbia.
Judge Thapar received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating, Judge Thapar worked as a law clerk to the Honorable S. Arthur Spiegel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Judge Thapar has also published in the Yale Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, and Catholic University Law Review. He teaches courses on originalism, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and legal writing at Notre Dame Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Vanderbilt Law School.
Vice President and Deputy Chief Counsel, U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Jennifer B. Dickey is vice president and deputy chief counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dickey handles a variety of litigation matters for the Chamber.
Dickey joined the Chamber following her service as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She also previously served as Deputy Associate Attorney General, providing strategic oversight of the Civil Division, Civil Rights Division, and Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, as well as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President. In the latter capacity, she provided legal advice on a wide array of executive actions and rulemakings, civil litigation, and judicial nominations.
Dickey also practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis LLP before her government service. She was a commercial and appellate litigator, representing businesses in federal and state courts.
Earlier in her career, Dickey served as a law clerk for the Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Honorable William H. Pryor Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Dickey earned her law degree magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, where she was an Executive Editor of the Duke Law Journal, and her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Dartmouth College.
Founder, Original Jurisdiction
David Lat is a lawyer turned writer. He publishes Original Jurisdiction, a newsletter on Substack about law and legal affairs, and he writes for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Prior to launching Original Jurisdiction, David founded Above the Law, one of the nation's most widely read legal news websites, and Underneath Their Robes, a popular blog about federal judges that he wrote under a pseudonym. He is also the author of a novel set in the world of the federal courts, Supreme Ambitions. Before entering the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Associate, Lehotsky Keller Cohn
Mark Rothrock helps clients navigate complex litigation matters in state and federal courts.
Before joining Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP, Mr. Rothrock worked in the Litigation Practice Group at Smith Anderson Blount Dorsett Mitchell & Jernigan, LLP, where he advised clients facing high-stakes disputes in state and federal courts. Mr. Rothrock clerked for Judge Raymond M. Kethledge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and for Judge James C. Dever III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Mr. Rothrock graduated from Duke Law School, where he served as the Managing Editor of the Duke Law Journal, Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, and as a research assistant to Professor Ernest Young.
Before law school, Mr. Rothrock served as a Tank Officer in the United States Marine Corps and deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Mr. Rothrock is now a Major in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.
Senior fellow, Manhattan Institute; Columnist, Wall Street Journal
Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he worked for more than 20 years writing opinion pieces on politics, economics, education, immigration and race, among other subjects. He’s also a commentator for Fox News, where he’s appeared for more than a decade.
After joining the Journal in 1994, he was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000 and a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. He joined the Manhattan Institute in 2015. In 2008 he published Let Them In, which argues for a more free-market oriented U.S. immigration policy. His second book, Please Stop Helping Us, which is about the track record of government efforts to help the black underclass, was published in 2014. His most recent book, False Black Power?, is an assessment of why black political success has not translated into more black economic success and was published in June.
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Mr. Riley earned a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has also worked for USA Today and the Buffalo News. He lives in suburban New York City.