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Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
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.
Chief Economist, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Curtis Dubay is the Chief Economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He tracks the condition of the economy, analyzes the impact of public policy on economic growth, and runs the Chamber’s Chief Economists Committee. Previously, he was senior economist at the American Bankers Association and a research fellow in tax and economic policy at The Heritage Foundation. He also worked at the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and at the Tax Foundation.
Dubay has researched and published frequently on a wide range of tax and economic issues. He isregularly quoted by the press and has appeared often in the media, including on CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, and C-SPAN. He has testified before Congress several times and been cited in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and Politico.
Dubay received his master’s degree in economics from the University of Connecticut and his bachelor’s degree in economics and leadership studies from the University of Richmond. He resides in Washington, D.C., with his wife and three sons.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law & Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Institute, University of Chicago Law School
William Baude is a Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Institute at the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches federal courts, constitutional law, and conflict of laws. His current research interests include different aspects of the Fourteenth Amendment (particularly both Section One and Section Three) and the nature of judicial discretion.
Among his other activities Baude is: the co-editor of two textbooks, The Constitution of the United States and Hart & Wechsler's Federal Courts in the Federal System; an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism; a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance; a member of the American Law Institute; an occasional blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy; and a podcaster on Divided Argument. He also recently served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor Baude received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and his JD from Yale Law School. He then clerked for then-Judge Michael McConnell on the United States Court of Appeals, and Chief Justice John Roberts on the United States Supreme Court. Before joining the Chicago faculty, he was a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, and a lawyer in Washington, DC.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Partner, Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC
Jason Torchinsky is a partner at Holtzman Vogel Josefiak PLLC, specializing in campaign finance, election law, lobbying disclosure and issue advocacy groups. Politico recently named him one of the “50 Politicos to Watch,” and in 2007, Campaigns and Elections Magazine named him a “Rising Star of Politics.”
In addition to his practice counseling clients on compliance with campaign finance, ethics laws, lobbying disclosure and election laws, Mr. Torchinsky has served as lead counsel in a number of litigation matters. Representative matters in the redistricting area include Louisiana House of Representatives v. Holder (D.D.C.) (Section 5 pre-clearance action), City of Sandy Springs v. Holder (D.D.C.) (Section 5 bailout action), and Fletcher v. Lamone (D. Md.) (challenging Maryland’s Congressional Districting map). In the campaign finance context, he is currently representing clients in Alliance for America’s Future v. State (Nevada Supreme Court) and Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission (D.D.C.) (Representing intervenor defendants). He has also represented Virginia candidates in recounts and voter registration challenges before various Virginia Circuit Courts.
Mr. Torchinsky frequently lectures on campaign finance redistricting and ethics related subjects and provides commentary to the media on election related matters.
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Torchinsky was Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice. During the 2004 election cycle, he served as Deputy General Counsel to Bush-Cheney ’04 and Deputy General Counsel to the 2005 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
He holds a B.A. in Government and Public Policy from the College of William and Mary and a J.D. from the College of William and Mary School of Law. He is a member of the Virginia Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, the Republican National Lawyers Association and the Federalist Society.
Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
Andy Hessick joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2016 and serves Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Strategy. His teaching and research interests include federal courts, administrative law, remedies, and criminal sentencing. His work has appeared in, among other places, the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the William and Mary Law Review. His work has been cited by the Supreme Courts of Connecticut, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah; various federal district and circuit courts; and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hessick received his J.D. from Yale Law School, at which he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, he clerked for Judge Reena Raggi on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He then served as a Bristow Fellow in the U.S. Solicitor General’s office and practiced litigation at Kellogg Huber Hansen Todd Evans & Figel PLLC in Washington, D.C. He previously taught at the University of Utah and Arizona State University and was a visiting assistant professor at Boston University.
Florida Office Managing Attorney, Institute for Justice
Justin Pearson is the Institute’s Florida Office Managing Attorney. He also coordinates aspects of the Institute’s national economic liberty efforts and personally directs IJ’s National Street Vending Initiative. Justin has devoted his career to vindicating the constitutional rights of small-business owners, and he has victoriously litigated on their behalf in trial and appellate courts across the nation.
Justin often wins in novel ways. He was the lead counsel in a federal appellate court victory vindicating the right of a Florida dairy creamery to tell the truth on its labels, which was the first victorious First Amendment challenge to a food standard of identity in U.S. history. His win against Little Rock’s ban on taxi competition was based on a provision in the Arkansas Constitution that had not been successfully relied upon in over half a century. And his victory against Fort Pierce’s food truck ban included the first preliminary injunction ever issued in this type of challenge anywhere in the nation.
In addition to litigation, Justin has testified to Florida Senate and House committees dozens of times, and provisions suggested by Justin have been enacted into law. The successful bills that Justin has actively supported include Florida’s 2021 cottage food, home-based business, and local occupational licensing reforms, Florida’s historic 2020 occupational licensing reform (which repealed the most occupational licensing barriers in U.S. history), Florida’s 2019 repeal of the certificate of need requirement for hospitals, Florida’s 2019 Fresh Start reform making it easier for individuals with criminal records to obtain employment, and Florida’s 2016 overhaul of its civil forfeiture laws.
Justin’s work has appeared in countless media outlets, and Justin has spoken to scores of law schools and attorney organizations across the nation. The law schools that have hosted Justin’s talks include Yale, the University of Chicago, Duke, NYU, Notre Dame, and the University of Michigan, among many others.
Prior to joining IJ, Justin founded and managed his own law practice to advocate for small-business owners, and Justin’s law practice was successful for many years before he made the decision to join IJ in 2012 to better fight against government power gone awry.
Justin received his law degree with honors from the University of Miami in 2002, where he was the Research and Writing Editor for, and was published in, the University of Miami Business Law Review. Justin received his undergraduate degree in business management from North Carolina State University. Justin has been honored by the Daily Business Review and Law.com for being one of South Florida’s “Most Effective Lawyers.”
Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement, Institute for Justice
Anthony Sanders is the Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement (CJE) at the Institute for Justice and a senior attorney. He joined IJ in 2010. As CJE’s director, he educates the public about the proper role of judges in enforcing constitutional limits on the size and scope of government. As a senior attorney he litigates cutting-edge constitutional cases protecting economic liberty, private property, freedom of speech and other individual liberties in both federal and state courts across the country.
One area of Anthony’s expertise is on using state constitutions to protect individual rights. He is the author of the book, published by University of Michigan Press, Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters. He has also written several law review articles on state constitutional law, unenumerated rights, judicial review, economic liberty, property rights, international law, and other subjects. His work has appeared in publications such as the Iowa Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, American University Law Review, and Rutgers Law Review, and he has published opinion pieces in leading media outlets across the country. Further, he frequently speaks to various audiences on these matters and others, including judicial engagement, free speech, civil forfeiture, and the continuing importance of Magna Carta. Additionally, he hosts the weekly Short Circuit podcast, which often records live in front of law student audiences.
Anthony has litigated several cases in various state courts on state constitutional protections, as well as in federal courts on matters such as economic liberty, free speech, administrative law, and fines and fees abuse. Prior to joining IJ, Anthony served as a law clerk to Justice W. William Leaphart on the Montana Supreme Court. Anthony also worked for several years in private practice in Chicago where he was an active member of the Chicago Bar Association and chaired its Civil Rights Committee.
Anthony received his law degree cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2004, where he served as an articles submission editor for the Minnesota Law Review. He received his undergraduate degree from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and his master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A dual U.S. and U.K. citizen, Anthony grew up on the islands of Vashon in Washington State, and Alderney in the British Channel Islands.
Professor of Law, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
Senior Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs, Boeing
Adam Gustafson is a Senior Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at Boeing.
Prior to joining Boeing, he served as Deputy General Counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to that, he was a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, where he represented States, federal judges, environmental groups, biofuel producers, agricultural interests, and public policy organizations, on such issues as the constitutional separation of powers, the First Amendment, automotive regulations, environmental computer models, healthcare regulation, and judicial deference to federal agencies.
Mr. Gustafson received his J.D. in 2009 from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, a managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, and an executive editor of the symposium issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Mr. Gustafson served as a Vice President of the Yale Law School Federalist Society. He was a Coker Fellow, and his legal writing won the Joseph A. Chubb Competition Prize and the Edward D. Robbins Memorial Prize.
Mr. Gustafson graduated with high distinction in 2005 from the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar, a member of the Raven Society, a member of the rowing team, and a Lawn resident.
Before joining Boyden Gray & Associates, Mr. Gustafson was an associate at Cooper & Kirk, where he specialized in appellate litigation. Mr. Gustafson served as a law clerk to Judge Richard R. Clifton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Professor of Law Emeritus; Senior Fellow for Climate Policy, Environmental Law Center, Vermont Law School
Patrick A. Parenteau is Emeritus Professor of Law and Senior Fellow for Climate Policy in the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School. He previously served as Director of the Environmental Law Center and was the founding director of the EAC (formerly the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic) in 2004.
Professor Parenteau has an extensive background in environmental and natural resources law. His previous positions include Vice President for Conservation with the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, DC (1976-1984); Regional Counsel to the New England Regional Office of the EPA in Boston (1984-1987); Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (1987-1989); and Senior Counsel with the Perkins Coie law firm in Portland, Oregon (1989-1993).
Professor Parenteau has been involved in drafting, litigating, implementing, teaching, and writing about environmental law and policy for over three decades. His current focus is on confronting the profound challenges of climate change through his teaching, publishing, public speaking and litigation.
Professor Parenteau is a Fulbright US Scholar and a Fellow in the American College of Environmental Lawyers. In 2005 he received the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to wildlife conservation and environmental education. In 2016 he received the Kerry Rydberg Award for excellence in public interest environmental law.
Professor Parenteau holds a B.S. from Regis University, a J.D. from Creighton University, and an LLM in Environmental Law from the George Washington U.
Charles Yates is an attorney in Pacific Legal Foundation’s environmental practice group, where he litigates to defend private property rights and uphold the structural protections guaranteed by the Constitution’s separation of powers.
His inspiration to focus on environmental law comes from the special case of government overreach it presents, where individual rights too often give way to collectivist notions and where misguided government policies create a cure worse than the disease. Charles has a particularly strong belief in the important role that the productive use of natural resources plays for human flourishing. To these ends, his practice at PLF focuses primarily on the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and related regulatory issues.
Charles credits his strong belief in the principles of individual liberty and limited, constitutional government to his family. His personal philosophy developed further while studying the works of Adam Smith, John Locke, James Madison, and other classical liberals. Born and raised in Australia, Charles has always admired the U.S. Constitution as the purest and most enduring application of the ideals of individual liberty and limited government. It was these influences that impressed upon him the desire to pursue a career in public interest litigation.
After obtaining a B.A. in political science and international relations from the University of Western Australia, Charles moved to the U.S., where he earned his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Baltimore School of Law. During law school, he served as president of his school’s chapter of The Federalist Society and was an editor of the University of Baltimore Law Review. Other highlights from his law school days include an internship at the Cato Institute and a clerkship at the Institute for Justice.
Charles lives in Sacramento with his wife Maxine. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and playing the bass guitar.
Executive Director, Committee for Justice
Ashley Baker serves as Executive Director at the Committee for Justice. Her focus areas include the Supreme Court, regulatory policy, antitrust, and judicial nominations. Her writing has appeared in Fox News, USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Hill, RealClearPolitics, The American Spectator, and elsewhere. Ashley is also the founder of the recently-formed Alliance on Antitrust coalition. She has testified before the United States Senate on the topic of antitrust law.
Ashley is an active member of the Federalist Society, where she serves as a member of the Regulatory Transparency Project's Antitrust & Consumer Protection and Cyber & Privacy working groups. As a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, she has served as a speaker on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary.
As an expert on the judicial nominations process, Ashley worked closely on the efforts to confirm Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Much of Ashley’s work is at the intersection of the courts, regulation, and technology. Ashley also engages in policy analysis and outreach on legislation and regulations related to these issues by writing op-eds, letters to Congress for committee hearings, and regulatory comments.
Founder and President, Good Government Now
Dr. William J. Murphy is the founder and president of Good Government Now. He is active with several advocacy and policy research organizations including service as a Policy Advisor to the Center for Constitutional Reform at the Heartland Institute and a Co-Chair of Physicians Against Drug Shortages, an advocacy group dedicated to promoting competition in the pharmaceutical and medical product markets.
He is an Associate Professor of Social Science at the New England Institute of Technology in East Greenwich, RI where he teaches American government, economics, and U.S. national security policy. Dr. Murphy holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an A.B. in Government from Harvard College. Dr. Murphy is also a veteran of enlisted and officer service in the armor branch of the United States Army from 1988-1991, including assignments as a tank platoon leader and battalion staff officer with the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, United States Department of Justice
Jesus A. Osete previously served as General Counsel to the Hon. John R. Ashcroft, Secretary of State of Missouri. Mr. Osete previously served as Deputy Solicitor General of Missouri and Deputy Attorney General for Special Litigation. He has presented oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court. Before joining the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, Mr. Osete worked at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP in the Appellate and Supreme Court Group. He also clerked for the Hon. Bobby E. Shepherd of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and the Hon. Chief Justice Zel M. Fischer of the Supreme Court of Missouri. Mr. Osete received his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, where he served as Senior Executive Editor of the Washington University Law Review. Before law school, Mr. Osete worked for the late Senator John McCain in the United States Senate, and received an A.B. in political science and pre-law from the University of Arizona.
Mr. Osete serves as Trustee for the Supreme Court of Missouri Historical Society and served as Vice-Chair of the Missouri Bar Appellate Practice Committee. In 2018, he was one of approximately forty individuals in the United States selected to attend the Originalism Summer Seminar at the Georgetown University Law Center. In 2019, he was one of twelve young lawyers in Missouri selected to participate in the MissouriBar’s Leadership Academy.
Associate, Cooper & Kirk, PLLC
Haley Proctor is an associate at Cooper & Kirk. She rejoined Cooper & Kirk in 2015 after clerking for Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court during the October 2014 term. She previously clerked for Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Ms. Proctor graduated from Yale Law School in 2012 and from Yale College, magna cum laude. In law school, she was a moot court semifinalist and co-authored several law review articles. At Yale College, she served as a co-founder and president of the New Haven Urban Debate League and a board member for the Yale Debate Association.
Florida Office Managing Attorney, Institute for Justice
Justin Pearson is the Institute’s Florida Office Managing Attorney. He also coordinates aspects of the Institute’s national economic liberty efforts and personally directs IJ’s National Street Vending Initiative. Justin has devoted his career to vindicating the constitutional rights of small-business owners, and he has victoriously litigated on their behalf in trial and appellate courts across the nation.
Justin often wins in novel ways. He was the lead counsel in a federal appellate court victory vindicating the right of a Florida dairy creamery to tell the truth on its labels, which was the first victorious First Amendment challenge to a food standard of identity in U.S. history. His win against Little Rock’s ban on taxi competition was based on a provision in the Arkansas Constitution that had not been successfully relied upon in over half a century. And his victory against Fort Pierce’s food truck ban included the first preliminary injunction ever issued in this type of challenge anywhere in the nation.
In addition to litigation, Justin has testified to Florida Senate and House committees dozens of times, and provisions suggested by Justin have been enacted into law. The successful bills that Justin has actively supported include Florida’s 2021 cottage food, home-based business, and local occupational licensing reforms, Florida’s historic 2020 occupational licensing reform (which repealed the most occupational licensing barriers in U.S. history), Florida’s 2019 repeal of the certificate of need requirement for hospitals, Florida’s 2019 Fresh Start reform making it easier for individuals with criminal records to obtain employment, and Florida’s 2016 overhaul of its civil forfeiture laws.
Justin’s work has appeared in countless media outlets, and Justin has spoken to scores of law schools and attorney organizations across the nation. The law schools that have hosted Justin’s talks include Yale, the University of Chicago, Duke, NYU, Notre Dame, and the University of Michigan, among many others.
Prior to joining IJ, Justin founded and managed his own law practice to advocate for small-business owners, and Justin’s law practice was successful for many years before he made the decision to join IJ in 2012 to better fight against government power gone awry.
Justin received his law degree with honors from the University of Miami in 2002, where he was the Research and Writing Editor for, and was published in, the University of Miami Business Law Review. Justin received his undergraduate degree in business management from North Carolina State University. Justin has been honored by the Daily Business Review and Law.com for being one of South Florida’s “Most Effective Lawyers.”
Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement, Institute for Justice
Anthony Sanders is the Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement (CJE) at the Institute for Justice and a senior attorney. He joined IJ in 2010. As CJE’s director, he educates the public about the proper role of judges in enforcing constitutional limits on the size and scope of government. As a senior attorney he litigates cutting-edge constitutional cases protecting economic liberty, private property, freedom of speech and other individual liberties in both federal and state courts across the country.
One area of Anthony’s expertise is on using state constitutions to protect individual rights. He is the author of the book, published by University of Michigan Press, Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters. He has also written several law review articles on state constitutional law, unenumerated rights, judicial review, economic liberty, property rights, international law, and other subjects. His work has appeared in publications such as the Iowa Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, American University Law Review, and Rutgers Law Review, and he has published opinion pieces in leading media outlets across the country. Further, he frequently speaks to various audiences on these matters and others, including judicial engagement, free speech, civil forfeiture, and the continuing importance of Magna Carta. Additionally, he hosts the weekly Short Circuit podcast, which often records live in front of law student audiences.
Anthony has litigated several cases in various state courts on state constitutional protections, as well as in federal courts on matters such as economic liberty, free speech, administrative law, and fines and fees abuse. Prior to joining IJ, Anthony served as a law clerk to Justice W. William Leaphart on the Montana Supreme Court. Anthony also worked for several years in private practice in Chicago where he was an active member of the Chicago Bar Association and chaired its Civil Rights Committee.
Anthony received his law degree cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2004, where he served as an articles submission editor for the Minnesota Law Review. He received his undergraduate degree from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and his master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A dual U.S. and U.K. citizen, Anthony grew up on the islands of Vashon in Washington State, and Alderney in the British Channel Islands.
