Commissioner, United States Securities and Exchange Commission
Biography
Hester M. Peirce was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was sworn in on January 11, 2018.
Prior to joining the SEC, Commissioner Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was a Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where she advised Ranking Member Richard Shelby and other members of the Committee on securities issues. Commissioner Peirce served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul S. Atkins. She also worked as a Staff Attorney in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management. Commissioner Peirce was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims.
Commissioner Peirce earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Case Western Reserve University and her JD from Yale Law School.
Vice President, Practice Groups, The Federalist Society
Speaker Information
Alberto R. Coll
Director, Global Engagement; Vincent de Paul Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law
Biography
Before joining DePaul, Dr. Alberto R. Coll served for five years as dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies, the U.S. Navy’s foremost strategic research center. A cum laude graduate from Princeton University in history, he earned his JD and PhD in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. In 1982, Professor Coll joined the faculty at Georgetown University, and in 1986 was appointed secretary of the Navy Senior Research Fellow at the Naval War College. In 1989, he became the youngest holder of the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law, the college’s oldest chair. From 1990 to 1993, Professor Coll was principal deputy assistant secretary of defense, serving in the Pentagon office that oversaw the Defense Department’s policy, strategy and $3 billion budget for special operations forces and “low-intensity” conflict, including counterterrorism. For his work, he received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Professor Coll is the author of The Wisdom of Statecraft and editor of several other books on international relations and law. He is the author of prize-winning articles in the American Journal of International Law and the Naval War College Review, as well as articles in Foreign Policy, Washington Quarterly, Harvard Journal of International Law, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, and the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs. In 2004, Professor Coll received the Antonio Jose Irisarri Medal for his contribution to strengthening the rule of law and civilian control over the military in Guatemala. He has served as consultant to the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, the Rand Corp., the United States Information Agency, and numerous defense and intelligence organizations. He is a frequent commentator on American foreign policy, U.S. relations with Cuba and Latin America, and international legal and political issues. Over the past 28 years he has lectured at more than 120 universities, think tanks, government agencies, and public forums in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia and South Africa. Professor Coll is a member of the Virginia Bar, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Instituto de Estudios Juridicos y Politicos at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. At DePaul, he teaches courses on international law, international human rights, U.S. foreign relations, terrorism, international trade and Latin America.
Megan L. Brown is a partner at Wiley Rein LLP. She has significant litigation, appellate and regulatory experience before state and federal courts and agencies.
Ms. Brown helps businesses respond to federal, state and local regulation and investigations raising administrative law, statutory interpretation, and constitutional issues, including the First Amendment.
Speaker Information
Daniel Lyons
Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Boston College Law School; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, Boston College Law School
Biography
Professor Lyons is a Professor and Associate Dean at Boston College Law School. He specializes in telecommunications and tech policy, energy, and administrative law. Before joining the faculty, he practiced at the firm of Munger, Tolles and Olson in Los Angeles. He also clerked for the Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Professor Lyons is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he has written over 250 blog posts on tech policy issues, including net neutrality, telecommunications regulation, First Amendment issues with tech regulation, and generative AI.
Associate Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs, George Washington University
Biography
Steven Balla is Associate Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs, and a Senior Scholar at the George Washington Regulatory Studies Center. He researches government consultation and public participation in policymaking in the United States and China. He has on two occasions served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States, drawing on his research on public commenting in the U.S. rulemaking process to make recommendations for how to improve regulatory policymaking. He has twice served as a Fulbright Scholar in China, at Peking University in Beijing and Nankai University in Tianjin. He is currently working on projects on congressional oversight of regulatory policymaking, polarization in public commenting on proposed rules, and the responsiveness of Chinese government officials to public feedback on draft laws and regulations.
Reeve T. Bull is Director of the Virginia Office of Regulatory Management. In this position, he leads the Commonwealth's efforts to streamline regulations and promote a transparent permitting process and to develop and implement artificial intelligence policy. Prior to this role, he was the Research Director of the Administrative Conference of the United States. In his time at ACUS, Mr. Bull worked on projects related to international regulatory cooperation, the use of science by administrative agencies, presidential review of agency rulemaking, and regulatory benefit-cost analysis, among other things.
Mr. Bull is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Mr. Bull has served on the Council of the ABA Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section and also co-chairs the Section's Rulemaking Committee. Mr. Bull serves as an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University, where he teaches a class on regulatory law. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University Law School, teaching a course on Legislation and Statutory Interpretation.
Mr. Bull has published a number of articles in leading law journals, including the Administrative Law Review, George Washington Law Review, and Law and Contemporary Problems. His articles explore enhanced judicial review of agency regulatory impact analysis, removing unnecessary trade barriers through enhanced international regulatory cooperation, and reducing regulatory burdens through retrospective review of existing rules, among other topics. For a list of these publications, please visit his SSRN page.
Mr. Bull previously worked in the private sector as an associate with the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and in government service as a law clerk to the Honorable Alvin A. Schall of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. During his time as an associate with Gibson Dunn, Mr. Bull worked on a variety of litigation and regulatory matters. He participated in cases appearing before the United States Supreme Court, several federal Courts of Appeals, and numerous federal district courts and state trial courts. His experience spanned a variety of practice areas, including administrative, constitutional, intellectual property, antitrust, environmental, securities, and white collar criminal law. During his clerkship for Judge Schall, Mr. Bull assisted with appeals in cases spanning a variety of areas, with particular emphasis on administrative and patent law.
Mr. Bull attended law school at Duke University, where he graduated with highest honors and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. He was one of two recipients of the Willis Smith Award for compiling the most outstanding academic record in the graduating class and the recipient of the James S. Bidlake Memorial Award for achieving the highest grade in his first year legal writing section. Mr. Bull also served as a Note Editor on the Duke Law Journal. Prior to law school, Mr. Bull attended the University of Oklahoma, where he graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelors in Chemistry and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
Director, GW Regulatory Studies Center & Distinguished Professor of Practice, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, The George Washington University
Biography
Susan Dudley is the Founder and Director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, established in 2009 to raise awareness of regulations’ effects and improve regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. She is also a distinguished professor of practice in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. She is past-president of the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis, a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and on the Regulatory Transparency Project Regulatory Practice Working Group. Her book, Regulation: A Primer, with Jerry Brito, is available on Amazon.com.
From April 2007 through January 2009, Professor Dudley served as the Presidentially-appointed Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and was responsible for the review of draft executive branch regulations under Executive Order 12866, the collection of federal-government-wide information under the Paperwork Reduction Act, the development and implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information policy, privacy, and statistical policy, and international regulatory cooperation efforts.
Prior to OIRA, she directed the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and taught courses on regulation at the George Mason University School of Law. Earlier in her career, Professor Dudley served as an economist at OIRA, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She was also a consultant to government and private clients at Economists Incorporated. She holds a Master of Science degree from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and a Bachelor of Science degree (summa cum laude) in Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Edward F. Howrey Professor of Law, University of Virginia
Biography
Michael Livermore joined the faculty in 2013. He teaches environmental law, administrative law, regulatory law and policy, and advanced seminars on these topics. His research focuses on environmental law, regulation, bureaucratic oversight and the computational analysis of law. He frequently collaborates on interdisciplinary projects with researchers in other academic fields, including economics, computer science and neurology. His work has appeared in leading law journals, including the Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, New York University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal and Duke Law Journal. Livermore is a leading expert on the use of cost-benefit analysis to evaluate environmental regulation, and he is the co-author of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health (Oxford University Press, 2008) and co-editor of The Globalization of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Prior to joining the faculty, Livermore was the founding executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, a think tank dedicated to improving the quality of government decision-making. In that capacity, he participated in dozens of regulatory proceedings on a diverse set of issues ranging from climate change to prison safety. He remains an active participant in environmental policy discussions. Livermore earned his J.D. magna cum laude from NYU Law, where he was a Furman Scholar, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and served as a managing editor of the Law Review. After law school, he spent a year as a fellow at NYU Law’s Center on Environmental and Land Use Law before clerking for Judge Harry T. Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
