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Justice, Texas Supreme Court
Brett Busby was appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas in 2019, confirmed unanimously by the Texas Senate, and elected to a full term in 2020. He previously practiced as an appellate litigator in Houston, served on the Fourteenth Court of Appeals and the Texas Multi-District Litigation Panel, and taught at U.T. Law School as an adjunct professor.
Brett is a seventh-generation Texan, third-generation Eagle Scout, and life-long violinist who grew up in Amarillo and Austin. After graduating with high honors from Duke University and Columbia Law School, he served as a law clerk to Justices Byron R. White (Ret.) and John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court, and to Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat, U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
In private practice, Brett presented oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court and handled dozens of appeals in that Court, the Supreme Court of Texas, and federal and state appellate courts. He is board-certified in civil appellate law, and his fellow Texas appellate lawyers elected him as Chair of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section in 2018. He has also served as Chair of the Texas Bar Committee on Pattern Jury Charges (Business, Consumer, Insurance, and Employment) and as a Director of the Texas Young Lawyers Association.
Brett serves as the Court’s liaison to the Texas Access to Justice Commission and Foundation, which help assure that Texans with limited means have access to basic civil legal services. He received the 2022 Judicial Civic Education Award from the American Lawyers Alliance for his work on the Teach Texas judicial civics program, a partnership with the Houston Bar Association and the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society that sends lawyers and judges to teach seventh graders about our court system and Texas legal history. The Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists named him Appellate Judge of the Year in 2018.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Principal, Dennis R. Adams Consulting; former CEO, American Share Insurance
Dennis R. Adams is currently the Principal of Dennis R. Adams Consulting, assisting credit unions, financial organizations, and businesses around the country. He is also the former President and CEO American Share Insurance. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Dennis was an adjunct instructor of finance with undergraduates at Franklin University,Ashland University, and Capital University’s MBA programs in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
Bryan Schneider is partner in Manatt’s Chicago office and a member of the firm’s industry-leading consumer financial services practice, where he focuses on advising clients through the gamut of consumer financial services regulatory and enforcement matters, particularly as it relates to supervision, enforcement and fair lending.
Prior to joining the firm, Bryan served as Associate Director for the Division of Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In this role, he was tasked with overseeing issues related to student loan origination and servicing, mortgage origination/services, auto finance, credit card account management, debt collection, and payday and other small dollar lending. He was also a member of key interagency governing organizations including the Task Force of Supervision of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.
Bryan’s experience also includes serving as Secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, a cabinet-level agency, under Governor Bruce Rauner. During this time, Bryan led numerous initiatives to place the state at the forefront of innovation in the financial services industry, including leading the conversion to the first-ever online, paperless process for professional licensure and achieving the first credit union section accreditation by the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors. He also led the creation of the Illinois Blockchain Initiative, where he advised organizations on how they can leverage blockchain technology to create more efficient, integrated and trusted services.
Before his tenure in government, Bryan held health care-related leadership positions at the largest retail, infusion and specialty pharmacy provider in the United States. While in this role, he helped develop policies concerning health care services and reimbursement, and provided regulatory and transactional support for joint ventures with hospitals, health systems and 340B programs. Bryan also served on Corporate Compliance and Disclosure Committees responsible for ensuring compliance with applicable health care and SEC securities requirements.
Bryan has served on the Executive Committee of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) and chaired its Non-Depository Supervisory Committee. He also served on the committee that was responsible for the administration of the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry (NMLS). Additionally, Bryan served on the Executive Committee of the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors (NASCUS).
Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Meg is head of Davis Polk's Financial Institutions practice and a member of its Fintech team. She provides strategic bank and financial regulatory advice to many of the largest U.S. and non-U.S. financial institutions, regional banks, fintechs, cryptocurrency exchanges and other digital assets companies.
In 2023, she led teams representing the Signature and Silicon Valley bridge banks and advised JPMorgan on its acquisition of First Republic. This work built on years of representing more than two dozen clients on living wills.
She has been involved in several regional bank combinations. She also advises on corporate governance, consent order remediation, bank chartering, payment systems, fintech partnerships, bank powers and activities, cryptocurrencies, digital assets, securities disclosure, capital and liquidity and the Federal Reserve’s liquidity programs.
Meg is a member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee. She co-authored Financial Regulation: Law and Policy, a leading textbook, and FinTech Law: The Case Studies.
In 2023, she was named a Law360 “Banking MVP” and an NYLJ “Dealmaker of the Year.”
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Menashi was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on November 14, 2019. Previously, he served as special assistant and associate counsel to the President in the White House and as acting general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. He was assistant professor of law at Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he taught administrative law and civil procedure, and a research fellow at New York University School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center. He was also a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in New York, where he practiced appellate and commercial litigation, and served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as senior articles editor of the Stanford Law Review, and from Dartmouth College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
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.
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School; Former President, American Civil Liberties Union
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. An internationally acclaimed free speech scholar and advocate, who regularly addresses diverse audiences and provides media commentary around the world, Strossen is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series distributed on public television in 2023. Her books about free speech include: Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Oxford University Press 2023); HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018); and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights (Scribner 1995), which was republished with a new Preface in 2024 as part of the NYU Classics Series. Her many honors and awards include the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech. She serves on the Advisory Boards of several organizations that do free speech work, including: ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
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.
Professor of Law, Ohio Northern Law
Bruce P. Frohnen holds the Ella and Ernest Fisher chair in the College of Law. Prior to joining ONU Law in 2008, he served as a legislative aide for a United States senator, as a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and as secretary and director of program at the Earhart Foundation. He has held visiting posts as Charles Evans Hughes professor of jurisprudence at Colgate University and as Thomas Bahnson and Anne Bassett Stanley professor of ethics and integrity at the Virginia Military Institute.
Frohnen’s most recent book, Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law, co-authored with George W. Carey, was published in 2016 by Harvard University Press. He is the author of two other books and editor or co-editor of eight. His co-edited volume, American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, was the subject of a front page article in The New York Times. His two most recent volumes, The American Nation: Primary Sources and Rethinking Rights (edited with Kenneth Grasso) were named Outstanding Academic Titles by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. His articles have appeared in journals such as the George Washington Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the American Journal of Jurisprudence. In 2015, he received the Fowler V. Harper Award for Excellence in Legal Scholarship.
Frohnen teaches a variety of courses in public and commercial law. His research focuses on the development of constitutionalism, rights and the rule of law. He holds a J.D. from Emory University Law School and a Ph.D. in government from Cornell University.
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Goldwater Institute
Director, Center for Education Policy and Mark A. Kolokotrones Fellow in Education, The Heritage Foundation
As director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, Lindsey Burke oversees Heritage’s research and policy on issues pertaining to preschool, K-12, and higher education reform. Burke’s research has been presented at academic conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals including Social Science Quarterly, Educational Research and Evaluation, and the Journal of School Choice, and her commentary and op-eds have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. She is a frequent guest on radio and television shows and speaks on education reform issues across the country and internationally. She has published evaluations of education choice options for public policy foundations across the country and has done extensive work shaping and evaluating education savings accounts (ESAs).
In 2021, Burke was tapped to join Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s transition steering committee and was also appointed to serve on the Youngkin landing team for education. Burke was also appointed by Governor Youngkin to serve on the Board of Visitors for George Mason University. Her term runs from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2026.
Burke also serves as a fellow at EdChoice, the namesake foundation of Milton and Rose Friedman, on the national advisory board of Learn4Life, a network of public charter schools serving “opportunity youth,” on the board of the Educational Freedom Institute, on the advisory board of the Independent Women’s Forum’s Education Freedom Center, and as a Trustee of Choice Media.
In 2015, Burke won Heritage’s prestigious W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award in recognition of her work fighting for expanded education choice options. The award is given annually to a policy expert who has made “an outstanding contribution to the analysis and promotion of a free society.”
Burke holds a bachelor's degree in politics from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA, and a master of teaching degree in foreign language education from the University of Virginia. She earned her Ph.D. in education policy from George Mason University, where she examined the intersection of education choice and institutional theory.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education; Former Chair, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Catherine E. Lhamon served as Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights from November 17, 2021 to January 20, 2025. Before that, she served as the Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. President Obama appointed Lhamon to a six-year term on the Commission on December 15, 2016, and the Commission unanimously confirmed the President’s designation of Lhamon to chair the Commission on December 28, 2016. Lhamon also serves in the cabinet of California Governor Gavin Newsom, where she has been Legal Affairs Secretary since January 2019. Lhamon previously litigated civil rights cases at the National Center for Youth Law.
Before coming to the Commission, Lhamon served as the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education until January 2017. President Obama nominated her to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights position on June 10, 2013, and she was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 1, 2013. Immediately prior to joining the Department of Education, Lhamon was director of impact litigation at Public Counsel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm. Before that, she practiced for a decade at the ACLU of Southern California, ultimately as assistant legal director.
Earlier in her career, Lhamon was a teaching fellow and supervising attorney in the Appellate Litigation Program at Georgetown University Law Center, after clerking for The Honorable William A. Norris on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2016, Politico Magazine named Lhamon one of Politico 50 Thinkers Transforming Politics and the National Action Network honored Lhamon with their Action & Authority Award. In 2015, Yale Law School named Lhamon their Gruber Distinguished Lecturer and the Association of University Centers on Disabilities awarded Lhamon their Special Recognition Award. Chronicle of Higher Education named Lhamon to their 2014 Influence List as the Enforcer. The Daily Journal listed her as one of California’s Top Women Litigators in 2010 and 2007, and as one of the Top 20 California Lawyers Under 40 in 2007. In 2004, California Lawyer magazine named Lhamon Attorney of the Year for Civil Rights.
Lhamon received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was the Outstanding Woman Law Graduate, and she graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College.
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Professor of American Politics, Boston College; Co-Chair , Harvard Program on Constitutional Government
R. Shep Melnick is the Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Professor of American Politics at Boston College and co-chair of the Harvard Program on Constitutional Government. He is the author of The Crucible of Desegregation: The Uncertain Search for Educational Equality (Univeristy of Chicago Press, 2023); The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education, (Brookings, 2018), Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights (Brookings,1994), and Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act (Brookings, 1983), as well as many articles on courts, agencies, and public policy. He is currently completing a book on education and the civil rights state. In 2012 he received the American Political Science Association Law and Courts Section’s “Lasting Contribution” award. He received his BA and PhD from Harvard, and taught at Harvard and Brandeis before moving to Boston College. He has also been a Research Associate at Brookings, President of the New England Political Science Association, and an elected member of the NH House of Representatives.
General Counsel, Mountain States Legal Foundation
William E. Trachman is General Counsel for Mountain States Legal Foundation, where he protects the rights of individuals to live freely and securely under the U.S. Constitution. Previously, he was appointed to serve in the Department of Education as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office for Civil Rights. Prior to his appointment, he served as General Counsel to the Douglas County School District, where he helped litigate the fight for school choice in the school district. Presently, Mr. Trachman serves as Chair of the Colorado Federalist Society and the Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ Colorado Advisory Board. He previously taught as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. He attended U.C. Berkeley for both undergraduate and law school, and then clerked for the Honorable Harris Hartz on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Trachman is licensed in Colorado, California, and Washington, D.C.
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.
