Miguel A. Estrada is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Mr. Estrada has represented clients before federal and state courts throughout the country in a broad range of matters. He has argued 24 cases before the United States Supreme Court, and briefed many others. He has also argued dozens of appeals in the lower federal courts.
Best Lawyers® recognized Mr. Estrada as a 2020 Lawyer of the Year in Intellectual Property Litigation and as a Lawyer of the Year in Appellate Practice. He has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a 2020 U.S. Appellate Litigation “Star”. In 2014, The American Lawyer named Mr. Estrada a “Litigator of the Year,” praising his “brains and tenacity” and noting he is the lawyer to call for “a tough, potentially unwinnable case.” From 2014-2021, Chambers & Partners has named him as one of a handful of attorneys that it ranked in the top tier among the nation’s leading appellate lawyers. Chambers & Partners noted that “clients are impressed by his intellect and ability, with one saying, ‘His papers are just blindingly clear in what they say and devastating in how they marshal the arguments.’” The Atlantic described his oral argument in a 2014 high-profile separation-of-powers case as “one of the most dazzling arguments the marble chamber has heard in many years.”
Mr. Estrada was selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® in the area of Appellate Law, in addition to previous recognition by the publication in the specialties of Bet-the-Company Litigation, Commercial Litigation and Criminal Defense: White Collar, Intellectual Property Litigation, and Regulatory Enforcement Litigation in the areas of SEC, Telecom, and Energy. In 2017, he was elected as a member of the American Law Institute. In 2021, Mr. Estrada was named among the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. In 2004, Legal Times named him one of the top 12 appellate litigators in the D.C. area, noting that “people who follow appellate practice in Washington have known for several years that Estrada . . . is one of the best around.” Also in 2004, Washingtonian Magazine named him one of the top constitutional law lawyers “who could become one of the legends of the Supreme Court bar.”
Mr. Estrada joined Gibson Dunn in 1997, after serving for five years as Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States. He previously served as Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York. In those capacities, Mr. Estrada represented the government in numerous jury trials and in many appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Estrada practiced corporate law in New York with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Mr. Estrada is a Trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society. He was formerly a member of the Board of Visitors of Harvard Law School.
Mr. Estrada served as a law clerk to the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy in the U.S. Supreme Court from 1988 to 1989 and to the Honorable Amalya L. Kearse in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1986 to 1987. He received a J.D. degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. Mr. Estrada graduated with an A.B. degree magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1983 from Columbia College, New York. He is fluent in Spanish and proficient in French.
Representative Supreme Court matters include:
In National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning (2014), he represented the Republican caucus of the United States Senate in successfully urging the invalidation of the President’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relation Board.
In Comcast Corp. v. Behrend (2013), he persuaded the Court to grant review of, and then reverse by a 5-4 vote, a certified antitrust class seeking $2.6 billion in damages.
In Black v. United States (2010), he represented media magnate Conrad M. Black in securing Court review and reversal of multiple convictions under the “honest services” provisions of the federal mail and wire fraud statutes.Based on his arguments, the Supreme Court significantly narrowed the scope of conduct that can be prosecuted as “honest services” fraud.
In Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc. (2006), he persuaded the Court to leave undisturbed a Federal Circuit ruling upholding the validity of a two-step process patent setting forth a method for diagnosing vitamin deficiencies.
In Northern Insurance Co. of New York v. Chatham County (2006), he persuaded the Court to rule unanimously that counties are not entitled to invoke sovereign immunity in admiralty actions.
In Aetna v. Davila Health (2004), he persuaded the Court to rule unanimously that federal law preempts state laws that give patients the right to sue managed care organizations.
In Strickler v. Greene (1999), he argued on behalf of a death row inmate pro bono in a challenge to his conviction and sentence.
In 2011, the Supreme Court appointed Mr. Estrada to brief and argue two criminal cases –Dorsey v. United States and Hill v. United States – in which the Solicitor General declined to defend the judgments of the court of appeals. Mr. Estrada was appointed to argue the position that the Solicitor General had declined to defend.
Mr. Estrada was also part of the team that successfully presented then Governor Bush’s position to the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000). Other cases that Mr. Estrada handled in the Supreme Court include Granholm v. Heald (2005) (dormant Commerce Clause and Twenty-First Amendment), Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens (2000) (False Claims Act, Article III standing and Eleventh Amendment immunity), Old Chief v. United States (1997) (rules of evidence), United States v. Mezzanatto (1995) (evidence and plea bargaining), United States v. Robertson (1995) (constitutional limits on Congress’s Commerce Clause powers), Citizens Bank of Maryland v. Strumpf (1995) (bankruptcy law), and NOW, Inc. v. Scheidler (1994) (RICO).
Recent Court of Appeals matters include:
In re Engle Cases, 767 F.3d 1082 (11th Cir. 2014): upholding dismissal of over 700 individual cases for pervasive pleading deficiencies.
Coquina Invs. V. TD Bank, N.A., 760 F.3d 1300 (11th Cir. 2014): upholding jury verdict and sanctions in fraud case arising out of a Ponzi scheme.
FERC v. JPMorgan Ventures Energy Corp. (D.C. Cir. 2013): argued two appeals on discovery issues arising out of FERC’s investigation of alleged market manipulation; the investigation was closed by settlement before decisions were issued.
Espenscheid v. DirectSat USA, LLC, 705 F.3d 770 (2013): rejecting class certification and collective-action treatment for overtime claims.
Comcast Cable Communications, LLC v. FCC, 717 F.3d 982 (D.C. Cir. 2013): reversing FCC decision in program-carriage case.
Georgia Pacific Consumer Prods. v. von Drehle, 710 F.3d 527 (4th Cir. 2013): reversing JNOV in trademark infringement case.
Fox v. FCC, 613 F.3d 317 (2d Cir. 2010): invalidating FCC’s indecency policy under vagueness doctrine.
In addition, Mr. Estrada is lead appellate counsel to Vivendi S.A. in two securities-fraud appeals from jury verdicts that are currently pending in the Second Circuit, and to the National Association of Broadcasters in a challenge to certain procedures promulgated by the FCC in connection with the upcoming Spectrum Auction. Mr. Estrada also recently presented argument before the D.C. Circuit on behalf of the tobacco industry in a first amendment challenge to certain compelled disclosures that were imposed as part of the government’s long-running civil RICO case against the industry.
Other matters:
In 2014, Mr. Estrada represented a large financial institution in a tax dispute with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and was part of a team that prevailed in a bench trial.
In 2013, Mr. Estrada represented the CEO of PokerStars, the largest online poker card-room in the world, in settling civil-forfeiture claims by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
From 2004 to 2009, Mr. Estrada defended Cessna in federal court litigation arising out of the largest airline disaster in Italian history, ultimately securing dismissal of most of the claims.
From 1999 to 2005, Mr. Estrada was a lead attorney for Aetna in dozens of class actions against the managed care industry that the Judicial Panel for Multidistrict Litigation consolidated in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida (MDL No. 1334).
U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (1983-1989); U.S. Solicitor General (1989-1993)
Biography
Kenneth Starr is a former United States Federal Court of Appeals Judge, U.S. Solicitor General, and Independent Counsel. He is the former President and Chancellor of Baylor University where he held the Louise L. Morrison Chair of Constitutional Law at Baylor University Law School.
Speaker Information
John C. Eastman
Biography
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Biography
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 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.
Before his appointment as U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Andrew Lelling was a federal prosecutor for over 15 years, serving first in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department and later at the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Eastern District of Virginia and the District of Massachusetts.
During his time as a prosecutor in the District of Massachusetts, Mr. Lelling served as Senior Litigation Counsel and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Economic Crimes Unit and on the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. He was the lead prosecutor in a number of complex fraud, immigration and international drug trafficking investigations including, most recently, the successful prosecution of one of the largest pyramid schemes ever charged by the Department of Justice, which involved over a million victims worldwide and losses of $3 billion. In addition, Mr. Lelling has prosecuted major drug trafficking organizations, domestic branches of Mexican drug cartels, and global drug traffickers based in Eastern Europe. In his role as the Senior Litigation Counsel, Mr. Lelling developed enforcement policy for criminal prosecutions and trained prosecutors and law enforcement officers on criminal practice.
Before serving as a federal prosecutor, Mr. Lelling was Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, focusing on criminal civil rights enforcement, voting rights enforcement actions, and civil investigations of major city police departments. In this role, Mr. Lelling led the Department’s investigation of the 2000 Presidential election in Florida and negotiated human rights issues with the Chinese government. In addition, Mr. Lelling advised on the drafting of the USA PATRIOT Act in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and led the Department’s task force for responding to backlash crimes.
Before joining the Justice Department, Mr. Lelling was a senior litigation associate at Goodwin Procter in Boston and a litigation associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae in New York. He also clerked for the U.S. District Court Chief Judge B. Avant Edenfield in the Southern District of Georgia.
Mr. Lelling graduated cum laude from University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1994 and received a Bachelor of Arts in Literature & Rhetoric from Binghamton University in 1991. He is a member of the Federalist Society and a former member of the Boston Bar Journal’s Board of Editors.
Rachael Rollins is the Suffolk County District Attorney in Massachusetts. Rollins was elected to the office on November 6, 2018.
Speaker Information
John C. Eastman
Biography
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Executive Director, Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, The Ohio State University
Biography
Professor Lee J. Strang serves as the inaugural executive director of the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at The Ohio State University.
Initiated in 2023 by the state of Ohio, the Chase Center will be an academic home at Ohio State for teaching, research, and programing on the foundations of the American constitutional order and its impact on society. As executive director, Professor Strang is responsible for organizing the center, overseeing the hiring and appointment of the center’s faculty, developing curriculum, and delivering student and academic programming. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State.
Professor Strang is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has published dozens of articles in leading journals in the fields of constitutional law and interpretation, property law, and religion and the First Amendment. He co-edits the textbook Federal Constitutional Law, and his most recent book, Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution is the first book-length, natural law justification for originalism. He currently is writing on civic thought and leadership, and he is finalizing a book on the history of American Catholic legal education (with John M. Breen).
Before joining Ohio State, Professor Strang served as the inaugural director of the University of Toledo’s Institute of American Constitutional Thought & Leadership. He joined the Toledo College of Law faculty in 2008, was granted tenure in 2010, and was named John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values in 2015. The University of Toledo awarded Professor Strang its Outstanding Faculty Research and Scholarship Award in 2017. Before that, he was a visiting professor at Michigan State University College of Law. A graduate of the University of Iowa, where he was articles editor of the Iowa Law Review and Order of the Coif, Professor Strang holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School.
Professor Strang has been a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. In 2016, he was appointed to the Ohio Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and reappointed as chair in 2023.
Prior to teaching, Professor Strang served as a judicial clerk for Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was also an associate for Jenner & Block LLP in Chicago, where he practiced in general and appellate litigation.
Professor Strang is a frequent presenter at scholarly conferences. He is the president of the Board of Trustees of Northwest Ohio Classical Academy, Ohio’s first classical charter school. He is also a regular participant in debates at law schools across the country, a contributor to the media, and a speaker to political, civic, and religious groups.
