Competition Policy, Corporate Concentration & Freedom of Thought: Approaching the Draft Merger Guidelines
Freedom of Thought Project
The Department of Justice has just released new Draft Merger Guidelines. What are the implications...
James M. Burnham, Jonathan S. Kanter, Doha Mekki, Todd J. Zywicki
Freedom of Thought Project
The Department of Justice has just released new Draft Merger Guidelines. What are the implications...
James M. Burnham, Jonathan S. Kanter, Doha Mekki, Todd J. Zywicki
Freedom of Thought Project
The Department of Justice has just released new Draft Merger Guidelines. What are the implications...
David Boies, Carissa Byrne Hessick, David Lat, Michael S. McGinniss, John S. Moran
Is it ethical for in-house attorneys to leverage their employer’s economic clout to interfere with...
Alexander R. Dahl, Theodore "Ted" Frank, Adam K. Mortara
Arguments over third-party litigation funding are nothing new. Opponents have argued the funding promotes frivolous...
Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Theodore "Ted" Frank, Randall Kennedy
In 2003, Professor Brian Fitzpatrick published a piece titled "The Diversity Lie" in which he...
Justice, Texas First Court of Appeals
Susanna Dokupil was elected to the First Court of Appeals in November 2024. With over two decades of experience, Susanna’s career has spanned all three branches of government as well as private practice. She has been a Special Counsel and Assistant Solicitor General in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas as well as a Special Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and a law clerk to the Hon. Jerry Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
In her role as Special Counsel at the Texas Attorney General’s office, Susanna led teams of litigators focused on protecting Texas’s interests against agency regulations that exceeded the agency’s statutory and constitutional power. As an Assistant Solicitor General, she drafted briefs before the Fifth Circuit and United States Supreme Court, primarily focused on First Amendment issues. Susanna’s experience in private practice has combined traditional commercial litigation with advising technology companies and founders on strategic communications.
Susanna has been a prolific speaker and writer on law and public policy topics, including articles in The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, The Texas Review of Law & Politics, American Enterprise, the Washington Times, and the Houston Chronicle, among others.
Susanna is a graduate of Harvard Law School and also holds degrees from The George Washington University and Baylor University. She lives in Houston and has four children.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Senior Fellow, Claremont Institute
Daniel J. Mahoney is professor emeritus at Assumption University (where he taught from 1986 until 2021), Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, Senior Writer at Law and Liberty, and executive editor of Perspectives on Political Science. He has written extensively (in a dozen books and over 500 articles, essays, and reviews) on statesmanship, French political thought, the art and political thought of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, conservatism, religion and politics, and various themes in political philosophy. His book, The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation was awarded the Palouci Prize for Conservative Book of the Year by ISI in 2023. His forthcoming book, The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now, will be published by Encounter Books in the spring of 2025. Mahoney has written for a wide range of academic and public journals from The Political Science Reviewer and Perspectives on Political Science to the Public Interest, the National Interest, First Things, National Review, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, Modern Age, Commentaire, La Nef, The European Conservative, and the Hungarian Review, among others. He has also edited and introduced the writings of Raymond Aron, Aurel Kolnai, Pierre Manent, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Joszef Cardinal Mindszenty, and the Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (see the acclaimed The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005, published in 2006). His writings have been translated into thirteen languages including French, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Korean. In his scholarship and public writings, Mahoney vigorously defends a conservative-minded liberalism informed by classical and Christian wisdom and the best currents of moderate modernity, as well as the practical wisdom of the American Founders and public-spirited statesman such as Burke, Lincoln, Churchill, and de Gaulle. His public writings have taken eloquent and pointed aim at the totalitarian temptation in its various forms.
Chief Deputy Attorney General
Ryan Newman is currently Chief Deputy Attorney General for Florida Office of the Attorney General.
During the first Trump Administration, he served as Counselor to the United States Attorney General for national security and international affairs, Deputy General Counsel (Legal Counsel) for the Department of Defense, and Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice. Prior to serving in the Executive Branch, Ryan was Chief Counsel to United States Senator Ted Cruz during the 114th Congress.
Ryan served as a law clerk to the Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the United States Supreme Court, the Honorable Richard J. Leon on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and the Honorable J.L. Edmondson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Prior to law school, Ryan was an armor officer in the United States Army assigned to the 1st Squadron, 10th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (Buffalo Soldiers). He deployed to Iraq in 2003 for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Ryan graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1998. He earned his law degree with high honors from The University of Texas School of Law in 2007.
Senior Policy Analyst, Independent Women’s Forum
Inez Feltscher Stepman is a senior policy analyst at IWF and host of High Noon with Inez Stepman, a podcast that hosts conversations with heterodox thinkers on a variety of important cultural and political subjects. She has over a decade of experience in education policy, and also handles issues related to institutional capture and the definition of sex in law and culture.
She is a Lincoln Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Her work has additionally appeared in outlets such as USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, and she has made appearances on Fox News, PBS, CSPAN, and NPR.
Inez has a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego, and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. She lives in New York City with her husband.
General Counsel, xAI and X
Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jonathan Kanter was confirmed on November 16, 2021, as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. Throughout his career, Mr. Kanter has been a leading advocate for strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy.
Mr. Kanter has been a partner in the Washington, D.C. offices of two national law firms and was the founder of a boutique antitrust law firm dedicated to promoting antitrust enforcement. Mr. Kanter began his career as an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition. He earned his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and his B.A. from State University of New York at Albany.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice
On January 14, 2022, Doha Mekki was appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. As Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Mekki supervises more than 350 attorneys who investigate and prosecute civil and criminal violations of federal antitrust and other competition laws. She is responsible for overseeing the Division’s civil enforcement, criminal enforcement, litigation, domestic and international policy, advocacy, and economic analysis programs, as well as the Division’s operations.
Ms. Mekki joined the Antitrust Division in 2015 as a Trial Attorney. In that capacity, she led investigations and litigated merger challenges in the rail, commercial vehicle, aviation, and healthcare industries, among others. She later served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. In that role, she focused on civil antitrust enforcement in healthcare, sports, and digital markets, as well as criminal enforcement in labor markets. From 2020 until 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief in the Antitrust Division’s Defense, Industrials, and Aerospace Section, where she provided legal and policy guidance to attorneys and paralegals working on the section’s merger and anticompetitive conduct investigations and enforcement. Beginning in 2021, she served concurrently as the Antitrust Division’s Special Counsel for Labor. In that capacity, she helped advance the Division’s civil and criminal enforcement in labor markets. She is a two-time recipient of the Assistant Attorney General’s Award of Distinction and she has testified before Congress about competition in labor markets.
She was previously an associate in the antitrust and financial services groups of an international law firm in New York, NY, where her antitrust practice focused on federal antitrust litigation, government investigations, and counseling.
Ms. Mekki holds a B.A. from Duke University, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an M.B.E. in Bioethics from the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
General Counsel, xAI and X
Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jonathan Kanter was confirmed on November 16, 2021, as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. Throughout his career, Mr. Kanter has been a leading advocate for strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy.
Mr. Kanter has been a partner in the Washington, D.C. offices of two national law firms and was the founder of a boutique antitrust law firm dedicated to promoting antitrust enforcement. Mr. Kanter began his career as an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition. He earned his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and his B.A. from State University of New York at Albany.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice
On January 14, 2022, Doha Mekki was appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. As Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Mekki supervises more than 350 attorneys who investigate and prosecute civil and criminal violations of federal antitrust and other competition laws. She is responsible for overseeing the Division’s civil enforcement, criminal enforcement, litigation, domestic and international policy, advocacy, and economic analysis programs, as well as the Division’s operations.
Ms. Mekki joined the Antitrust Division in 2015 as a Trial Attorney. In that capacity, she led investigations and litigated merger challenges in the rail, commercial vehicle, aviation, and healthcare industries, among others. She later served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. In that role, she focused on civil antitrust enforcement in healthcare, sports, and digital markets, as well as criminal enforcement in labor markets. From 2020 until 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief in the Antitrust Division’s Defense, Industrials, and Aerospace Section, where she provided legal and policy guidance to attorneys and paralegals working on the section’s merger and anticompetitive conduct investigations and enforcement. Beginning in 2021, she served concurrently as the Antitrust Division’s Special Counsel for Labor. In that capacity, she helped advance the Division’s civil and criminal enforcement in labor markets. She is a two-time recipient of the Assistant Attorney General’s Award of Distinction and she has testified before Congress about competition in labor markets.
She was previously an associate in the antitrust and financial services groups of an international law firm in New York, NY, where her antitrust practice focused on federal antitrust litigation, government investigations, and counseling.
Ms. Mekki holds a B.A. from Duke University, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an M.B.E. in Bioethics from the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Chairman and Managing Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner
David Boies has been the Chairman and a Managing Partner of Boies Schiller Flexner since its founding in 1997.
David has been selected as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine (2010). He has been named Global International Litigator of the Year by Who’s Who Legal an unprecedented seven times. David has been named the Litigator of the Year by The American Lawyer; the Lawyer of the Year by The National Law Journal (twice); the Antitrust Lawyer of the Year by the New York Bar Association; Best Lawyers in America from 1987-2021; Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers; and an Eminent Practitioner by Chambers USA. He was named one of the Top 50 Big Law Innovators of the Last 50 Years by The American Lawyer in 2013.
David is the recipient of Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Redlands (2000), New York Law School (2007), University of New Hampshire School of Law (2013), and New York University (2013) and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the Chicago Theological Seminary (2011). His awards include the Award of Merit from the Yale Law School, the ABA Medal from the American Bar Association, the Vanderbilt Medal from New York University Law School, the Pinnacle Award from the International Dyslexia Association, the William Brennan Award from the University of Virginia, the Role Model Award from Equality Forum, the Lead by Example Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, the Torch of Learning Award from the American Friends of Hebrew University, the Eisendrath Bearer of Light Award from the Union for Reform Judaism, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Center for Justice.
David served as Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the United States Senate Antitrust Subcommittee in 1978 and Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in 1979.
In 1991-1993, he was counsel to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, recovering $1.2 billion from companies who sold junk bonds to failed savings and loan associations.
In 1998-2000, he served as Special Trial Counsel for the United States Department of Justice in its antitrust suit against Microsoft. David also served as the lead counsel for former Vice-President Al Gore in connection with litigation relating to the 2000 election Florida vote count. As co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in Perry v. Brown, he won the first judgment establishing the right to marry for gay and lesbian citizens under the U.S. Constitution.
David was born in Sycamore, Illinois on March 11, 1941. He attended the University of Redlands (1960-62), and received a B.S. from Northwestern University (1964), an LL.B., magna cum laude from Yale University (1966), and an LL.M. from New York University (1967).
He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers; and a Trustee of the National Constitution Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York University Law School Foundation and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. He is the author of numerous publications including Courting Justice (2004), Redeeming the Dream (with Ted Olson), and Public Control of Business (with Paul Verkuil), published by Little Brown in 1977. He has taught courses at New York University Law School and Cardozo Law School.
Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland "Buck" Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
Carissa Byrne Hessick joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2016. She serves as the Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland “Buck” Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law and as the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project. Her teaching and research interests include criminal law, the structure of the criminal justice system, criminal sentencing, and child pornography crimes. Hessick is the author of multiple law review articles, essays, and op eds on plea bargaining, the powers and selection of prosecutors, Sixth Amendment sentencing rights, and criminal statutes. Her work has appeared in the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the L.A. Times, the UCLA Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. She founded the Prosecutors and Politics Project in 2018. And she currently serves as the Reporter for the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Sentencing Standards Task Force.
Hessick attended Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and winner of the Potter Stewart Prize for the Morris Tyler Moot Court of Appeals. After graduating from law school, she clerked for Judge Barbara S. Jones on the Southern District of New York and for Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the D.C. Circuit. She also worked as a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City. Before joining the faculty at Carolina Law, Hessick taught on the faculties at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. She also spent two years as a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School.
Founder, Original Jurisdiction
David Lat is a lawyer turned writer. He publishes Original Jurisdiction, a newsletter on Substack about law and legal affairs, and he writes for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Prior to launching Original Jurisdiction, David founded Above the Law, one of the nation's most widely read legal news websites, and Underneath Their Robes, a popular blog about federal judges that he wrote under a pseudonym. He is also the author of a novel set in the world of the federal courts, Supreme Ambitions. Before entering the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Professor of Law and J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow, University of North Dakota School of Law
Michael S. McGinniss is Professor of Law and J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow at the University of North Dakota School of Law, where he joined the faculty in 2010 and served as the Dean from 2019 to 2022. He chairs the executive committee for the Federalist Society's Practice Group on Professional Responsibility and Legal Education.
Before entering the legal academy, Professor McGinniss served for twelve years as a Disciplinary Counsel for the Supreme Court of Delaware. He currently teaches courses on Professional Responsibility, Advanced Legal Ethics, Civil Procedure, and Federal Courts. He also serves as Faculty Advisor for the North Dakota Law Review and the UND Law Federalist Society student chapter.
Professor McGinniss’ research and scholarship interests are wide-ranging and include lawyer and judicial ethics, lawyer discipline and regulation of the profession, constitutional law (especially First Amendment, separation of powers, and federalism), and cultural challenges faced by conservatives in the law schools and the legal profession. His most recent law review article, Declaring Independence to Secure Integrity: The Supreme Court Justices' Code of Conduct, was published in the Federalist Society Review. His article Expressing Conscience with Candor: Saint Thomas More and First Freedoms in the Legal Profession, was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Professor McGinniss has spoken to Federalist Society lawyer and student chapters across the country about judicial independence and ethics, especially relating to the federal courts and the United States Supreme Court Justices. In addition, he has spoken to several chapters about rising challenges to ideological diversity and targeting of conservative viewpoints in law schools and the legal profession. Although he is very pleased to speak on these and many other topics that may be of interest to lawyer and student chapters, in 2026-2027, he has particular interest in speaking on the topic “Lawyer Discipline as Political ‘Resistance’: Separation of Powers, Federalism, and the Rule of Law,” concerning his work-in-progress on the weaponization of professional disciplinary processes against conservative lawyers for political and ideological purposes.
Partner, McGuireWoods
John Moran is a member of the firm’s nationally recognized Government Investigations and White Collar Litigation department. A former senior official at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the White House and an experienced litigator and counselor, John draws on his broad experience from private practice and government service to advise and represent clients in government enforcement, congressional investigations, high-stakes civil disputes, and regulatory litigation. He also serves as co-chair of the firm’s Congressional Investigations practice, representing both companies and individuals in congressional investigations and hearings and is a member of the firm’s Appeals & Issues group.
Founder & CEO, Strategic Policy Counsel, PLLC
Alex Dahl has nearly three decades of experience in law and advocacy, having served in all three branches of the federal government as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a federal prosecutor, and a law clerk to a federal district court judge, as well as working in private practice as a lobbyist and civil litigator.
Alex serves as outside General Counsel to Lawyers for Civil Justice, a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense lawyer organizations, promoting excellence and fairness in the civil justice system. LCJ is the corporate and defense bar voice for reforms aimed at securing the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of civil cases, notably including the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which established “proportionality” in the scope of discovery and created a uniform standard for judicial handling of the loss of electronically stored information (ESI). Alex works with LCJ’s member experts to: (1) promote balance and fairness in the civil justice system; (2) reduce costs and burdens associated with litigation; and (3) promote more predictability and efficiency in litigation.
Prior to founding the firm, Alex was a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the second largest lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., for over 11 years. Alex represented companies and associations before Congress and the Executive Branch on a variety of policy issues.
Alex served as the Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he spent five years working for then-Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) on legislative strategy concerning a wide variety of bills and constitutional amendments within the Committee's jurisdiction, which includes legal reform, antitrust, intellectual property, immigration policy and criminal law.
Alex also worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted felony drug distribution and firearms cases in DC Superior Court. He was specially assigned to handle criminal intellectual property cases involving illegal sales of pirated DVD movies and music CDs.
Prior to his government service, Alex was a commercial litigator at Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he handled a variety of civil matters relating to electric utilities, securities and contract disputes.
Alex began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Dee V. Benson, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah.
Alex currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
Partner and Lecturer
Adam Mortara graduated from the University of Chicago in 1996 with a B.Sc. in chemistry. He then attended Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he received a masters degree in astrophysics on a British Marshall Scholarship.
Mr. Mortara graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with highest honors in 2001. Following graduation, he clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. After his clerkships, he was a Temple Bar Scholar of the American Inns of Court.
From 2003 to 2020, Mr. Mortara was with Bartlit Beck LLP where he tried high stakes intellectual property cases and, more notably, Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard. He retired from Bartlit Beck and founded Lawfair LLC, a civil and voting rights firm. He has been a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School since 2007, where he teaches Federal Habeas Corpus, Federal Jurisdiction, Criminal Procedure, and Writing for the Judiciary.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Randall Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina. For his education he attended St. Albans School, Princeton University, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court of the United States. Awarded the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime, and the Law, Mr Kennedy writes for a wide range of scholarly and general interest publications. His other books are For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law (2013), The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (2011), Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (2008), Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (2003), and Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002). A member of the American Law Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, Mr. Kennedy is also a Trustee emeritus of Princeton University.