Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Mr. Guynn is head of Davis Polk’s Financial Institutions Group. He has been recognized as a thought-leader on financial regulatory reform and as one of the most widely consulted U.S. legal advisers during the financial crisis. See “In the Red Zone,”The American Lawyer, January 2009 and “For Davis Polk, Dodd-Frank Pays,” The American Lawyer, December 2010.
He has advised the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the principal trade organization for U.S. banks, securities firms and asset managers, all of the U.S.’s six-largest banks and several foreign banks on the Dodd-Frank Act and its regulatory implementation.
His practice focuses on providing strategic bank and regulatory and enforcement advice and advising on M&A and capital markets transactions when the target or issuer is a banking organization or other financial institution. He also advises on bank failures and recapitalizations, corporate governance and internal controls, cross-border collateral transactions, credit risk management, securities settlement systems and payment systems.
CEO, Institute of International Bankers
Commissioner, United States Securities and Exchange Commission
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.
Director, Financial Services Regulatory Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Cory’s recent engagements include advising on the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act for a major international bank, evaluating Basel II readiness, and advising a federal regulator on oversight and analysis of banking entities. Her areas of expertise include traded products controls (including fixed income, currency, and equity trading), wholesale credit risk management, Basel II implementation requirements, liquidity and funding, financial analysis, and corporate governance.
Prior to joining PwC, she was the associate director of the Large Institution Group at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, with responsibility for advising staff and the governors on issues relating to the largest, most complex banking organizations, including applications, enforcement actions, and matters related to safety and soundness. During the recent financial crisis, Cory led the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program, commonly referred to as the stress tests. Prior to her responsibilities at the Board of Governors, she led Basel II implementation for the Federal Reserve System from 2003 to mid-2007. Cory also held a number of leadership positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, including in the Market Risk Group and in Relationship Management for large, complex banking organizations. Cory also spent a number of years in the capital markets, where she traded bank debt and later brokered derivatives for financial organizations.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale Law School
Degrees from Davidson College, B.A. summa cum laude, 1973; Harvard University, M.A., 1974; Yale Law School, J.D, 1978. Clerked for Edward Weinfeld, 1978-79; Attorney at Shea & Gardner, 1979-82; Law Professor since 1982, tenured at Georgetown and Yale, visiting professor at Stanford, NYU, Toronto, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Fordham, Vanderbilt. Author of casebooks on legislation and sexuality, gender and law, as well as monographs on statutory interpretation and the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Author of dozens of articles, by one empirical count a top ten most cited law professors.
Senior Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP and Founder & Chair, Common Good
Philip K. Howard is a well-known leader of government and legal reform in America. He is Chair of Common Good and a bestselling author, and has advised both parties on needed reforms. In his new book, Not Accountable (Rodin Books, 2023), he argues that public employee unions undermine democratic governance and should be unconstitutional.
Philip is the author of the bestseller The Death of Common Sense (Random House, 1995), The Collapse of the Common Good (Ballantine Books, 2002), Life Without Lawyers (W.W. Norton, 2009), The Rule of Nobody (W.W. Norton, 2014), and Try Common Sense (W.W. Norton, 2019). His commentaries are published frequently in major media outlets.
In 2002, Philip formed Common Good, a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to simplifying laws so that Americans can use common sense in daily choices. His 2010 TED Talk has been viewed by more than 750,000 people. His 2015 report, “Two Years, Not Ten Years,” exposed the economic and environmental costs of delayed infrastructure approvals, and its proposals have since been incorporated into federal law. Philip has appeared often on television and radio, including several times on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.”
The son of a minister, Philip got his start working summers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner. He has been active in public affairs his entire adult life. He is Senior Counsel at the law firm Covington & Burling, LLP. A graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School, Philip lives in Manhattan with his wife Alexandra. They have four children.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale Law School
Degrees from Davidson College, B.A. summa cum laude, 1973; Harvard University, M.A., 1974; Yale Law School, J.D, 1978. Clerked for Edward Weinfeld, 1978-79; Attorney at Shea & Gardner, 1979-82; Law Professor since 1982, tenured at Georgetown and Yale, visiting professor at Stanford, NYU, Toronto, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Fordham, Vanderbilt. Author of casebooks on legislation and sexuality, gender and law, as well as monographs on statutory interpretation and the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Author of dozens of articles, by one empirical count a top ten most cited law professors.
Senior Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP and Founder & Chair, Common Good
Philip K. Howard is a well-known leader of government and legal reform in America. He is Chair of Common Good and a bestselling author, and has advised both parties on needed reforms. In his new book, Not Accountable (Rodin Books, 2023), he argues that public employee unions undermine democratic governance and should be unconstitutional.
Philip is the author of the bestseller The Death of Common Sense (Random House, 1995), The Collapse of the Common Good (Ballantine Books, 2002), Life Without Lawyers (W.W. Norton, 2009), The Rule of Nobody (W.W. Norton, 2014), and Try Common Sense (W.W. Norton, 2019). His commentaries are published frequently in major media outlets.
In 2002, Philip formed Common Good, a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to simplifying laws so that Americans can use common sense in daily choices. His 2010 TED Talk has been viewed by more than 750,000 people. His 2015 report, “Two Years, Not Ten Years,” exposed the economic and environmental costs of delayed infrastructure approvals, and its proposals have since been incorporated into federal law. Philip has appeared often on television and radio, including several times on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.”
The son of a minister, Philip got his start working summers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner. He has been active in public affairs his entire adult life. He is Senior Counsel at the law firm Covington & Burling, LLP. A graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School, Philip lives in Manhattan with his wife Alexandra. They have four children.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science; Director, Penn Program on Regulation, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Cary Coglianese is the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he currently serves as the director of the Penn Program on Regulation and has served as the law school’s Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs. He specializes in the study of regulation and regulatory processes, with an emphasis on the empirical evaluation of alternative regulatory strategies and the role of public participation, negotiation, and business-government relations in policy making. His most recent books include: Achieving Regulatory Excellence; Does Regulation Kill Jobs?; Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation; Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy; and Regulation and Regulatory Processes.
Prior to joining Penn Law, Coglianese spent a dozen years on the faculty at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He also has taught as a visiting law professor at Stanford and Vanderbilt, founded the Law & Society Association’s international collaborative research network on regulatory governance, served as a founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal Regulation & Governance, and created and now advises the daily production of The Regulatory Review. The chair of the Administrative Conference of the United States' committee on rulemaking, he has led a National Science Foundation initiative on e-rulemaking, served on the ABA’s task force on improving Regulations.Gov, and chaired a task force on transparency and public participation in the regulatory process that offered a blueprint to the Obama Administration on open government. He is a co-chair of the American Bar Association’s administrative law section committee on e-government, past co-chair of the section's committee on rulemaking, and a past member of the section's Council. He currently serves as a member of a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine studying performance-based safety regulation and of an Aspen Institute dialogue on energy policy governance. He has served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States, Environment Canada, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Distinguished Fellow, Hudson Institute
Christopher DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute. He was president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) from 1986 to 2008 and was the D.C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI from 2008 to 2011.
Mr. DeMuth was raised in Kenilworth, Illinois, and attended the Lawrenceville School (1964), Harvard College (A.B. 1968), and the University of Chicago Law School (J.D. 1973). He served as staff assistant to President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1970, working first for Daniel P. Moynihan (then assistant to the President for Urban Affairs) on urban policy matters and then as chairman of the White House Task Force on Environmental Policy. Following law school, he practiced regulatory, antitrust, and general corporate law with Sidley & Austin in Chicago (1973-1976) and was associate general counsel of the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in Philadelphia (1976-1977).
From 1977 to 1981, Mr. DeMuth was lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and director of the Harvard Faculty Project on Regulation. There he taught courses on law, economics, and regulatory policy and conducted and sponsored research on health, safety, environmental, and economic regulation.
Returning to Washington in 1981, Mr. DeMuth served as administrator for information and regulatory affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and as executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief during President Ronald Reagan’s first term of office. From 1984 to 1986, he was managing director of Lexecon Inc., a law-and-economics consulting firm; in 1986, he was also publisher and editor-in-chief of Regulation magazine. He was elected president of the American Enterprise Institute in December 1986.
Many of Mr. DeMuth’s articles, lectures, and occasional talks are posted on his website (https://www.ccdemuth.com).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science; Director, Penn Program on Regulation, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Cary Coglianese is the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he currently serves as the director of the Penn Program on Regulation and has served as the law school’s Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs. He specializes in the study of regulation and regulatory processes, with an emphasis on the empirical evaluation of alternative regulatory strategies and the role of public participation, negotiation, and business-government relations in policy making. His most recent books include: Achieving Regulatory Excellence; Does Regulation Kill Jobs?; Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation; Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy; and Regulation and Regulatory Processes.
Prior to joining Penn Law, Coglianese spent a dozen years on the faculty at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He also has taught as a visiting law professor at Stanford and Vanderbilt, founded the Law & Society Association’s international collaborative research network on regulatory governance, served as a founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal Regulation & Governance, and created and now advises the daily production of The Regulatory Review. The chair of the Administrative Conference of the United States' committee on rulemaking, he has led a National Science Foundation initiative on e-rulemaking, served on the ABA’s task force on improving Regulations.Gov, and chaired a task force on transparency and public participation in the regulatory process that offered a blueprint to the Obama Administration on open government. He is a co-chair of the American Bar Association’s administrative law section committee on e-government, past co-chair of the section's committee on rulemaking, and a past member of the section's Council. He currently serves as a member of a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine studying performance-based safety regulation and of an Aspen Institute dialogue on energy policy governance. He has served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States, Environment Canada, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Distinguished Fellow, Hudson Institute
Christopher DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute. He was president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) from 1986 to 2008 and was the D.C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI from 2008 to 2011.
Mr. DeMuth was raised in Kenilworth, Illinois, and attended the Lawrenceville School (1964), Harvard College (A.B. 1968), and the University of Chicago Law School (J.D. 1973). He served as staff assistant to President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1970, working first for Daniel P. Moynihan (then assistant to the President for Urban Affairs) on urban policy matters and then as chairman of the White House Task Force on Environmental Policy. Following law school, he practiced regulatory, antitrust, and general corporate law with Sidley & Austin in Chicago (1973-1976) and was associate general counsel of the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in Philadelphia (1976-1977).
From 1977 to 1981, Mr. DeMuth was lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and director of the Harvard Faculty Project on Regulation. There he taught courses on law, economics, and regulatory policy and conducted and sponsored research on health, safety, environmental, and economic regulation.
Returning to Washington in 1981, Mr. DeMuth served as administrator for information and regulatory affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and as executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief during President Ronald Reagan’s first term of office. From 1984 to 1986, he was managing director of Lexecon Inc., a law-and-economics consulting firm; in 1986, he was also publisher and editor-in-chief of Regulation magazine. He was elected president of the American Enterprise Institute in December 1986.
Many of Mr. DeMuth’s articles, lectures, and occasional talks are posted on his website (https://www.ccdemuth.com).
Chief Program Officer, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
David Berenbaum serves as The National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s Chief Program Officer. David is responsible for implementing NCRC’s legislative, research, compliance, community lending, minority business and civil rights programs. He testified in 2007 before the House Financial Services Committee on solutions to the current foreclosure crisis in America and before the Senate Banking Committee hearing on solutions to the current sub-prime mortgage melt-down. His current national public policy and regulatory focus includes initiatives to expand CRA to reach all financial service providers, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act analysis, RESPA reform, enactment of a meaningful national responsible lending bill and related consumer protections. Mr. Berenbaum has achieved a national reputation as a civil rights expert and advocate. He attained national recognition for fair housing and related consumer protection advocacy and has appeared as an expert on numerous national news magazine shows – including Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, The CBS Evening News, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN and others. Recently, his work documenting fair lending compliance issues by mortgage brokers through mystery shopping in six cities and concerning about appraisal valuation practices was reported on by syndicated real estate columnist Ken Harney in two articles.
Mr. Berenbaum is responsible for coordinating NCRC’s fair housing and fair lending compliance initiatives, which in 2008 will be relaunched under the historic name “National Neighbors" and the establishment of NCRC’s new CDFI, which is a component of it’s National Homeownership Sustainability Fund. David is also one of the founders of NCRC’s Center for Responsible Appraisals and Valuations (CRAV). The CRAV celebrates appraisal best practices in cooperation with it’s stake holders, who include lenders, securitizers, appraisers, real estate professionals and other public and private sector leaders.
General Counsel, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Len Kennedy is the General Counsel of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As General Counsel he is responsible for providing legal advice, counsel and support to all components of the Bureau. Prior to joining the Bureau, he most recently served as General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Chief Government Affairs Officer for Sprint Nextel Corporation, where he managed a legal department of 131 attorneys and advised the board of directors, CEO and senior management on all aspects of the company's business and legal affairs. During his tenure, Mr. Kennedy successfully oversaw the business and legal integration of a $35 billion merger. He previously served for five years as General Counsel of Nextel. In 2008, he was a recipient of Corporate Board Member's America's Top General Counsel Award.
In a prior role, he advised providers of communications and Internet services on all aspects of communications business and regulatory matters as a partner of Dow Lohnes. Mr. Kennedy twice served as a Senior Legal Advisor at the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Kennedy has served on the board of many Washington-area non-profit organizations and presently serves as a member of the Cornell University Council. He is an alumnus of Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences and Cornell Law School.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
Judge Tymkovich, of Denver, Colorado, was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, and confirmed in April 2003. On October 1, 2015 he became Chief Circuit Judge and held this position until October 2022. He was Chair of the US Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources from 2011 to 2015. Since 2008 he has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Election Law. He is a member of the Doyle Inn of Court, the American Law Institute, and the International Society of Barristers. Since he joined the Circuit, Judge Tymkovich has hosted judicial delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, and has also represented the United States in programs at Kiev and Yalta in Ukraine.
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.
Chief Program Officer, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
David Berenbaum serves as The National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s Chief Program Officer. David is responsible for implementing NCRC’s legislative, research, compliance, community lending, minority business and civil rights programs. He testified in 2007 before the House Financial Services Committee on solutions to the current foreclosure crisis in America and before the Senate Banking Committee hearing on solutions to the current sub-prime mortgage melt-down. His current national public policy and regulatory focus includes initiatives to expand CRA to reach all financial service providers, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act analysis, RESPA reform, enactment of a meaningful national responsible lending bill and related consumer protections. Mr. Berenbaum has achieved a national reputation as a civil rights expert and advocate. He attained national recognition for fair housing and related consumer protection advocacy and has appeared as an expert on numerous national news magazine shows – including Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, The CBS Evening News, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN and others. Recently, his work documenting fair lending compliance issues by mortgage brokers through mystery shopping in six cities and concerning about appraisal valuation practices was reported on by syndicated real estate columnist Ken Harney in two articles.
Mr. Berenbaum is responsible for coordinating NCRC’s fair housing and fair lending compliance initiatives, which in 2008 will be relaunched under the historic name “National Neighbors" and the establishment of NCRC’s new CDFI, which is a component of it’s National Homeownership Sustainability Fund. David is also one of the founders of NCRC’s Center for Responsible Appraisals and Valuations (CRAV). The CRAV celebrates appraisal best practices in cooperation with it’s stake holders, who include lenders, securitizers, appraisers, real estate professionals and other public and private sector leaders.
General Counsel, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Len Kennedy is the General Counsel of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As General Counsel he is responsible for providing legal advice, counsel and support to all components of the Bureau. Prior to joining the Bureau, he most recently served as General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Chief Government Affairs Officer for Sprint Nextel Corporation, where he managed a legal department of 131 attorneys and advised the board of directors, CEO and senior management on all aspects of the company's business and legal affairs. During his tenure, Mr. Kennedy successfully oversaw the business and legal integration of a $35 billion merger. He previously served for five years as General Counsel of Nextel. In 2008, he was a recipient of Corporate Board Member's America's Top General Counsel Award.
In a prior role, he advised providers of communications and Internet services on all aspects of communications business and regulatory matters as a partner of Dow Lohnes. Mr. Kennedy twice served as a Senior Legal Advisor at the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Kennedy has served on the board of many Washington-area non-profit organizations and presently serves as a member of the Cornell University Council. He is an alumnus of Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences and Cornell Law School.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
Judge Tymkovich, of Denver, Colorado, was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, and confirmed in April 2003. On October 1, 2015 he became Chief Circuit Judge and held this position until October 2022. He was Chair of the US Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources from 2011 to 2015. Since 2008 he has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Election Law. He is a member of the Doyle Inn of Court, the American Law Institute, and the International Society of Barristers. Since he joined the Circuit, Judge Tymkovich has hosted judicial delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, and has also represented the United States in programs at Kiev and Yalta in Ukraine.
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.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Prior to his joining the faculty, he was a visiting law professor at NYU from 2007 through 2009. He served as the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2000 to 2024. Since 2024 to the present he is a senior lecturer at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas—Austin. Epstein is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His initial law school appointment was at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972. Epstein received an LL.D., h.c. from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and was a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences, also from 1983. to 2022 He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991-2001. From 2001 to 2010 he was a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago.
His newest book, The Myth of Birthright Citizenship: What the Fourteenth Amendment Really Says was published in 2026 (Encounter Books). Prior to that he has published many books including, The Dubious Morality of the Modern Administrative State (Roman & Littlefield 2020).Earlier he published th Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (Harvard 2014) iHis previous books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (Harvard 2011); The Case Against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection of Property Rights (Oxford 2008); Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less is More (AEI 2007); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press. 2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Cato 2006); Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 8th ed. 2004); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago, 2003); Torts (Aspen Law & Business 1999); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books, 1998): Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care (Addison-Wesley, 1997); Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995); Bargaining With the State (Princeton, 1993); Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard , 1992); Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985); and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980). He has also edited(with Catherine M. Sharkey) Cases and Materials on the Law of Torts (10th edition 2012).
Professor Epstein has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects. He has taught courses in administrative law, antitrust law, civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers' compensation.
Professor Epstein also writes a regular column for Civitas Institute, which also sponsors his podcast, The Libertarian with Charles C.W. Cooke, and Law Talk, with Cooke and John Yoo. He also does a podcast with John Batchelor. And appears regularly on the Freedom File with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, U.S. Chamber Of Commerce
Dr. Martin A. Regalia is senior vice president for economic and tax policy and chief economist at the United States Chamber of Commerce.
Prior to coming to the Chamber in April 1993, Regalia served as the director of research for the Savings and Community Bankers of America (SCBA). Before that, in June 1992 when the group was founded, Regalia was executive vice president of policy development and chief economist for the National Council of Community Bankers—one of SCBA’s predecessor organizations.
Regalia also served as a principal analyst in the Fiscal Analysis Division at the Congressional Budget Office, as an economist for the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System in both the Banking and Capital Markets Sections, and as a financial economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
In addition, he served as a consultant to the Thrift Institutions Advisory Council to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System and was a visiting instructor at The George Washington University School of Government and Business.
Regalia appears regularly on national television news and debate programs, testifies before congressional committees, authors articles and publications on a variety of economic topics, and speaks to many groups across the country.
USA Today named Regalia one of the top 10 economists in the nation. Regalia and the other economic experts received this recognition for the accuracy of their 2008 forecasts.
Regalia has a B.A. with honors in economics from the University of Santa Clara as well as an M.A. in economics and a Ph.D. in monetary economics from the University of Wisconsin.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Sentelle was appointed United States Circuit Judge in October 1987, served as Chief Judge from February 11, 2008 until February 11, 2013, and took senior status on February 12, 2013. He is a 1968 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School. Following law school, he practiced with the firm of Uzzell & DuMont until he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Charlotte, N.C. in 1970. From 1974 to 1977, he served as a North Carolina State District Judge but left the bench in 1977 to become a partner with the firm of Tucker, Hicks, Sentelle, Moon & Hodge. In 1985, Judge Sentelle joined the U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina, in Asheville, where he served until his appointment to the D.C. Circuit. Judge Sentelle was the Presiding Judge of the Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels (1992-2006). He also served as the Chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference's Executive Committee (2010-2013). Judge Sentelle served for over 20 years as President of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of the American Inns of Court.
Senior Legal and Policy Adviser, Office of Investment, AFL-CIO
Heather Slavkin is the Senior Legal and Policy Advisor for the AFL-CIO Office of Investment. Ms. Slavkin's work focuses on legal, regulatory and corporate governance issues that impact union- and other worker-based pension, health and savings funds. She is the lead policy advisor on financial regulatory reform for the AFL-CIO and focuses on issues related to hedge funds and private equity, derivatives, systemic risk and corporate governance. Ms. Slavkin works with legislators, political organizations, pension funds and union affiliates to build support for policies that improve investor protections and regulatory oversight. She is also the chair of the Americans for Financial Reform task force on derivatives regulation.
Prior to joining the AFL-CIO, Ms. Slavkin was Assistant Counsel at BISYS Fund Services where she provided legal services related to establishing and maintaining mutual funds, money market funds and registered hedge funds of funds. Ms. Slavkin received her J.D. from Boston University School of Law and a B.S. in journalism from the University of Florida.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Prior to his joining the faculty, he was a visiting law professor at NYU from 2007 through 2009. He served as the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2000 to 2024. Since 2024 to the present he is a senior lecturer at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas—Austin. Epstein is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His initial law school appointment was at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972. Epstein received an LL.D., h.c. from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and was a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences, also from 1983. to 2022 He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991-2001. From 2001 to 2010 he was a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago.
His newest book, The Myth of Birthright Citizenship: What the Fourteenth Amendment Really Says was published in 2026 (Encounter Books). Prior to that he has published many books including, The Dubious Morality of the Modern Administrative State (Roman & Littlefield 2020).Earlier he published th Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (Harvard 2014) iHis previous books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (Harvard 2011); The Case Against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection of Property Rights (Oxford 2008); Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less is More (AEI 2007); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press. 2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Cato 2006); Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 8th ed. 2004); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago, 2003); Torts (Aspen Law & Business 1999); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books, 1998): Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care (Addison-Wesley, 1997); Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995); Bargaining With the State (Princeton, 1993); Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard , 1992); Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985); and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980). He has also edited(with Catherine M. Sharkey) Cases and Materials on the Law of Torts (10th edition 2012).
Professor Epstein has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects. He has taught courses in administrative law, antitrust law, civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers' compensation.
Professor Epstein also writes a regular column for Civitas Institute, which also sponsors his podcast, The Libertarian with Charles C.W. Cooke, and Law Talk, with Cooke and John Yoo. He also does a podcast with John Batchelor. And appears regularly on the Freedom File with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, U.S. Chamber Of Commerce
Dr. Martin A. Regalia is senior vice president for economic and tax policy and chief economist at the United States Chamber of Commerce.
Prior to coming to the Chamber in April 1993, Regalia served as the director of research for the Savings and Community Bankers of America (SCBA). Before that, in June 1992 when the group was founded, Regalia was executive vice president of policy development and chief economist for the National Council of Community Bankers—one of SCBA’s predecessor organizations.
Regalia also served as a principal analyst in the Fiscal Analysis Division at the Congressional Budget Office, as an economist for the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System in both the Banking and Capital Markets Sections, and as a financial economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
In addition, he served as a consultant to the Thrift Institutions Advisory Council to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System and was a visiting instructor at The George Washington University School of Government and Business.
Regalia appears regularly on national television news and debate programs, testifies before congressional committees, authors articles and publications on a variety of economic topics, and speaks to many groups across the country.
USA Today named Regalia one of the top 10 economists in the nation. Regalia and the other economic experts received this recognition for the accuracy of their 2008 forecasts.
Regalia has a B.A. with honors in economics from the University of Santa Clara as well as an M.A. in economics and a Ph.D. in monetary economics from the University of Wisconsin.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Sentelle was appointed United States Circuit Judge in October 1987, served as Chief Judge from February 11, 2008 until February 11, 2013, and took senior status on February 12, 2013. He is a 1968 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School. Following law school, he practiced with the firm of Uzzell & DuMont until he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Charlotte, N.C. in 1970. From 1974 to 1977, he served as a North Carolina State District Judge but left the bench in 1977 to become a partner with the firm of Tucker, Hicks, Sentelle, Moon & Hodge. In 1985, Judge Sentelle joined the U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina, in Asheville, where he served until his appointment to the D.C. Circuit. Judge Sentelle was the Presiding Judge of the Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels (1992-2006). He also served as the Chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference's Executive Committee (2010-2013). Judge Sentelle served for over 20 years as President of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of the American Inns of Court.
Senior Legal and Policy Adviser, Office of Investment, AFL-CIO
Heather Slavkin is the Senior Legal and Policy Advisor for the AFL-CIO Office of Investment. Ms. Slavkin's work focuses on legal, regulatory and corporate governance issues that impact union- and other worker-based pension, health and savings funds. She is the lead policy advisor on financial regulatory reform for the AFL-CIO and focuses on issues related to hedge funds and private equity, derivatives, systemic risk and corporate governance. Ms. Slavkin works with legislators, political organizations, pension funds and union affiliates to build support for policies that improve investor protections and regulatory oversight. She is also the chair of the Americans for Financial Reform task force on derivatives regulation.
Prior to joining the AFL-CIO, Ms. Slavkin was Assistant Counsel at BISYS Fund Services where she provided legal services related to establishing and maintaining mutual funds, money market funds and registered hedge funds of funds. Ms. Slavkin received her J.D. from Boston University School of Law and a B.S. in journalism from the University of Florida.
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law, New York University School of Law
Professor Clayton Gillette joined the New York University School of Law faculty in 2000. For the prior eight years, he was the Perre Bowen Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Gillette began his teaching career at Boston University where he served as the Warren Scholar in Municipal Law and Associate Dean, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia as well as at NYU School of Law.
Professor Gillette earned his J.D. from the University of Michigan in 1975 and a B.A. from Amherst College in 1972. After law school, he clerked for Judge J. Edward Lumbard of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and was associated with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton in New York City.
Gillette's scholarship concentrates on commercial law and local government law. He is the author of casebooks on Local Government Law (with Lynn Baker) and Payment Systems and Credit Instruments (with Alan Schwartz and Robert Scott), and a textbook on Municipal Debt Finance Law (with Robert S. Amdursky). Gillette's numerous articles include studies of long-term commercial contracts, initiatives, relations between localities and their neighbors, privatization of municipal services, and judicial construction of contracts governing homeowners associations. He has also served as the Reporter for the ABA Intersectional Task Force on Initiatives and Referenda and has consulted in litigation ranging from the Agent Orange Products Liability Litigation to the default on municipal bonds by Orange County, California and the Washington Public Power Supply System.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown Law
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1971, Professor Seidman served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He then was a staff attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service until joining the Law Center faculty in 1976. He teaches a variety of courses in the fields of constitutional and criminal law. He is co-author of a constitutional law casebook and the author of many articles concerning criminal justice and constitutional law. His most recent books are Silence and Freedom (Stanford 2007), Our Unsettled Constitution: A New Defense of Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Yale 2001) and Equal Protection of the Laws (Foundation 2002).
The Volcker Rule: Curbing Risk or Curbing the Economy?
Randall D. Guynn, Sarah "Sally" Miller, Hester M. Peirce, Coryann Stefansson, Mark Weide
Financial Services & E-Commerce Practice Group and the American Bankers Associaton
When President Obama, with former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker at his side, announced...
Showcase Panel IV: A Federal Sunset Law
Frank H. Easterbrook, William N. Eskridge, Philip K. Howard, Thomas W. Merrill, Jeffrey S. Sutton
2011 National Lawyers Convention
In the years since the New Deal and the Great Society, a huge number of...
Showcase Panel IV: A Federal Sunset Law
Frank H. Easterbrook, William N. Eskridge, Philip K. Howard, Thomas W. Merrill, Jeffrey S. Sutton
2011 National Lawyers Convention
In the years since the New Deal and the Great Society, a huge number of...
Administrative Law: Reining in Regulation or Letting Regulation Reign? Predictions and Prescriptions for Government
Carlos T. Bea, Ronald A. Cass, Cary Coglianese, Christopher C. DeMuth
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Administrative Law & Regulation Practice Group hosted this panel on "Reining in Regulation or...
Administrative Law: Reining in Regulation or Letting Regulation Reign? Predictions and Prescriptions for Government
Carlos T. Bea, Ronald A. Cass, Cary Coglianese, Christopher C. DeMuth
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Administrative Law & Regulation Practice Group hosted this panel on "Reining in Regulation or...
Financial Services: Will Consumers and the Economy Benefit from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
David Berenbaum, Leonard J. Kennedy, Alex J. Pollock, Timothy M. Tymkovich, Todd J. Zywicki
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Financial Services & E-Commerce Practice Group hosted this panel on "Will Consumers and the...
Financial Services: Will Consumers and the Economy Benefit from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
David Berenbaum, Leonard J. Kennedy, Alex J. Pollock, Timothy M. Tymkovich, Todd J. Zywicki
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Financial Services & E-Commerce Practice Group hosted this panel on "Will Consumers and the...
Corporations: Deficit Reduction and the Role of the Federal Government in Regulating Business
Richard A. Epstein, Martin A. Regalia, David B. Sentelle, Heather L. Slavkin
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Practice Group hosted this panel on "Deficit Reduction and the...
Corporations: Deficit Reduction and the Role of the Federal Government in Regulating Business
Richard A. Epstein, Martin A. Regalia, David B. Sentelle, Heather L. Slavkin
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Practice Group hosted this panel on "Deficit Reduction and the...
Panel II: Federalism and Interstate Competition
Jonathan H. Adler, Clayton Gillette, Gregory G. Katsas, John O. McGinnis, Lauren Prieb, Louis Michael Seidman
2011 National Student Symposium
This panel will assess American federalism as a competitive institution that offers a marketplace of...