United States House of Representatives, Florida
Congressman for Kentucky's 6th District, U. S. House of Representatives
Congressman Barr is focused on strengthening Kentucky’s signature bourbon, equine, coal, agriculture and manufacturing industries, and serves as co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Horse Caucus. He is a member of the Committee on Financial Services, and is Ranking Member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. He is also a member of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.
Congressman Barr graduated from Lexington's Henry Clay High School in 1992, earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and Philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1996, and received his law degree from the University of Kentucky in 2001.
He and his wife, Carol, are the proud parents of two daughters, Eleanor and Mary Clay.
Vice President, Networks, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Nathan Kaczmarek is Vice President for Networks at the Federalist Society. He began his legal career in Detroit representing nationwide clients in all phases of healthcare litigation and complex medical malpractice claims. He has since served as a Senior Legal and Policy Advisor in the U.S. House of Representatives and as Counsel for the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management in the U.S. Senate. Prior to overseeing the Networks, he was Director of the Practice Groups, the Regulatory Transparency Project, and the Article I Initiative for the Federalist Society.
Nathan holds degrees from Hillsdale College and Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He is a Liaison Representative for The Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves as Vice President of the Associates of St. John Bosco, a Virginia based non-profit dedicated to Catholic high school and college students.
Vice President, Networks, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Nathan Kaczmarek is Vice President for Networks at the Federalist Society. He began his legal career in Detroit representing nationwide clients in all phases of healthcare litigation and complex medical malpractice claims. He has since served as a Senior Legal and Policy Advisor in the U.S. House of Representatives and as Counsel for the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management in the U.S. Senate. Prior to overseeing the Networks, he was Director of the Practice Groups, the Regulatory Transparency Project, and the Article I Initiative for the Federalist Society.
Nathan holds degrees from Hillsdale College and Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He is a Liaison Representative for The Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves as Vice President of the Associates of St. John Bosco, a Virginia based non-profit dedicated to Catholic high school and college students.
Senator from South Carolina, United States Senate
Senator Lindsey Graham was elected to the United States Senate in 2002 and was re-elected in 2008 and 2014. He became the first person in South Carolina history to garner over one million votes in the 2008 general election.
Prior to serving in the Senate, Graham was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994 as the first Republican from the Third Congressional District of South Carolina since 1877.
Before being elected to Congress, Graham compiled a distinguished record in the United States Air Force as he logged six-and-a-half years of service on active duty as an Air Force lawyer. From 1984-1988, he was assigned overseas and served at Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Germany. Upon leaving active duty Air Force in 1989, Graham joined the South Carolina Air National Guard where he served until 1995. During the first Gulf War in the early 90's, Graham was called to active duty and served state-side at McEntire Air National Guard Base as Staff Judge Advocate where he prepared members for deployment to the Gulf region.
In 1995, Graham joined the U.S. Air Force Reserves. During American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Graham put his experience in military law to use pulling numerous short-term Reserve duties in both countries over congressional breaks and holidays.
Graham retired from the Air Force Reserves in June 2015 having served his country in uniform for 33 years. He retired at the rank of Colonel.
A native South Carolinian, Graham grew up in a blue collar family in the small town of Central where his parents ran a restaurant and pool hall. The first member of his family to go to college, Graham earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of South Carolina. He lives in Seneca and is a member of Corinth Baptist Church.
Director, Washington Ofice, Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy
Elise Bean became counsel to U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., on the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in 1985. She worked for him on three subcommittees, under the leadership of Linda Gustitus. In 2003, Levin appointed Bean as staff director and chief counsel of the committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which he chaired. Bean retired from the Senate with Levin at the end of 2014.
During her tenure, Bean handled a variety of investigations, hearings and legislation, including matters involving offshore tax abuses, money laundering, foreign corruption, unfair credit card practices, health care fraud, abuses involving derivatives and structured finance, and shell companies with hidden owners. Investigations headed by her included inquiries into the 2008 financial crisis, HSBC money laundering problems, London whale trades at JPMorgan Chase, collapse of Enron, and offshore tax avoidance by Apple, Microsoft and Caterpillar.
In 2016 and 2015, she was included in the Global Tax 50, a list compiled by International Tax Review of the year's top 50 individuals and organizations influencing tax policy and practice. In 2013 and 2011, the Washingtonian magazine named her one of Washington's 100 most powerful women. In 2010, she was selected by the National Law Journal as one of Washington's most influential women lawyers.
Bean graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University in 1978 and earned her law degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 1982. She served as a law clerk to former Chief Judge of the U.S. Claims Court Alex Kozinski, who later served as the chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She worked for two years as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Frauds Section. Earlier in her career, she worked for U.S. Rep. John Joseph Moakley, D-Mass.
Senior Counsel, Akin Gump
Stanley M. Brand’s practice covers all levels of state and federal courts, with an emphasis on defending the rights of witnesses involved in government investigations.
Mr. Brand has represented numerous individuals and organizations investigated by and/or called to testify before the U.S. Congress. He has developed particular experience in the application of the separation-of-powers doctrine. His diverse litigation and counseling practice also includes representing corporations, trade associations, labor unions and individuals in major Department of Justice, grand jury, and independent counsel investigations and trial proceedings, including Whitewater, Housing and Urban Development, the savings and loan crisis, and the campaign finance task force investigations. Mr. Brand has also represented individuals and entities involved in contested election proceedings.
From 1976 to 1983, Mr. Brand served as general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O'Neill, Jr. and was the House's chief legal officer responsible for representing the House, its members, officers and employees in connection with legal procedures and litigation arising from the conduct of their official activities. Since leaving the House, Mr. Brand has had a succession of high-profile, political and public corruption cases and clients, including former White House aide George Stephanopoulos in the Whitewater investigation, former congressman and Gore 2000 campaign manager Tony Coelho, former House Majority Whip Bill Gray, congressmen Dan Rostenkowski and Joe McDade, and former executive agency officials.
Prior to joining Akin Gump, Mr. Brand was the founding partner of Brand Law Group, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm specializing in matters at the intersection of politics and criminal law.
Founder, Quell Strategies
Machalagh Carr is a trusted and strategic counselor with decades of private sector and government experience. She has nimbly navigated the intersection of congressional investigations and oversight, law, geopolitics, and policy, most recently as the top staffer in Article I as Chief of Staff to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
Prior to her role as Chief of Staff, she served as General Counsel for the Speaker and Office of the Republican Leader at the U.S. House of Representatives. Previously, she served as General Counsel & Parliamentarian for the Committee on Ways and Means, where she handled all legal and procedural issues for the Committee. Before that, she was the Oversight Staff Director at the Committee where she led the investigations and oversight of all issues within the Committee’s jurisdiction. Prior to joining Ways and Means, she served as the Director of Oversight and Investigations for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and as Senior Oversight Counsel at the Committee on Natural Resources.
Previously, Machalagh served in the Office of Global Compliance of an international energy company where she conducted internal anti-corruption investigations, audits, and compliance reviews for the company. Before her in-house experience she practiced in the Litigation, White Collar, and Government Investigations Group at Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal LLP (now Dentons). Directly after law school, Machalagh clerked for the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
She taught Trial Practice at Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law and lives in Virginia with her husband and three sons.
Chief Counsel for Oversight (R), Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives
Director of the Congressional Oversight Initiative, The Project On Government Oversight
Justin Rood directs POGO's Congressional Oversight Initiative. The Initiative aims to improve and enhance Congress's ability to do effective oversight by providing information, advice, and other assistance.
Previously, Rood served under Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) on his Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as director of investigations on Homeland Security matters.
Prior to that, he worked under Senator Coburn as senior investigator on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Minority Staff. There he led a 2012 investigation into domestic intelligence fusion centers, finding them "pools of ineptitude, waste, and civil liberties intrusions," in the words of The Washington Post's front-page coverage of the report.
Before joining Senator Coburn’s staff, Rood was an award-winning investigative producer and reporter with ABC News and other outlets. At ABC, Rood helped uncover the D.C. Madam scandal, which led to a number of resignations including that of Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias. In 2006, while at Talking Points Memo, Rood was part of a two-person reporting/blogging team that broke the story about the Bush administration dismissing seven U.S. Attorneys during a midterm purge. The story earned Talking Points Memo a Polk Award.
Rood is a 2015 non-resident fellow with the Yale Law School's Information Society Project.
A native Washingtonian, Rood is also co-founder of the Funk Parade, a celebration of local music, arts, and culture that brings the diverse communities of the city together.
President and General Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
NCLA’s President and General Counsel, Mark Chenoweth, has observed the administrative state up close and personal from perches in all four branches of the federal government. Mark served as the first chief of staff to Congressman Mike Pompeo, as legal counsel to Commissioner Anne Northup at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, as an attorney advisor in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as a law clerk to the Hon. Danny J. Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Mark has worked in several different roles in the private sector as well. He began his legal career in D.C. as a regulatory associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. He then returned to his home state of Kansas to serve as in-house counsel for Koch Industries. Most recently he spent over four years as general counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation.
Mark is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School, where he co-founded the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship and became a Tony Patiño Fellow. Mark has been widely quoted and/or published in newspapers and websites including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New Hampshire Union Leader, and Metropolitan Corporate Counsel. He has also had recurring op-eds in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and at Forbes.com.
Director, Climate & Clean Air Program, Natural Resources Defense Council
David Doniger has been at the forefront of the battle against air pollution and global climate change since he joined NRDC in 1978. He helped formulate the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement designed to stop the depletion of the earth's ozone layer, as well as several essential amendments to the Clean Air Act. In 1993, he left NRDC to serve on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, followed by key posts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He rejoined NRDC in 2001 and has since been working to defend the Clean Air Act from assaults in Congress. He is based in Washington, D.C.
Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life, McKnight Presidential Professor in Law, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law, Associate Director, Corporate Institute, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor Kristin E. Hickman is the McKnight Presidential Professor in Law, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She also has taught at Harvard Law School and Northwestern University School of Law. Professor Hickman teaches and writes primarily in the areas of administrative law, tax administration, and statutory interpretation. Her articles on these topics have appeared in the Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and other publications. She also co-authors the Administrative Law Treatise with Richard J. Pierce, Jr., and a casebook on federal administrative law with Pierce and Christopher J. Walker. Her scholarly work has been cited several times in opinions of the United States Supreme Court as well as regularly in lower court judicial opinions and court briefs.
In 2018-19, Professor Hickman served as Special Adviser to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in Washington, D.C. She presently serves as a Senior Fellow, and previously served as a public member and chair of the judicial review committee, for the Administrative Conference of the United States. She also is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.
Professor Hickman received her B.S. degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting and a secondary major in history from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. After practicing for several years as a certified public accountant, Professor Hickman earned her J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Northwestern University School of Law, where she was awarded the Raoul Berger Prize and the Lowden Wigmore Prize for her scholarly writings. Following law school, Professor Hickman clerked for The Honorable David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and practiced law as an associate with the Chicago office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, concentrating on corporate and international tax transactions and matters.
Trustee Professor of Law, New York Law School
From 1972-79, Schoenbrod served as one of the leaders of the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he campaigned to reduce lead in gasoline, resurrect the then-decrepit New York City subway, and protect the environment of Puerto Rico. Previously, he was Director of Program Development at the community development project that Senator Robert Kennedy established in Bedford Stuyvesant. He has also been a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.
His books include
D.C. Confidential: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington (Encounter Books, 2017) with forewords by Governor Howard Dean and Senator Mike Lee;
Breaking the Logjam: Environmental Protection That Will Work (Yale University Press, 2010)(with Richard B. Stewart and Katrina M. Wyman);
Saving Our Environment from Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People (Yale University Press, 2005);
Democracy by Decree: What Happens When Courts Run Government (Yale University Press, 2003) (with Ross Sandler); and
Power Without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation (Yale University Press, 1993).
In addition to writing scholarly articles, he has frequently contributed opinion pieces to the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, the New York Times, and other publications.
He has an undergraduate degree from Yale College, a graduate degree in economics from Oxford University, which he attended as a Marshall Scholar, and a law degree from Yale Law School.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Hon. Jennifer Mascott served as Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Separation of Powers Institute at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law before her appointment to the federal bench. On July 16, 2025, President Donald J. Trump nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Delaware), and she was confirmed on October 9, 2025.
Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mascott wrote extensively in administrative and constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and the separation of powers. Her scholarship—published in leading journals including the Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Supreme Court Review—was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal courts. She also contributed Supreme Court commentary for NBC Universal.
Before joining Catholic Law, she was an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of The C. Boyden Gray Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. In 2022 she became co-author of Beermann, Cass & Diver’s Administrative Law: Cases and Materials (9th ed.). In 2023 she received the Justice Joseph Story Award for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and advancing the rule of law.
Judge Mascott also served as a Council Member of the ABA’s Administrative Law Section and as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. She frequently testified before Congress on executive power, regulatory reform, and judicial jurisdiction, and participated in multiple Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
From 2019 to 2021, she took leave from academia to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and later as Associate Deputy Attorney General, where she argued federal cases and assisted with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation. Earlier in her career, she clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and for then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit.
Judge Mascott earned her J.D. summa cum laude from the George Washington University Law School and her B.A. from the same institution.
Associate, Wiley Rein LLP
Joel S. Nolette is an associate at Wiley Rein LLP, where he advocates on behalf of corporate and individual clients in a broad spectrum of complex litigation matters. In 2017, Joel graduated cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as the Editor in Chief of Volume 15 of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. From 2019 to 2021, Joel clerked for the Honorable Raymond W. Gruender of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; and from 2021 to 2022, he clerked for the Honorable Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Before attending law school, Joel graduated summa cum laude from Gordon College in Wenham, MA, with his Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies and worked as a letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service.
Necessary & Proper Episode 42: An Address by Congressman John Rutherford
John Rutherford
On May 6th the Article I Initiative partnered with the Jacksonville Lawyers Chapter to host...
Necessary & Proper Episode 41: An Address by Congressman Andy Barr
Andy Barr
On April 15th, 2019, the Federalist Society’s Article I Initiative and the University of Kentucky Student...
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Mueller Report Fireworks – And It Isn’t Even the Fourth of July
And the drama continues! On Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr appeared before the Senate Judiciary...
The Second Annual Article I Writing Contest Winner Presentation
Nathan Kaczmarek
2019 National Student Symposium
On March 15-16, 2019, the Federalist Society's student chapter at the ASU Sandra Day O'Connor...
The Second Annual Article I Writing Contest Winner Presentation
Nathan Kaczmarek
2019 National Student Symposium
On March 15-16, 2019, the Federalist Society's student chapter at the ASU Sandra Day O'Connor...
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Recognizing the Congressional Review Act’s Full Potential
For twenty years, the Congressional Review Act lay dormant. But recent action from all three...
Necessary & Proper Episode 40: Legislative Branch Review Keynote Speech by Senator Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Graham
On February 6, 2019, the Federalist Society's Article I Initiative and the Georgetown Student Chapter...
Necessary & Proper Episode 39: Bipartisanship and High Profile Congressional Oversight
Elise Bean, Stanley M. Brand, Machalagh Carr, Jon Skladany, Justin Rood
Welcome again to Necessary & Proper. Today we bring you the great discussion we had...
Necessary & Proper Episode 38: A World Without Chevron?
Mark Chenoweth, David D. Doniger, Kristin E. Hickman, David S. Schoenbrod, Jenn L. Mascott, Joel S. Nolette
Welcome again to Necessary & Proper. Today we bring you the great discussion we had...
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Ambition Counteracting Ambition: Enduring Principle or Failed Experiment?
For the second year, myself and fellow contest Judges, Lillian BeVier and Chris DeMuth have...