Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
Morris Sheppard Arnold is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. Prior to his appointment, he served on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas after a nomination by Ronald Reagan in 1985. He assumed senior status on October 9, 2006.
Morris also served as a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review from 2008 to 2013. He was the presiding judge on that court from 2012 to 2013.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Faculty Director, Georgetown Center for the Constitution
Randy E. Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and is the Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney’s Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies and the Bradley Prize, Professor Barnett has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern and Harvard Law School.
Professor Barnett’s publications includes thirteen books, more than one hundred articles and reviews, as well as numerous op-eds. His most recent book is Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago (2026). His other books on the Constitution include: A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist (2024); The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit (2021) (with Evan Bernick); An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know (2019) (with Josh Blackman); Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (2nd ed. 2013); Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (2016); and Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (5th ed. forthcoming 2027) (with Josh Blackman). His books on contracts are The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts (2010) and Contracts: Cases and Doctrine (7th ed. 2021) (with Nate Oman). And he is the author of The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (2nd ed. 2014).
In 2004, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, he was one of the lawyers representing the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act in NFIB v. Sebelius. He’s appeared in numerous documentaries and portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable: The Movie. On X he is @RandyEBarnett
President Emeritus, Intercollegiate Studies Institute
T. Kenneth Cribb Jr. is the former president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Mr. Cribb was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan administration, serving as President Reagan’s top adviser on domestic matters. Earlier in the administration he held the position of Counselor to the Attorney General. He also served as Vice Chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board from 1989 to 1992.
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.
Former General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, Former United States Ambassador to East Timor
Grover Joseph Rees is a Louisiana native whose family has lived in the Breaux Bridge/Lafayette area since the 1700s.
His first job after college was as an assistant to Congressman Dave Treen (R-LA3), who had just been elected as the first Republican Congressman from Louisiana since Reconstruction.
Rees graduated with honors from LSU Law School, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Louisiana Law Review. While in law school he worked on Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign and was a Reagan delegate from Louisiana to the Republican National Convention. He also served as a member of the Lafayette Parish Republican Executive Committee and as a board member of Acadiana Right to Life.
In 1979, when Congressman Treen ran successfully for Governor, he asked Rees to write his authorized biography. The book, Dave Treen of Louisiana, was read and discussed widely during the campaign and after Treen’s election.
In 1985-86 Rees served as Special Counsel for Judicial Selection in President Reagan’s Justice Department, working closely with Attorney General Ed Meese to reorganize the judicial selection process to make it more philosophically oriented. These efforts resulted in the appointment of over 100 federal judges and were widely credited with transforming the federal judiciary.
From 1986 through 1991 Rees served as Chief Justice of the High Court of American Samoa, an Article I federal judicial position.
From 1991 through 1993 he was General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
In 1995 Rees went to work for the new Republican Congress as staff director and chief counsel of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. He worked with subcommittee chairman Chris Smith (R.-N.J.) to cut U.S. funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation and other organizations that perform and promote abortions overseas. Rees also worked on the drafting and enactment of the International Religious Freedom Act, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and other legislation that has helped to bring U.S. foreign policy into closer alignment not only with our national interests but also with our values.
In 2001-2002 Rees worked for Congressman Henry Hyde (R.-Ill.), who was then serving as Chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
From 2002 until 2006 Rees served as the first United States Ambassador to newly independent East Timor.
From 2006 until 2009 Ambassador Rees was the United States Special Representative for Social Issues, responsible for representing the United States on issues relating to vulnerable persons and the family within the United Nations system.
Ambassador Rees retired from government service in January 2009 and returned to Lafayette. He is married to Lan Dai Nguyen Rees and is a member of St. Genevieve’s Catholic parish in Lafayette. He was recently elected to serve as a member of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee.
Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University
In memoriam
Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the
following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.
In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.
Director, GW Regulatory Studies Center & Distinguished Professor of Practice, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, The George Washington University
Susan Dudley is the Founder and Director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, established in 2009 to raise awareness of regulations’ effects and improve regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. She is also a distinguished professor of practice in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. She is past-president of the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis, a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and on the Regulatory Transparency Project Regulatory Practice Working Group. Her book, Regulation: A Primer, with Jerry Brito, is available on Amazon.com.
From April 2007 through January 2009, Professor Dudley served as the Presidentially-appointed Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and was responsible for the review of draft executive branch regulations under Executive Order 12866, the collection of federal-government-wide information under the Paperwork Reduction Act, the development and implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information policy, privacy, and statistical policy, and international regulatory cooperation efforts.
Prior to OIRA, she directed the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and taught courses on regulation at the George Mason University School of Law. Earlier in her career, Professor Dudley served as an economist at OIRA, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She was also a consultant to government and private clients at Economists Incorporated. She holds a Master of Science degree from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and a Bachelor of Science degree (summa cum laude) in Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP
John Bellinger heads the firm's Global Law and Public Policy practice. He joined the firm in 2009, after holding several senior Presidential appointments in the US government, including as the Senate-confirmed Legal Adviser to the Department of State and Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House in the George W. Bush Administration.
Mr. Bellinger represents individuals, corporations, and sovereign governments in litigation in US courts and before international institutions. He has extensive experience in US foreign relations litigation involving the Alien Tort Statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, the Anti-Terrorism Act, and the diplomatic and official immunities of foreign governments and government officials. He advises clients on other public international law matters, including treaties and international agreements as well as international humanitarian law and human rights law. He also counsels US and foreign clients on national security legal and policy issues, including US and multilateral financial sanctions and asset controls, the extraterritorial application of US criminal and civil laws, and transactions reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
Chambers Global ranks Mr. Bellinger among the best international lawyers in the world, reporting that he has "second-to-none experience in public international law, international litigation and foreign sovereign immunity" and that his "experience at the highest levels of the Executive branch...gives him a distinct and important vantage point on legal issues." Chambers adds: "For any cross border work he's just extraordinary, he knows the area inside-out."
Mr. Bellinger was the State Department Legal Adviser–the most senior international lawyer in the US Government–from 2005 to 2009, serving under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He directed more than 170 lawyers on domestic and international law matters affecting US foreign relations. Before joining the State Department, Mr. Bellinger managed Secretary Rice's Senate confirmation process and co-directed her State Department transition team. In 2009, Mr. Bellinger received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award.
Mr. Bellinger has argued cases before the International Court of Justice (Mexico v. United States–(Medellin)) and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague. He has appeared on numerous briefs in US federal courts, including the Supreme Court, in litigation involving international law issues.
As Legal Adviser to the NSC from 2001 to 2005, Mr. Bellinger advised President Bush, Cabinet officials, National Security Advisor Rice, and NSC staff on a wide range of national security and international law issues, including counterterrorism issues after the 9-11 attacks. He was one of the principal drafters of the legislation that created the Director of National Intelligence.
Prior to his service in the Bush Administration, Mr. Bellinger served as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division at the US Department of Justice (1997-2001); Of Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1996); General Counsel of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the US Intelligence Community (1995-1996); and Special Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster (1988-1991). Mr. Bellinger is an Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has testified before Congress on numerous occasions, is quoted regularly in the media on international and national security law matters, and has lectured at numerous US and foreign universities and law schools. He is the author of many law review articles and op-eds on international law, including op-eds in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Bellinger is a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog.
Mr. Bellinger is a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Law. He served from 2005-2019 as one of four US Members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and a member of the US "National Group", which nominates judges to the International Court of Justice. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Society of International Law. He is a member of the Council of the American Law Institute; the boards of directors of the American Ditchley Foundation, the Salzburg Global Seminar, and the Stimson Center; and the advisory committee of Foreign Affairs magazine.
Mr. Bellinger is a graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and he holds an MA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and a JD from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard International Law Journal.
Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy; Director, Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, Penn Law
Claire Finkelstein’s current research addresses national security law and policy, with a focus on ethical and rule of law issues that arise in that arena. In 2012, Professor Finkelstein founded Penn Law’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), a non-partisan interdisciplinary institute that seeks to promote the rule of law in modern day conflict, warfare, and national security. In 2019, she was named Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). An expert in the law of armed conflict, military ethics, and national security law, she is a co-editor (with Jens David Ohlin) of The Oxford Series in Ethics, National Security, and the Rule of Law, and a volume editor of its four titles thus far: Targeted Killings: Law & Morality in an Asymmetrical World (Oxford University Press, 2012); Cyber War: Law and Ethics for Virtual Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 2015); Weighing Lives in War (Oxford University Press, 2017); and Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority (Oxford University Press, 2018). Professor Finkelstein has briefed Pentagon officials, U.S. Senate staff, and JAG Corps members on various issues in national security law and practice. She is a frequent radio, broadcast, and print commentator and has published op-eds in The New York Times and The Hill. Her prior scholarly work focuses on criminal law theory, moral and political philosophy, jurisprudence, and rational choice theory. She is also the editor of Hobbes on Law (Ashgate Publishing, 2005) and is currently completing a book called Contractarian Legal Theory.
James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor Saikrishna Prakash’s scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and Presidential Powers at the Law School.
Prakash’s most recent book, “The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers,” was published by Harvard Belknap Press in 2020. He also authored “Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive” (Yale University Press, 2015). The former book focuses on the modern presidency while the latter considers the presidency of the Founders.
Prakash has authored over 75 law review articles. Among them are “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” in the Harvard Law Review, “The Indefensible Duty to Defend” in the Columbia Law Review, and “50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend” and “The Executive Power Over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal.
Prakash has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. At the request of Democrats and Republicans, he has testified before Congress on matters of presidential removal, the Mueller Report and how Congress might better check the presidency. He is currently a Miller Center Senior Fellow. In 2015, he received the Roger Traynor award for faculty scholarship. In the same year, he received an honorable mention from the American Society of Legal Writers for his book “Imperial from the Beginning.” He has given named lectures at William & Mary Law School, Princeton University and Toledo Law School, and keynote addresses at several conferences.
Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He subsequently clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War & Peace at Stanford University.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Rao was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in March 2019. She graduated from Yale College in 1995 and the University of Chicago Law School in 1999. Following graduation, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and, in the 2001 October Term, as law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Between her clerkships, Judge Rao served as counsel for nominations and constitutional law to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In 2002, she joined the international arbitration group of Clifford Chance LLP in London, England. From 2005-2006, she served as Special Assistant and Associate White House Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2006 to 2017, Judge Rao was a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where she taught constitutional law, legislation and statutory interpretation, and the history and foundations of the administrative state. In 2014, she founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, a non-profit Center that promotes academic scholarship and public policy debates about administrative law. In July 2017, she was appointed to serve as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management Budget. She served in this position until her appointment to the D.C. Circuit.
Associate Dean for Research Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law Director, Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Ingrid Wuerth is a leading scholar of foreign affairs, public international law and transnational litigation. She joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2007, was appointed director of the International Legal Studies Program in 2009, and was appointed director of the Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program in 2018. She was named to the newly endowed Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law in 2015. Professor Wuerth has served on the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law and on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute and was named as a Reporter for the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. She has received numerous honors and fellowships, including the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Fulbright Senior Scholar award, the German Chancellor's Fellowship, election to the German Society of International Law, election to the Order of the Coif and many teaching awards. She clerked for Judge Jan E. DuBois in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and for Judge Jane Roth on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The class of 2018 elected Professor Wuerth to give the commencement address. She is a contributing editor at Lawfare.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also the Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War; Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare; and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
He is a co-author of volumes 1 and 2 of R. Rossum, G. Tarr, V. Munoz & J. Yoo American Constitution Law (Routledge, 2026), and a co-editor of the eight-volume series on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, We Hold These Truths, with Yuval Levin and Adam White of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, Seoul National University, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Keio University, Trento University, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of Founding Forward, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Ulysses Grant Institute, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Originalism Lectureship.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
On March 20, 2018, Judge Elizabeth L. Branch (Lisa) was sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge Branch attended and graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina (B.A., cum laude, 1990), and Emory University School of Law (J.D., with distinction, 1994).
After graduating from law school, Judge Branch served as a federal law clerk to The Honorable J. Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia from 1994 to 1996. Following her clerkship, Judge Branch joined the litigation department of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta as an associate and then a partner.
From 2004 to 2008, Judge Branch was a senior official in the Administration of President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. She served first as the Associate General Counsel for Rules and Legislation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then as the Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U. S. Office of Management and Budget.
She returned to Smith Gambrell in 2008 as a litigation partner. Judge Branch then was appointed to the Court of Appeals of Georgia by Governor Nathan Deal, taking office on September 4, 2012, where she served until March 19, 2018.
Judge Branch is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of International Law, Yale Law School
Lea Brilmayer is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. In addition to teaching Contracts to first-year students, she also teaches Conflict of Laws and International Courts and Tribunals, as well as seminars on the laws of war and on African current affairs. Her degrees include a B.A. in mathematics and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as an LL.M. from Columbia Law School. Brilmayer has taught at a number of different law schools as either a professor or visiting professor, including the University of Texas, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, and the New York University School of Law (where she led a weekly seminar on International Jurisprudence.) She is a member of the Texas and Supreme Court bars. She has given numerous endowed lectures at other American law schools and has also taught twice at the summer session of the Hague Academy of International Law.
During her first decade of teaching, her writing interests mainly concerned conflict of laws (in particular, personal jurisdiction and choice of law); federal jurisdiction; and jurisprudence. Her conflict of laws writings have included one theoretical book on the subject and a leading casebook (in the more recent editions, co-authored with Jack Goldsmith). Together with a group of Yale student contributors, she published An Introduction to Jurisdiction in the American Federal System. Her writings on the conflict of laws have resulted in her being asked on a number of occasions to testify before Congressional committees, most recently on the Full Faith and Credit implications of same sex marriage. More recently, her interests have gradually turned to international law and international relations, and she is frequently cited for her academic writings about nationalism and the international legal status of secessionist movements. Her research in international jurisprudence has also led to two books, Justifying International Acts and American Hegemony: Political Morality in a One-Superpower World.
In addition to her academic interests, Brilmayer carries on an active life in interstate and international adjudication. In addition to contributing to amicus briefs, she has served as counsel of record before the United States Supreme Court and has been an expert consultant on many lower and intermediate appellate court cases. For the last decade she has served as lead counsel in several international public (state-to-state) arbitrations dealing with island sovereignty, maritime delimitation, land boundaries, and mass claims for violations of the laws of war.
John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law
Professor Dodge is a leading expert on international law, international transactions, and international dispute resolution. He served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2012 and as Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018. He is currently a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law and an Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of the Conflict of Laws.
Professor Dodge is co-author (with Detlev Vagts, Hannah Buxbaum, and Harold Koh) of the casebook Transnational Business Problems (6th ed. Foundation Press 2019) and co-editor (with David Sloss and Michael Ramsey) of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (Cambridge University Press 2011), which won the American Society of International Law’s 2012 certificate of merit. He has more than 60 other publications in books and law reviews, including the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. The U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada have relied on his work, as have state courts and lower federal courts in the United States.
Professor Dodge teaches International Business Transactions, International Litigation and Arbitration, Conflict of Laws, and Contracts. He has won the Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award both at UC Davis and at UC Hastings, where he was previously Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law.
Professor Dodge received his B.A. in History, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1986. After teaching English in Tianjin, China, he attended Yale Law School, where he was a Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal, served as Director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Project, and earned his J.D. in 1991. Professor Dodge clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1993 to 1995, he was an attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C.
He is a member of the American Law Institute.
Andrea M. Leelike is working at the intersection of generative AI and the law as a Strategic Business Development Lead at Harvey AI. She previously worked as a Private Credit Associate at Proskauer Rose LLP in New York City and as a Finance Associate at Winston & Strawn LLP in Dallas.
Andrea attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School where she served as President of Penn’s Federalist Society chapter. She also served as an Associate Editor and Community Relations Board Member on the Journal of Law and Innovation. She is a native of eastern Long Island and earned her B.S.B.A. in Business Management and Administration at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.
Sterling and Eleanor Colton Endowed Chair in Law; Associate Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, BYU Law
Professor Moore is a scholar of foreign relations law, international law, international human rights, and international development. His publications have appeared in the Harvard, Columbia, Virginia, and Northwestern Law Reviews, among others. Professor Moore has taught international law, international human rights, U.S. foreign relations law, civil procedure, legal scholarship, a plenary powers colloquium, and an international religious freedom clinic. As a teacher, he has been recognized with the University's R. Wayne Hansen Teaching and Learning Fellowship, the BYU Law Alumni Association Teacher of the Year Award, and the Student Bar Association First Year Professor of the Year Award. He is a member of the American Law Institute.
As a human rights expert, Professor Moore serves on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Moscow Mechanism. In 2020, he was elected to a brief term on the Human Rights Committee, a body of independent experts that oversees states’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Professor Moore also serves as an Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, which seeks to secure the blessings of religious freedom and belief for everyone.
Between 2017 and 2019, Professor Moore served, variously, as the Acting Deputy Administrator and General Counsel of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government’s lead agency for international development and humanitarian assistance. From 2016 to 2017, he was the Associate Dean for Research and Academic Affairs at Brigham Young University Law School. He was a Visiting Professor at the George Washington University Law School from 2008 to 2009.
Before joining BYU, Professor Moore clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. during the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 Term. From 2003 to 2007, Professor Moore was an assistant and then associate professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. He arrived at the University of Kentucky after researching and teaching at the University of Chicago Law School as an Olin Fellow from 2001 to 2003. From 2000 to 2001, Professor Moore clerked for Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. From 1996 to 2000, he was an Honor Program trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch.
Professor Moore is a summa cum laude graduate of Brigham Young University Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Law Review and graduated first in his class. He received his BA from Brigham Young University, where he was a Benson scholar and graduated summa cum laude, with University Honors, and as co-valedictorian of his college. He and his wife Natalie are the parents of seven wonderful children.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz teaches constitutional law and federal jurisdiction, and he writes articles for the Harvard Law Review and the Stanford Law Review.
He is currently developing a new theory of constitutional interpretation and judicial review. The first installment, entitledThe Subjects of the Constitution, was published in the Stanford Law Review in May of 2010, and it is among the most downloaded articles about constitutional interpretation, judicial review, and/or federal courts in the history of SSRN. The second installment, The Objects of the Constitution, was published in May of 2011, also in the Stanford Law Review. And the comprehensive version is forthcoming as a book by Oxford University Press.
Rosenkranz has served and advised the federal government in a variety of capacities. He clerked for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (1999-2000) and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the U.S. Supreme Court (October Term 2001). He served as an Attorney-Advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice (November 2002 - July 2004). He often testifies before Congress as a constitutional expert—most recently before the House Financial Services Oversight Subcommittee, regarding the Obama Administration's use of bank settlement agreements to circumvent the Appropriations Clause. He has also filed briefs and presented oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. His most recent Supreme Court brief, in Los Angeles v. Patel, was cited by Justice Alito in dissent.
Rosenkranz is a member of the New York Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is a founding member of Heterodox Academy and a member of its Executive Committee. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Federalist Society and as the faculty advisor to the Georgetown chapter.
Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Theodore Ruger brings fresh insight to the study of some of the oldest questions of American law – namely the theoretical justifications for, and empirical contours of, the application of judicial authority. In exploring these issues, Ruger supplements traditional legal analysis with the methods of other disciplines, including history and political science. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Northwestern Law Review, and as the centerpiece of a symposium in Perspectives on Politics, a leading peer-reviewed political science journal. In addition to his interests in constitutional law and legislation, Ruger also teaches and writes in the area of health law and pharmaceutical regulation. His current research in that field draws on his broader work on judicial power and constitutionalism, and addresses the manner in which American legal institutions – including the U.S. Supreme Court – have shaped the field of health law over the past two centuries.
Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University
In memoriam
Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the
following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.
In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.
Professor of Political Science, Northeastern University
Professor of Law Emeritus, Brooklyn Law
Henry Mark Holzer received his B.A. degree from New York University where he studied Russian and political science. After graduation in 1954 he served in South Korea with United States Army intelligence, holding top secret clearance as chief order of battle analyst (Chinese Communist Forces) at Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul. Following Professor Holzer’s military service he earned his Juris Doctor degree at New York University School of Law. After his admission to the New York bar in December 1959 he practiced constitutional and appellate law.
From 1972 to 1993 he taught full time at Brooklyn Law School, and for two years was an associate dean. His courses included Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Civil Liberties, First Amendment and Appellate Advocacy. In the fall of 1993, he taught as a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law in Albuquerque.
He is author of approximately 300 articles, essays, and reviews. He has published legal and political commentary on current issues in print and electronic media, and has often been interviewed on radio and television.
Several of his out-of-print books are The Gold Clause: Government’s Money Monopoly; Sweet Land of Liberty? The Supreme Court and Individual Rights; Speaking Freely: The Case Against Speech Codes; Why Not Call it Treason? Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Today. With his wife, Erika Holzer, he is co-author of “Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam; and Fake Warriors: Identifying, Exposing, and Punishing Those Who Falsify Their Military Service.
His book The Supreme Court Opinions of Clarence Thomas, 1919-2006, was published in 2007. The second edition, covering the years 1991-2011 was published in 2012. Also published in 2012, in a print edition and eBook, was Professor Holzer’s book The American Constitution and Ayn Rand’s “Inner Contradiction.”
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
John T. Noonan, Jr. was a federal judge on senior status with the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He joined the court in 1985 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan. He assumed senior status on December 27, 1996, and served as a senior judge until his death on April 17, 2017.
Senior Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union
Arthur B. Spitzer was the Legal Director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia from April Fool’s Day, 1980 until April 2020, when he became Senior Counsel. His work has spanned the range of ACLU issues, including freedom of speech and religion, police misconduct, national security, due process, privacy, prisoners’ rights, the rights of government employees, freedom of information, discrimination based on race, sex, religion, sexual orientation and gender preference, and more.
He has represented such varied clients as Mohamedou Ould Slahi (a Guantánamo detainee held without charge for 14 years), Louis Farrakhan (when he was barred from attending then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry’s criminal trial), the Ku Klux Klan (when it was denied a permit to march in D.C.), the National Black Police Association (challenging ultra-low D.C. election campaign contribution limits), the White House Vigil for the Equal Rights Amendment (challenging restrictive regulations for demonstrating near the White House), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (when its design for an abused circus elephant was rejected from a public art display), Milo Yiannopoulos (whose advertisement for his new book was denied advertising by the D.C. transit authority), and both John and Jane Doe.
In Abbate v. Ramsey, Art represented some of the nearly 400 protestors arrested at an anti-World Bank demonstration in Pershing Park in 2002, challenging their illegal arrest and inhumane detention, and resulting in a settlement that included major changes in D.C. police practices in demonstration situations. He also had a major hand in crafting the legislation that created the D.C. police civilian review board (now known as the Office of Police Complaints) and the First Amendment Rights and Police Practices Act, a model statute governing D.C. police conduct during the peaceful exercise of free speech rights.
Other cases include Harmon v. Thornburgh (challenging random drug testing of Justice Department employees), Walsh v. Montrose Christian School (representing longtime school secretaries and a cafeteria worker at a Christian School who were fired because they were not members of the church), Schroer v. Billington (representing a trans woman who was fired by the Library of Congress when she disclosed her status), Center for National Security Studies v. U.S. Department of Justice (challenging the secret detention of immigrants after 9/11), Wimberly v. D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics (blocking a proposed ballot initiative to permit organized group prayer in D.C. public schools), and LaShawn A. v. Bowser (a still-ongoing class action filed in 1989 to reform D.C.’s dysfunctional foster care system).
In the Supreme Court, Art successfully argued Ake v. Oklahoma, which ruled that poor criminal defendants are entitled to free expert witnesses when needed for their defense, just as they’re entitled to free lawyers.
Art was born in Brooklyn (yay!), raised in Queens, and educated at Cornell University and Yale Law School. Before ascending to the ACLU, he practiced for several years at the law firm now known as WilmerHale. He has taught a course in “Demonstration Law” at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law.
His dog is Taxi; his cats are Tigris and Euphrates. He is not and has never been related to former New York governor Elliot Spitzer.
Professor of Political Science, Northeastern University
Professor of Law Emeritus, Brooklyn Law
Henry Mark Holzer received his B.A. degree from New York University where he studied Russian and political science. After graduation in 1954 he served in South Korea with United States Army intelligence, holding top secret clearance as chief order of battle analyst (Chinese Communist Forces) at Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul. Following Professor Holzer’s military service he earned his Juris Doctor degree at New York University School of Law. After his admission to the New York bar in December 1959 he practiced constitutional and appellate law.
From 1972 to 1993 he taught full time at Brooklyn Law School, and for two years was an associate dean. His courses included Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Civil Liberties, First Amendment and Appellate Advocacy. In the fall of 1993, he taught as a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law in Albuquerque.
He is author of approximately 300 articles, essays, and reviews. He has published legal and political commentary on current issues in print and electronic media, and has often been interviewed on radio and television.
Several of his out-of-print books are The Gold Clause: Government’s Money Monopoly; Sweet Land of Liberty? The Supreme Court and Individual Rights; Speaking Freely: The Case Against Speech Codes; Why Not Call it Treason? Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Today. With his wife, Erika Holzer, he is co-author of “Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam; and Fake Warriors: Identifying, Exposing, and Punishing Those Who Falsify Their Military Service.
His book The Supreme Court Opinions of Clarence Thomas, 1919-2006, was published in 2007. The second edition, covering the years 1991-2011 was published in 2012. Also published in 2012, in a print edition and eBook, was Professor Holzer’s book The American Constitution and Ayn Rand’s “Inner Contradiction.”
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
John T. Noonan, Jr. was a federal judge on senior status with the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He joined the court in 1985 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan. He assumed senior status on December 27, 1996, and served as a senior judge until his death on April 17, 2017.
Senior Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union
Arthur B. Spitzer was the Legal Director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia from April Fool’s Day, 1980 until April 2020, when he became Senior Counsel. His work has spanned the range of ACLU issues, including freedom of speech and religion, police misconduct, national security, due process, privacy, prisoners’ rights, the rights of government employees, freedom of information, discrimination based on race, sex, religion, sexual orientation and gender preference, and more.
He has represented such varied clients as Mohamedou Ould Slahi (a Guantánamo detainee held without charge for 14 years), Louis Farrakhan (when he was barred from attending then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry’s criminal trial), the Ku Klux Klan (when it was denied a permit to march in D.C.), the National Black Police Association (challenging ultra-low D.C. election campaign contribution limits), the White House Vigil for the Equal Rights Amendment (challenging restrictive regulations for demonstrating near the White House), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (when its design for an abused circus elephant was rejected from a public art display), Milo Yiannopoulos (whose advertisement for his new book was denied advertising by the D.C. transit authority), and both John and Jane Doe.
In Abbate v. Ramsey, Art represented some of the nearly 400 protestors arrested at an anti-World Bank demonstration in Pershing Park in 2002, challenging their illegal arrest and inhumane detention, and resulting in a settlement that included major changes in D.C. police practices in demonstration situations. He also had a major hand in crafting the legislation that created the D.C. police civilian review board (now known as the Office of Police Complaints) and the First Amendment Rights and Police Practices Act, a model statute governing D.C. police conduct during the peaceful exercise of free speech rights.
Other cases include Harmon v. Thornburgh (challenging random drug testing of Justice Department employees), Walsh v. Montrose Christian School (representing longtime school secretaries and a cafeteria worker at a Christian School who were fired because they were not members of the church), Schroer v. Billington (representing a trans woman who was fired by the Library of Congress when she disclosed her status), Center for National Security Studies v. U.S. Department of Justice (challenging the secret detention of immigrants after 9/11), Wimberly v. D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics (blocking a proposed ballot initiative to permit organized group prayer in D.C. public schools), and LaShawn A. v. Bowser (a still-ongoing class action filed in 1989 to reform D.C.’s dysfunctional foster care system).
In the Supreme Court, Art successfully argued Ake v. Oklahoma, which ruled that poor criminal defendants are entitled to free expert witnesses when needed for their defense, just as they’re entitled to free lawyers.
Art was born in Brooklyn (yay!), raised in Queens, and educated at Cornell University and Yale Law School. Before ascending to the ACLU, he practiced for several years at the law firm now known as WilmerHale. He has taught a course in “Demonstration Law” at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law.
His dog is Taxi; his cats are Tigris and Euphrates. He is not and has never been related to former New York governor Elliot Spitzer.
Director and Professor, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University
Paul Carrese is the founding director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. For nearly two decades he was a professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and co-founded a new honors program blending liberal arts education and leadership education. He is author of The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism, and co-editor of three other books – on George Washington, constitutionalism, and American grand strategy. His most recent book is Democracy in Moderation: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Sustainable Liberalism. He has held fellowships at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar; Harvard University; the University of Delhi (as a Fulbright fellow); and the James Madison Program, Politics Department, Princeton University. He served on the founding advisory board of the Program on Public Discourse at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and currently is co-leading a national study funded by the NEH and US Department of Education on improving American history and civics education in K-12 schools with partners from Harvard and Tufts Universities and iCivics.
Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science, The University of Notre Dame
Michael Zuckert (B.A., Cornell University; PhD, University of Chicago, 1974) is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor, and Department Chair of Political Science at University of Notre Dame. Professor Zuckert teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Political Philosophy and Theory, American Political Thought, American Constitutional Law, American Constitutional History, Constitutional Theory, and Philosophy of Law. His advising specialties are graduate programs in political science.
Professor Zuckert has published extensively on a variety of topics, including George Orwell, Plato, Shakespeare, and contemporary liberal theory. He is currently finishing a book called Completing the Constitution: The Post-Civil War Amendments and is co-authoring another book on Machiavelli and Shakespeare. He has been commissioned to write the volume on John Rawls for a series on Twentieth Century Political Philosophy. He co-authored and co-produced public radio series Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson: A Nine Part Drama for the Radio. He also was senior scholar for Liberty! (1997), a six hour public television series on the American Revolution, and served as senior advisor on the PBS series on Benjamin Franklin (2002) and Alexander Hamilton (2007). He is currently head of the new Tocqueville Center for the Study of Religion in American Public Life.
Zuckert has received grants from NEH, the Woodrow Wilson Center, Earhart Foundation and NSF, and has taught at Carleton College, Cornell University, Claremont Men’s College, Fordham University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Chicago.
Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University
In memoriam
Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the
following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.
In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.
Panel V: The Freedom of Association [Archive Collection]
Morris S. Arnold, Randy E. Barnett, T. Kenneth Cribb, Frank H. Easterbrook, Grover Joseph Rees
1986 National Student Symposium
On March 7-8, 1986, The Federalist Society hosted its annual National Student Symposium at Stanford...
Federalist Papers Book Club: The Federalist [Session 9]
John S. Baker
Federalist ##67, 68, 70, and 74 (The President)
Federalist Papers Book Club will run weekly on Tuesday evenings for 10 one-hour sessions, beginning...
How Do Regulatory Agencies Implement Laws?
Susan E. Dudley
A Regulatory Transparency Project Fourth Branch Video
After a law is passed by Congress, how is it put into effect? Most laws...
Panel III: Unilateral Presidential War Powers
John B. Bellinger, Claire Finkelstein, Saikrishna Prakash, Neomi Rao, Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk, John C. Yoo
2021 National Student Symposium
Presidents of both parties now regularly claim the authority to take offensive military interventions without...
Panel I: The Role of International Law in U.S. Constitutional Interpretation
Lisa Branch, Lea Brilmayer, William S. Dodge, Andrea M. Leelike, David Moore, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Theodore Ruger
2021 National Student Symposium
In 1900, the Supreme Court stated that “international law is part of our law” in...
Federalist Papers Book Club: The Federalist [Session 8]
John S. Baker
Federalist ##62, 63, 65, 66 (The Senate)
Slide deck I Federalist Papers Book Club will run weekly on Tuesday evenings for 10...
Panel II: The Freedom of Religion [Archive Collection]
Robert L. Cord, Mitchell L. Edwards, Henry Mark Holzer, Michael W. McConnell, John T. Noonan, Arthur B. Spitzer
1986 National Student Symposium
On March 7-8, 1986, The Federalist Society hosted its annual National Student Symposium at Stanford...
Panel II: The Freedom of Religion [Archive Collection]
Robert L. Cord, Mitchell L. Edwards, Henry Mark Holzer, Michael W. McConnell, John T. Noonan, Arthur B. Spitzer
1986 National Student Symposium
On March 7-8, 1986, The Federalist Society hosted its annual National Student Symposium at Stanford...
The Laws, the Leviathan, & the Prince | The Philosophers Behind the Founders
Paul Carrese, Michael P. Zuckert
The FedSoc Films Podcast
Who are some of the other philosophers behind the founders that didn’t make it into...
Federalist Papers Book Club: The Federalist [Session 7]
John S. Baker
Federalist ##52, 55, 56, and 57 (The House of Representatives)
Federalist Papers Book Club will run weekly on Tuesday evenings for 10 one-hour sessions, beginning...