Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
Bryan Schneider is partner in Manatt’s Chicago office and a member of the firm’s industry-leading consumer financial services practice, where he focuses on advising clients through the gamut of consumer financial services regulatory and enforcement matters, particularly as it relates to supervision, enforcement and fair lending.
Prior to joining the firm, Bryan served as Associate Director for the Division of Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In this role, he was tasked with overseeing issues related to student loan origination and servicing, mortgage origination/services, auto finance, credit card account management, debt collection, and payday and other small dollar lending. He was also a member of key interagency governing organizations including the Task Force of Supervision of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.
Bryan’s experience also includes serving as Secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, a cabinet-level agency, under Governor Bruce Rauner. During this time, Bryan led numerous initiatives to place the state at the forefront of innovation in the financial services industry, including leading the conversion to the first-ever online, paperless process for professional licensure and achieving the first credit union section accreditation by the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors. He also led the creation of the Illinois Blockchain Initiative, where he advised organizations on how they can leverage blockchain technology to create more efficient, integrated and trusted services.
Before his tenure in government, Bryan held health care-related leadership positions at the largest retail, infusion and specialty pharmacy provider in the United States. While in this role, he helped develop policies concerning health care services and reimbursement, and provided regulatory and transactional support for joint ventures with hospitals, health systems and 340B programs. Bryan also served on Corporate Compliance and Disclosure Committees responsible for ensuring compliance with applicable health care and SEC securities requirements.
Bryan has served on the Executive Committee of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) and chaired its Non-Depository Supervisory Committee. He also served on the committee that was responsible for the administration of the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry (NMLS). Additionally, Bryan served on the Executive Committee of the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors (NASCUS).
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Managing Director, Banking Supervision and Regulation Group, Patomak Global Partners
Brian Johnson is Managing Director in the Banking Supervision and Regulation Group at Patomak Global Partners.
In this role, Mr. Johnson spearheads projects related to the regulation of consumer financial products under Keith Noreika, Executive Vice President and Chairman of the Banking Supervision and Regulation Group and former acting Comptroller of the Currency.
Prior to joining Patomak, Mr. Johnson was a partner in Alston & Bird LLP’s financial services and products group. There, he advised financial institutions on consumer finance regulatory issues relating to product compliance, examination, enforcement investigations, and compliance management systems, and on strategic engagement with independent federal regulatory agencies and with Congress.
Mr. Johnson previously served as Deputy Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where he oversaw the agency’s rulemaking, supervision, and enforcement activities. He conceived and led the creation of high-profile agency initiatives, including the Office of Innovation, Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law, policy symposia series, and Start Small, Save Up emergency savings program. He also served as the CFPB representative to the Financial Stability Oversight Council Deputies’ Committee and advised on interagency matters involving the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.
Mr. Johnson held various positions on Capitol Hill, including policy director and chief financial institutions counsel on the House Committee on Financial Services, where his portfolio covered consumer protection and credit, mortgage origination, credit reporting, banking, and data security. His efforts on the committee involved drafting legislation to provide regulatory relief to bank, credit union, and nondepository financial institutions, as well as conducting oversight of the activities of the CFPB, Financial Stability Oversight Council, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of Financial Research, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve System, and National Credit Union Administration.
Mr. Johnson received his juris doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law and his bachelor’s in economics from the University of Virginia.
Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
Bryan Schneider is partner in Manatt’s Chicago office and a member of the firm’s industry-leading consumer financial services practice, where he focuses on advising clients through the gamut of consumer financial services regulatory and enforcement matters, particularly as it relates to supervision, enforcement and fair lending.
Prior to joining the firm, Bryan served as Associate Director for the Division of Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In this role, he was tasked with overseeing issues related to student loan origination and servicing, mortgage origination/services, auto finance, credit card account management, debt collection, and payday and other small dollar lending. He was also a member of key interagency governing organizations including the Task Force of Supervision of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.
Bryan’s experience also includes serving as Secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, a cabinet-level agency, under Governor Bruce Rauner. During this time, Bryan led numerous initiatives to place the state at the forefront of innovation in the financial services industry, including leading the conversion to the first-ever online, paperless process for professional licensure and achieving the first credit union section accreditation by the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors. He also led the creation of the Illinois Blockchain Initiative, where he advised organizations on how they can leverage blockchain technology to create more efficient, integrated and trusted services.
Before his tenure in government, Bryan held health care-related leadership positions at the largest retail, infusion and specialty pharmacy provider in the United States. While in this role, he helped develop policies concerning health care services and reimbursement, and provided regulatory and transactional support for joint ventures with hospitals, health systems and 340B programs. Bryan also served on Corporate Compliance and Disclosure Committees responsible for ensuring compliance with applicable health care and SEC securities requirements.
Bryan has served on the Executive Committee of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) and chaired its Non-Depository Supervisory Committee. He also served on the committee that was responsible for the administration of the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry (NMLS). Additionally, Bryan served on the Executive Committee of the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors (NASCUS).
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Managing Director, Banking Supervision and Regulation Group, Patomak Global Partners
Brian Johnson is Managing Director in the Banking Supervision and Regulation Group at Patomak Global Partners.
In this role, Mr. Johnson spearheads projects related to the regulation of consumer financial products under Keith Noreika, Executive Vice President and Chairman of the Banking Supervision and Regulation Group and former acting Comptroller of the Currency.
Prior to joining Patomak, Mr. Johnson was a partner in Alston & Bird LLP’s financial services and products group. There, he advised financial institutions on consumer finance regulatory issues relating to product compliance, examination, enforcement investigations, and compliance management systems, and on strategic engagement with independent federal regulatory agencies and with Congress.
Mr. Johnson previously served as Deputy Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where he oversaw the agency’s rulemaking, supervision, and enforcement activities. He conceived and led the creation of high-profile agency initiatives, including the Office of Innovation, Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law, policy symposia series, and Start Small, Save Up emergency savings program. He also served as the CFPB representative to the Financial Stability Oversight Council Deputies’ Committee and advised on interagency matters involving the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.
Mr. Johnson held various positions on Capitol Hill, including policy director and chief financial institutions counsel on the House Committee on Financial Services, where his portfolio covered consumer protection and credit, mortgage origination, credit reporting, banking, and data security. His efforts on the committee involved drafting legislation to provide regulatory relief to bank, credit union, and nondepository financial institutions, as well as conducting oversight of the activities of the CFPB, Financial Stability Oversight Council, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of Financial Research, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve System, and National Credit Union Administration.
Mr. Johnson received his juris doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law and his bachelor’s in economics from the University of Virginia.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Chairman & Co-Founder, Cynosure Group
Randal Quarles is Chairman and co-founder of The Cynosure Group. Before founding Cynosure, Mr. Quarles was a long-time partner of the Carlyle Group, where he began the firm’s program of investments in the financial services industry during the 2008 financial crisis.
From October 2017 through October 2021, Mr. Quarles was Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, serving as the system’s first Vice Chairman for Supervision, charged specifically with ensuring stability of the financial sector. He also served as the Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (“FSB”) from December 2018 until December 2021; a global body established after the Great Financial Crisis to coordinate international efforts to enhance financial stability. In both positions, he played a key role in crafting the US and international response to the economic and financial dislocations of COVID-19, successfully preventing widespread global disruption of the financial system. As FSB Chairman, he was a regular delegate to the finance ministers’ meetings of the G-7 and G20 Groups of nations and to the Summit meetings of the G20. As Fed Vice Chair, he was a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that sets monetary policy for the United States.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Quarles was Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, where he led the Department’s activities in financial sector and capital markets policy, including coordination of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
Before serving as Under Secretary, Mr. Quarles was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, where he had a key role in response to several international crises. Mr. Quarles was also the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, a member of the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, and board representative for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. In earlier public service, he was an integral member of the Treasury team in the George H. W. Bush Administration that developed the governmental response to the savings and loan crisis.
Between his tours of duty in public service, Mr. Quarles was a partner with the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, working at various times in both the New York and London offices, where he was co-head of the firm’s financial institutions practice and advised on transactions that included a number of the largest financial sector mergers ever completed.
Mr. Quarles received an A.B. summa cum laude in philosophy and economics from Columbia in 1981 and a J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1984.
Duke University Law School, Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business
Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business at Duke University and Founding Director of Duke’s interdisciplinary Global Capital Markets Center (now renamed the Global Financial Markets Center). His areas of research and scholarship include insolvency and bankruptcy law, international finance, capital markets, systemic risk, corporate governance, and commercial law. (Links to his scholarship are at http://law.duke.edu/fac/schwarcz/.) He holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering (summa cum laude) and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. Prior to joining the Duke faculty, he was a partner at two of the world’s leading law firms and Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School. He also helped to pioneer the field of asset securitization, and his book, Structured Finance, A Guide to the Principles of Asset Securitization (3d edition), is one of the most widely used texts in the field.
Professor Schwarcz has also been the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva Faculty of Law, Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, Senior Fellow at The University of Melbourne Law School, Visiting Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen (LMU) Center for Advanced Studies, Guest Professor at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws, Distinguished Honorary Professor, University of Durham Law School, the MacCormick Fellow at The University of Edinburgh School of Law, the Liberty Fellow at the University of Leeds School of Law (scheduled for May-June 2020), and an adviser to the United Nations. He has given numerous endowed or distinguished public lectures, including at The University of Hong Kong, the University of Oxford (the Leverhulme Lectures 2010, available at http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/published/leverhulme2010.php), Georgetown University Law Center, National University of Singapore, University of Florence, Leiden University, Radboud University Nijmegen, Trinity College Dublin School of Law, and The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. He has served as an expert at meetings of the World Economic Forum. He also has given numerous keynote speeches, including at annual conferences of the European Central Bank, the Corporate Law Teachers Association of Australia, New Zealand, and Asia-Pacific, the National Business Law Scholars Conference (at The University of Chicago Law School), Moody’s Corporation, and the Asian Securitisation Forum.
Additionally, Professor Schwarcz has testified before the U.S. Congress on topics including systemic risk, securitization, credit rating agencies, and financial regulation and has advised several U.S. and foreign governmental agencies on the financial crisis and shadow banking. His writings include Systemic Risk, 97 Georgetown Law Journal 193, the second most cited law review article of 2008; he also has been recognized as the world’s second most cited scholar, 2010-2014 and again 2013-2017, in commercial, contract, and bankruptcy law. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a Founding Member of the International Insolvency Institute, a Fellow of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, Business Law Advisor to the American Bar Association Section on Business Law, a member of P.R.I.M.E. Finance’s Panel of Recognized International Market Experts in Finance, and Senior Fellow of The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Chairman & Co-Founder, Cynosure Group
Randal Quarles is Chairman and co-founder of The Cynosure Group. Before founding Cynosure, Mr. Quarles was a long-time partner of the Carlyle Group, where he began the firm’s program of investments in the financial services industry during the 2008 financial crisis.
From October 2017 through October 2021, Mr. Quarles was Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, serving as the system’s first Vice Chairman for Supervision, charged specifically with ensuring stability of the financial sector. He also served as the Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (“FSB”) from December 2018 until December 2021; a global body established after the Great Financial Crisis to coordinate international efforts to enhance financial stability. In both positions, he played a key role in crafting the US and international response to the economic and financial dislocations of COVID-19, successfully preventing widespread global disruption of the financial system. As FSB Chairman, he was a regular delegate to the finance ministers’ meetings of the G-7 and G20 Groups of nations and to the Summit meetings of the G20. As Fed Vice Chair, he was a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that sets monetary policy for the United States.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Quarles was Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, where he led the Department’s activities in financial sector and capital markets policy, including coordination of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
Before serving as Under Secretary, Mr. Quarles was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, where he had a key role in response to several international crises. Mr. Quarles was also the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, a member of the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, and board representative for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. In earlier public service, he was an integral member of the Treasury team in the George H. W. Bush Administration that developed the governmental response to the savings and loan crisis.
Between his tours of duty in public service, Mr. Quarles was a partner with the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, working at various times in both the New York and London offices, where he was co-head of the firm’s financial institutions practice and advised on transactions that included a number of the largest financial sector mergers ever completed.
Mr. Quarles received an A.B. summa cum laude in philosophy and economics from Columbia in 1981 and a J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1984.
Duke University Law School, Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business
Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business at Duke University and Founding Director of Duke’s interdisciplinary Global Capital Markets Center (now renamed the Global Financial Markets Center). His areas of research and scholarship include insolvency and bankruptcy law, international finance, capital markets, systemic risk, corporate governance, and commercial law. (Links to his scholarship are at http://law.duke.edu/fac/schwarcz/.) He holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering (summa cum laude) and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. Prior to joining the Duke faculty, he was a partner at two of the world’s leading law firms and Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School. He also helped to pioneer the field of asset securitization, and his book, Structured Finance, A Guide to the Principles of Asset Securitization (3d edition), is one of the most widely used texts in the field.
Professor Schwarcz has also been the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva Faculty of Law, Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, Senior Fellow at The University of Melbourne Law School, Visiting Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen (LMU) Center for Advanced Studies, Guest Professor at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws, Distinguished Honorary Professor, University of Durham Law School, the MacCormick Fellow at The University of Edinburgh School of Law, the Liberty Fellow at the University of Leeds School of Law (scheduled for May-June 2020), and an adviser to the United Nations. He has given numerous endowed or distinguished public lectures, including at The University of Hong Kong, the University of Oxford (the Leverhulme Lectures 2010, available at http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/published/leverhulme2010.php), Georgetown University Law Center, National University of Singapore, University of Florence, Leiden University, Radboud University Nijmegen, Trinity College Dublin School of Law, and The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. He has served as an expert at meetings of the World Economic Forum. He also has given numerous keynote speeches, including at annual conferences of the European Central Bank, the Corporate Law Teachers Association of Australia, New Zealand, and Asia-Pacific, the National Business Law Scholars Conference (at The University of Chicago Law School), Moody’s Corporation, and the Asian Securitisation Forum.
Additionally, Professor Schwarcz has testified before the U.S. Congress on topics including systemic risk, securitization, credit rating agencies, and financial regulation and has advised several U.S. and foreign governmental agencies on the financial crisis and shadow banking. His writings include Systemic Risk, 97 Georgetown Law Journal 193, the second most cited law review article of 2008; he also has been recognized as the world’s second most cited scholar, 2010-2014 and again 2013-2017, in commercial, contract, and bankruptcy law. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a Founding Member of the International Insolvency Institute, a Fellow of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, Business Law Advisor to the American Bar Association Section on Business Law, a member of P.R.I.M.E. Finance’s Panel of Recognized International Market Experts in Finance, and Senior Fellow of The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Associate Counsel to the President, White House Counsel's Office
Samuel Adkisson serves as Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Mr. Adkisson previously practiced law at Cooper & Kirk PLLC, where he focused on high-stakes civil-rights, political, and constitutional disputes. His matters included class actions challenging the FAA’s race-based air traffic controller hiring practices and the University of Oklahoma’s financial aid policies; appellate work on behalf of X Corp.; and the successful defense of Florida’s actions during a 2024 abortion referendum. Before joining Cooper & Kirk, he worked on the landmark case challenging Harvard’s affirmative action policies and helped launch a successful challenge to the State Bar of Texas’s membership policies.
Mr. Adkisson clerked for Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr., Judge Amul R. Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Judge Gregory G. Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. During Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, he worked for Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Charles E. Grassley.
Mr. Adkisson received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was President of the Yale Law School Federalist Society and an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University. Prior to joining the Trump Administration in January 2025, he lived on Signal Mountain, TN, with his wife and three children.
Partner, BakerHostetler, Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
Andrew Grossman leads BakerHostetler’s Appellate and Major Motion team. He has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly all the federal courts of appeals, as well as some state appellate courts, litigating high-profile and complex commercial, administrative and constitutional issues.
Andrew works with practice groups across BakerHostetler to identify and tackle complex issues, advise on administrative law and strategy, tee up issues for appeal and tackle appeals. He has developed and implemented litigation and administrative strategies for clients in several fields and industries.
In addition to his practice, Andrew advises members of Congress on matters of constitutional and administrative law, having testified more than a dozen times before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. He has been a frequent legal commentator on radio and television, having appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and its affiliates, CBN and elsewhere. His legal commentary has also appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and many others.
Andrew is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Buckeye Institute, an Adjunct Fellow the Manhattan Institute and a member of the leadership of the Federalist Society. He previously served as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Vice President for Legal Strategy, Stand Together
Casey Mattox is Vice President for Legal Strategy at Stand Together and Senior Advisor at
Americans for Prosperity. In these roles he advocates for and creates strategies and
partnerships to ensure a constitutionally limited government that protects the civil liberties of all
Americans. Prior to joining Stand Together and AFP Casey’s legal career focused on defending
the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, healthcare workers and religious organizations.
Casey has a J.D. from Boston College School of Law and an undergraduate degree from the
University of Virginia. You can find him on Twitter at @CaseyMattox_ and on LinkedIn at
@Casey-Mattox-ST.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Associate Counsel to the President, White House Counsel's Office
Samuel Adkisson serves as Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Mr. Adkisson previously practiced law at Cooper & Kirk PLLC, where he focused on high-stakes civil-rights, political, and constitutional disputes. His matters included class actions challenging the FAA’s race-based air traffic controller hiring practices and the University of Oklahoma’s financial aid policies; appellate work on behalf of X Corp.; and the successful defense of Florida’s actions during a 2024 abortion referendum. Before joining Cooper & Kirk, he worked on the landmark case challenging Harvard’s affirmative action policies and helped launch a successful challenge to the State Bar of Texas’s membership policies.
Mr. Adkisson clerked for Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr., Judge Amul R. Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Judge Gregory G. Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. During Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, he worked for Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Charles E. Grassley.
Mr. Adkisson received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was President of the Yale Law School Federalist Society and an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University. Prior to joining the Trump Administration in January 2025, he lived on Signal Mountain, TN, with his wife and three children.
Partner, BakerHostetler, Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
Andrew Grossman leads BakerHostetler’s Appellate and Major Motion team. He has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly all the federal courts of appeals, as well as some state appellate courts, litigating high-profile and complex commercial, administrative and constitutional issues.
Andrew works with practice groups across BakerHostetler to identify and tackle complex issues, advise on administrative law and strategy, tee up issues for appeal and tackle appeals. He has developed and implemented litigation and administrative strategies for clients in several fields and industries.
In addition to his practice, Andrew advises members of Congress on matters of constitutional and administrative law, having testified more than a dozen times before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. He has been a frequent legal commentator on radio and television, having appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and its affiliates, CBN and elsewhere. His legal commentary has also appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and many others.
Andrew is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Buckeye Institute, an Adjunct Fellow the Manhattan Institute and a member of the leadership of the Federalist Society. He previously served as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Vice President for Legal Strategy, Stand Together
Casey Mattox is Vice President for Legal Strategy at Stand Together and Senior Advisor at
Americans for Prosperity. In these roles he advocates for and creates strategies and
partnerships to ensure a constitutionally limited government that protects the civil liberties of all
Americans. Prior to joining Stand Together and AFP Casey’s legal career focused on defending
the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, healthcare workers and religious organizations.
Casey has a J.D. from Boston College School of Law and an undergraduate degree from the
University of Virginia. You can find him on Twitter at @CaseyMattox_ and on LinkedIn at
@Casey-Mattox-ST.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Head of U.S. Policy and Strategic Advocacy, Electric Coin Company
Paul Brigner is the Head of U.S. Policy and Strategic Advocacy at the Electric Coin Company. He has served in senior level technology policy and government relations roles for the last eighteen years with another ten years of hands-on technical experience at the beginning his career after serving in the United States Army.
He holds an MBA from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. He received a Bachelors degree from Stephen F. Austin State University where he was named the Outstanding Computer Science Graduate.
General Counsel, Espresso Systems
Michael Mosier is General Counsel at Espresso Systems, which is developing configurable privacy for digital assets with decentralized private computation. He served as Acting Director, Deputy Director, and the first Digital Innovation Officer of the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). He also was Counselor (for Cybersecurity & Emerging Technology) to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
Previously, Michael was Chief Technical Counsel at Chainalysis; an Associate Director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control; a Deputy Chief at the Department of Justice’s Money Laundering Section; and White House National Security Council Director for Transnational Organized Crime. He began his public service with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Kevin Werbach is a professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and formerly Counsel for New Technology Policy at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, Werbach has spent the past two decades exploring major trends at the intersection of the Internet, digital media, and communications. He served on the Obama Administration's Presidential Transition Team and founded the Supernova Group, a technology consulting firm, which organized the CEO-level Supernova technology conference. He also created one of the most successful massive open online courses, with nearly half a million enrollments. He was named Wharton's first-ever Iron Prof in 2010.
Werbach has published four books, including The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust, For the Win: The Power of Gamification and Game Thinking in Business, Education, Government, and Social Impact, and After the Digital Tornado: Networks, Algorithms, Humanity.
Earlier in his career, he edited the influential technology newsletter Release 1.0, and helped develop the U.S. Government's Internet and e-commerce policies in the Clinton Administration
Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law J.W. Verret joined the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University faculty in 2008. In 2013, he took leave for two years to serve as the Chief Economist and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. He received his JD and MA in Public Policy from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, respectively, in 2006. While in law school, Professor Verret served an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance under the guidance of Prof. Lucian Bebchuk.
Professor Verret then served as a law clerk for Vice-Chancellor John W. Noble of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Prior to joining the faculty at Scalia Law, Professor Verret was an associate in the SEC Enforcement Defense Practice Group at Skadden, Arps in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on corporate law topics, including Delaware's Guidance, co-written with Chief Justice Myron T. Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court. His academic work has been featured in the Yale Journal on Regulation, The Business Lawyer, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and the Virginia Law and Business Review. Professor Verret was selected by the Northwestern Law School Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth for a 2009-2010 Searle-Kaufmann Research Fellowship.
Professor Verret is also a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Working Group on Financial Markets, where he regularly briefs Congressional staff, members of Congress, SEC Commissioners and other financial regulatory agencies on financial regulation topics. He also directs the Corporate Federalism Initiative, where he obtains research grants for a network of students and faculty scholars who study the division between states and the federal government as sources of corporate law. Professor Verret has been invited to testify before various House and Senate Committees four times during the financial crisis of 2009 regarding all of the central provisions of the Obama Administration's 2009 financial regulatory reform proposals. For a full list of Professor Verret's C-Span appearances, including testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jwverret.
Professor Verret has been an invited panelist for various television appearances, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Professor Verret has been quoted in various media on financial regulation and corporate law topics, including the New York Times, CNN Money, the CNN Political Ticker, CNBC, ABC News, Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, The American Banker, The American Lawyer, The Huffington Post, CBS.com, and AP News. Professor Verret's op-eds have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Orange County Register, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Verret is also a regular guest contributor to three of the most noted corporate law and financial regulation law blogs: the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation Forum, Deallawyers.com, and The Conglomerate.
Executive Director, Coin Center
Jerry Brito is executive director of Coin Center, a non-profit research and advocacy center focused on the public policy issues facing cryptocurrency technologies such as Bitcoin.
Now, steel yourself for some serious signaling and credentialism:
Jerry lives in Annandale, Virginia, with his wife Kathleen, daughter Penny Lane, and their dog Jerkface.
Assistant Professor of Law, Willamette University
Professor Grey’s research focuses on the legal design and regulation of money and finance, including digital fiat currency, as well as broader issues of law and political economy. He teaches Contracts, Business Organizations, and Securities Regulation. He previously co-taught seminars on Fintech and Monies with Professor Robert Hockett at Cornell Law School, where he was a fellow with the Clarke Business Law Institute’s Program on the Law and Regulation of Financial Institutions and Markets, and facilitated a reading group on Law, Money, and Finance at Columbia Law School with Professor Jeffrey N. Gordon.
Lecturing Fellow, Duke University
Lee Reiners is a lecturing fellow at the Duke Financial Economics Center at Duke University. At Duke, Reiners has taught classes on FinTech Law and Policy, Cryptocurrency Law and Policy, Financial Regulatory Policy, Climate Change and Financial Markets, and Cybersecurity Law and Policy. Reiners is widely recognized for his unbiased commentary and analysis on cryptocurrency regulation, and he has testified three times on the subject before the U.S. Congress.
Topics
The Fed’s Operating Losses Become Taxpayer Losses
The year 2023 is shaping up to be a financially challenging one for the Federal...
Deep Dive Episode 250 - Examining the CFPB’s Targeting of Discrimination in Consumer Finance Through UDAAP
Bryan Schneider, Todd J. Zywicki, Brian C. Johnson
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
Under the Biden Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra has dramatically increased the...
Examining the CFPB’s Targeting of Discrimination in Consumer Finance Through UDAAP
Bryan Schneider, Todd J. Zywicki, Brian C. Johnson
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
Under the Biden Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra has dramatically increased the...
Topics
Is Crypto Insider Trading Really “Insider Trading”?: Prosecuting Fraud in the Crypto Space
Cryptocurrency conjures images of both the Wild West and the Wolf of Wall Street. Crypto...
Central Bank Digital Currencies: A New Tool for Government Control?
Joan Larsen, Randal K. Quarles, Steven L. Schwarcz, Todd J. Zywicki
2022 National Lawyers Convention
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) are the subject of global debate. While proponents see CBDC...
Central Bank Digital Currencies: A New Tool for Government Control?
Joan Larsen, Randal K. Quarles, Steven L. Schwarcz, Todd J. Zywicki
2022 National Lawyers Convention
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) are the subject of global debate. While proponents see CBDC...
A Seat at the Sitting - December 2022
Samuel D. Adkisson, Andrew Grossman, Casey Mattox, Ilya Somin
The December Docket in 90 minutes or less.
Each month, a panel of constitutional experts convenes to discuss the Court’s upcoming docket sitting...
A Seat at the Sitting - December 2022
Samuel D. Adkisson, Andrew Grossman, Casey Mattox, Ilya Somin
The December Docket in 90 minutes or less.
Each month, a panel of constitutional experts convenes to discuss the Court’s upcoming docket sitting...
Deep Dive Episode 243 - Is the Office of Foreign Assets Control's Sanctioning of Tornado Cash a Threat to the Future of Financial Privacy?
Paul Brigner, Michael Mosier, Kevin Werbach, J.W. Verret
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
Tornado Cash is an open source, decentralized cryptocurrency tumbler that was introduced in 2019. The...
Bitcoin Cowboys: Will Wyoming Become the Next Crypto Capital?
Jerry Brito, Rohan Grey, David Kinitsky, Caitlin Long, Stephen Mihm, Lee A. Reiners
A Regulatory Transparency Project Fourth Branch Video
“Bitcoin Cowboys: Will Wyoming Become the Next Crypto Capital” will premiere on the Federalist Society’s YouTube...