Member, Caplin & Drysdale
Services
Mr. Birkenstock focuses on advising corporations, non-profit organizations, candidates, officeholders, and other clients in structuring new political efforts and administering their political, lobbying, and issue-advocacy projects. He also helps clients respond to controversies involving issues of political law such as alleged campaign finance improprieties, conflicts of interest, and real or perceived violations of other legal and ethical obligations.Highlights
While at the DNC, Mr. Birkenstock worked closely with the party's fundraisers and campaign staff to help ensure their compliance with the myriad of state and federal laws governing their activities. He took primary responsibility for responding to several investigations into Democratic Party fundraising following the 1996 presidential election. He also assisted in the litigation and public relations efforts surrounding the 2000 Florida recount and helped implement the DNC's transition to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regime.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (ret.)
The Honorable Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8, 2005. She retired from the court in 2017. From 1996 to 2005, she was an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Prior to this, she served as associate justice of the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento and as legal affairs secretary to California Governor Pete Wilson. Earlier in her career, she served as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency after having worked in the criminal appellate and civil trial divisions of the California Attorney General’s Office. She currently chairs the Advisory Board of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and serves on the Board of the Coolidge Foundation and the Association of College Trustees and Alumni. She is the Darling Foundation Jurist-in-Residence and visiting professor of Law at the University of California Boalt School of Law. Brown has been honored with the Jurisprudence Award of Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, the Baroness Thatcher Award of the Pacific Research Institute, the Edwin Meese III, Originalism and Religious Liberty Award from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the James Wilson Institute Leadership and the Law Award, and the 2019 Bradley Award. She earned her law degree from the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, and a Master of Laws in judicial process from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law & Religion and, Washington University School of Law
Professor John Inazu's scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. His first book, Liberty's Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012), seeks to recover the role of assembly in American political and constitutional thought. His second book isConfident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Professor Inazu is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is the special editor of a volume on law and theology published in Law and Contemporary Problems, and his articles have appeared in a number of law reviews and specialty journals. He has written broadly for mainstream audiences in publications including USA Today, CNN, the Hedgehog Review, and the Washington Post.
Professor Inazu was the law school's 2014 David M. Becker Professor of the Year. Prior to joining the law faculty, he was a visiting assistant professor at Duke University School of Law and a Royster Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served for four years as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon.
Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Virginia School of Law; Alice McKean Young Regents Chair in Law Emeritus, University of Texas
Douglas Laycock is perhaps the nation’s leading authority on the law of religious liberty and also on the law of remedies. He has taught and written about these topics for more than four decades at the University of Chicago, the University of Texas, the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. He retired from teaching at UVA Law School in May 2023.
Laycock has testified frequently before Congress and has argued many cases in the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has served as lead counsel in six cases and has also filed influential amicus briefs. He is the author (co-author in the most recent edition) of the leading casebook Modern American Remedies, the award-winning monograph The Death of the Irreparable Injury Rule and many articles in leading law reviews. He co-edited a collection of essays, Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty.
His many writings on religious liberty have been republished in a five-volume collection:
Laycock resigned from the council and as first vice president of the American Law Institute to become co-reporter for the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Remedies. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
B.A., Yale; J.D., University of Chicago. Lee Liberman Otis is the Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President at the Federalist Society. She also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference (ACUS), and as the co-chair of the National Constitution Center's Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board. She previously was a special assistant and an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Department of Energy, an associate in the appellate section of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, an associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and a law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She also served as an assistant professor of law at George Mason, where she taught legislation, federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, civil procedure, and appellate advocacy. Ms. Otis has been an important member of the Federalist Society team since the organization’s beginnings. Together with David McIntosh, she led the effort to start what became the Chicago chapter of the Society. She also helped organize the Society’s first conference at Yale, its second conference at Chicago, and its first Lawyers Division chapter in Washington DC, as well as the effort to incorporate the Society, recruit its permanent staff, and obtain its early funding. She was a Founding Director of the Federalist Society.
University Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University
George C. Edwards III is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University. He also holds the Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies and has served as the Olin Professor of American Government at Oxford and the John Adams Fellow at the University of London, and has held senior visiting appointments at Sciences Po-Paris, Peking University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He is an Associate Member of Nuffield College at the University of Oxford and was the founder and from 1991-2001 the director of The Center for Presidential Studies. In 2012-13, he will be Winant Professor of American Government at Oxford.
A leading scholar of the presidency, he has authored dozens of articles and has written or edited 25 books on American politics and public policy making. He is also editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly and general editor of the Oxford Handbook of American Politics series. Among his recent books, On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit examines the effectiveness of presidential leadership of public opinion; Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America evaluates the consequences of the method of electing the president; Governing by Campaigning analyzes the politics of the Bush presidency; and The Strategic President offers a new formulation for understanding presidential leadership. His most recent book,Overreach, analyzes presidential leadership during the Obama presidency.
Professor Edwards has served as president of the Presidency Research Section of the American Political Science Association, which has named its annual dissertation prize in his honor and awarded him its Career Service Award. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, he has received the Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service from the U.S. Army and the Pi Sigma Alpha Prize from the Southern Political Science Association. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has spoken to more than 200 universities and other groups in the U.S. and abroad, keynoted numerous national and international conferences, done hundreds of interviews with the national and international press, and can be heard on National Public Radio. Grants from the National Science Foundation, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and the Ford Foundation have funded his work. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Roper Center and the Board of Trustees of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and on many editorial boards.
Dr. Edwards also applies his scholarship to practical issues of governing, including advising Brazil on its constitution and the operation of its presidency, Russia on building a democratic national party system, Mexico on elections, and Chinese scholars on democracy. He also authored studies for the 1988 and 2000 U.S. presidential transitions.
Founder and Executive Director, Save Our States
Trent England defends the Electoral College as the founder and director of Save Our States. He also serves as the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.
Trent previously served as Executive Vice President of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and earlier of the Olympia, Washington-based Freedom Foundation. He was also a morning-drive radio host, a state legislative candidate, a legal policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, and a research analyst at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Trent is the author of "Why We Must Defend the Electoral College," co-author of "The Case Against Ranked-Choice Voting," and a contributor to "The Heritage Guide to the Constitution" and "One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty." His writing has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Times, and other newspapers. He is a producer of the feature-length documentary "Safeguard: An Electoral College Story."
Trent earned a law degree from The George Mason University School of Law and a bachelor of arts in government from Claremont McKenna College. He lives in Oklahoma City with his wife and their three children.
Chair, National Popular Vote
John R. Koza received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan in 1972. He published a board game involving Electoral College strategy in 1966. From 1973 through 1987, he was co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Scientific Games Inc. where he co-invented the rub-off instant lottery ticket used by state lotteries. In the 1980s, he and attorney Barry Fadem were active in promoting adoption of lotteries by various states through the citizen-initiative process and state legislative action. Between 1988 and 2003, he taught a course on genetic algorithms and genetic programming at Stanford University, where he was a consulting professor. He is lead author of the book Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote and originator of the National Popular Vote legislation. He is Chair of National Popular Vote and a member of the Board of Directors. Koza has visited 29 states on behalf of National Popular Vote.
Author, The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College
Tara Ross is nationally recognized for her expertise on the Electoral College. She is the author of Why We Need the Electoral College (2019), The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule (2017), We Elect A President: The Story of our Electoral College (2016), and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College (2d ed. 2012). She is also the author of She Fought Too: Stories of Revolutionary War Heroines (2019), and a co-author of Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State (2008) (with Joseph C. Smith, Jr.). Her Prager University video, Do You Understand the Electoral College?, is Prager’s most-viewed video ever, with more than 60 million views.
Tara often appears as a guest on a variety of talk shows nationwide, and she regularly addresses civic, university, and legal audiences. She’s contributed to several law reviews and newspapers, including the National Law Journal, USA Today, the Washington Examiner, The Hill, The Washington Times, and FoxNews.com. She’s appeared before institutions such as the Cooper Union, Brown University, the Dole Institute of Politics, and Mount Vernon. She’s appeared on Fox News, CSPAN, NPR, and a variety of other national and local shows.
Tara is a retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She resides in Dallas with her husband and children.
Judge, Iowa Court of Appeals
Judge Samuel P. Langholz was appointed to the Iowa Court of Appeals by Governor Kim Reynolds in 2023. Before his appointment, he practiced law in the Iowa Executive Branch for nearly thirteen years, serving as Chief Deputy Attorney General, Assistant Solicitor General, Senior Legal Counsel to the Governor, Chief Administrative Law Judge, and State Public Defender. He also previously worked in private practice at a law firm in Des Moines. He began his legal career as a judicial law clerk to Judge Steven M. Colloton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Judge Langholz earned his law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law with highest distinction and Order of the Coif in 2008 and his undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University magna cum laude in 2002. He was raised and graduated from high school in Clear Lake. Judge Langholz is married and has two sons.
Justice, Iowa Supreme Court
Justice Mansfield, Des Moines, was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2011.
Justice Mansfield was born and raised in Massachusetts. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1978, and his law degree from Yale in 1982. After law school he clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
Justice Mansfield worked as an attorney in private practice until his appointment to the Iowa Court of Appeals in 2009. Justice Mansfield also has been an adjunct professor of law at Drake University since 1997.
Justice Mansfield is a member of the Iowa State Bar Association, having served as Chair of the Trade Regulation Section from 2004-2006. He is a member of the Polk County Bar Association and the Iowa Judges Association. Justice Mansfield also serves on the board of directors of Goodwill Industries of Central Iowa, and is a past Chairperson of this organization.
Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa
Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
Judge, Iowa Court of Appeals
Judge Samuel P. Langholz was appointed to the Iowa Court of Appeals by Governor Kim Reynolds in 2023. Before his appointment, he practiced law in the Iowa Executive Branch for nearly thirteen years, serving as Chief Deputy Attorney General, Assistant Solicitor General, Senior Legal Counsel to the Governor, Chief Administrative Law Judge, and State Public Defender. He also previously worked in private practice at a law firm in Des Moines. He began his legal career as a judicial law clerk to Judge Steven M. Colloton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Judge Langholz earned his law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law with highest distinction and Order of the Coif in 2008 and his undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University magna cum laude in 2002. He was raised and graduated from high school in Clear Lake. Judge Langholz is married and has two sons.
Justice, Iowa Supreme Court
Justice Mansfield, Des Moines, was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2011.
Justice Mansfield was born and raised in Massachusetts. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1978, and his law degree from Yale in 1982. After law school he clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
Justice Mansfield worked as an attorney in private practice until his appointment to the Iowa Court of Appeals in 2009. Justice Mansfield also has been an adjunct professor of law at Drake University since 1997.
Justice Mansfield is a member of the Iowa State Bar Association, having served as Chair of the Trade Regulation Section from 2004-2006. He is a member of the Polk County Bar Association and the Iowa Judges Association. Justice Mansfield also serves on the board of directors of Goodwill Industries of Central Iowa, and is a past Chairperson of this organization.
Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa
Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law; Director, Center for Labor, New York University School of Law
Samuel Estreicher is a nationally preeminent scholar in US and international-comparative labor and employment law and arbitration law. He has authored more than a dozen books, including Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America (with Joy Radice, Cambridge Univ. 2016); leading casebooks on legislation and regulatory state, labor law and employment discrimination and employment law; and published more than 200 articles in professional and academic journals. He served as Chief Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Employment Law (2015). After clerking for Judge Harold Leventhal of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, practicing in a labor law firm, and clerking for Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. of the US Supreme Court, Prof. Estreicher joined the NYU School of Law faculty in 1978. In addition to serving as counsel to major law firms, he is the former secretary of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the American Bar Association, a former chair of the Committee on Labor and Employment Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.15). He maintains an active appellate and ADR practice. The Labor and Employment Research Association awarded him its 2010 Susan C. Eaton Award for Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner. In recent years, Estreicher also has published work in public international law and authored several briefs in the Supreme Court and US courts of appeals on employment and US foreign relations law issues. Prof. Estreicher received his BA from Columbia College, his MS in industrial relations from Cornell University, and his JD from Columbia Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He is a member of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and was appointed in 2016 by the UN Secretary General as a member of the UN’s Internal Justice Commission.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
James Lindgren is a law professor at Northwestern University, with a BA from Yale and a JD and a PhD in (quantitative) sociology from the University of Chicago. He is a cofounder of the Section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools and a former chair of its Section on Social Science and the Law. He has published in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, California, Northwestern, Georgetown, and UCLA Law Reviews, among others. His work includes "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal " (Yale Law Journal, 2002) and "Term Limits for the Supreme Court: Life Tenure Reconsidered " (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2006). In Evans v. US (1992), the US Supreme Court adopted Lindgren's view of the overlap of bribery and federal extortion. He blogs at the Washington Post.
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Eugene N. Balk Professor of Law and Values, University of Toledo College of Law
Professor Joseph E. Slater, a faculty member since 1999, is a graduate of Georgetown University (PhD), the University of Michigan Law School (JD), and Oberlin College (BA).
Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Slater practiced labor and employment law in Washington, D.C. for twelve years. He also was an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and an Instructor and Teaching Assistant at Georgetown University's History Department.
Professor Slater has published in the field of labor law and history. Recent publications include: Down By Law: Public Sector Unions and the State in America, 1900-60 (forthcoming, Cornell University Press); "The Court DoesNotKnow 'What a Labor Union Is': How Bias, State Structures and Judicial (Mis)Constructions Deformed Public Sector Labor Law," 79 Oregon Law Review 981 (2000); "Petting the Infamous Yellow Dog: The Seattle High School Teachers Union and the State, 1928-1931," 23 Seattle University Law Review 485 ( 2000); "Public Workers: Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919,"38Labor History7 (1997); and "The Rise of Master-Servant and the Fall of Master Narrative: A Review ofLabor Law In America," 15 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 141 (1994).
Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law; Director, Center for Labor, New York University School of Law
Samuel Estreicher is a nationally preeminent scholar in US and international-comparative labor and employment law and arbitration law. He has authored more than a dozen books, including Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America (with Joy Radice, Cambridge Univ. 2016); leading casebooks on legislation and regulatory state, labor law and employment discrimination and employment law; and published more than 200 articles in professional and academic journals. He served as Chief Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Employment Law (2015). After clerking for Judge Harold Leventhal of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, practicing in a labor law firm, and clerking for Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. of the US Supreme Court, Prof. Estreicher joined the NYU School of Law faculty in 1978. In addition to serving as counsel to major law firms, he is the former secretary of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the American Bar Association, a former chair of the Committee on Labor and Employment Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.15). He maintains an active appellate and ADR practice. The Labor and Employment Research Association awarded him its 2010 Susan C. Eaton Award for Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner. In recent years, Estreicher also has published work in public international law and authored several briefs in the Supreme Court and US courts of appeals on employment and US foreign relations law issues. Prof. Estreicher received his BA from Columbia College, his MS in industrial relations from Cornell University, and his JD from Columbia Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He is a member of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and was appointed in 2016 by the UN Secretary General as a member of the UN’s Internal Justice Commission.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
James Lindgren is a law professor at Northwestern University, with a BA from Yale and a JD and a PhD in (quantitative) sociology from the University of Chicago. He is a cofounder of the Section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools and a former chair of its Section on Social Science and the Law. He has published in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, California, Northwestern, Georgetown, and UCLA Law Reviews, among others. His work includes "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal " (Yale Law Journal, 2002) and "Term Limits for the Supreme Court: Life Tenure Reconsidered " (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2006). In Evans v. US (1992), the US Supreme Court adopted Lindgren's view of the overlap of bribery and federal extortion. He blogs at the Washington Post.
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Eugene N. Balk Professor of Law and Values, University of Toledo College of Law
Professor Joseph E. Slater, a faculty member since 1999, is a graduate of Georgetown University (PhD), the University of Michigan Law School (JD), and Oberlin College (BA).
Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Slater practiced labor and employment law in Washington, D.C. for twelve years. He also was an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and an Instructor and Teaching Assistant at Georgetown University's History Department.
Professor Slater has published in the field of labor law and history. Recent publications include: Down By Law: Public Sector Unions and the State in America, 1900-60 (forthcoming, Cornell University Press); "The Court DoesNotKnow 'What a Labor Union Is': How Bias, State Structures and Judicial (Mis)Constructions Deformed Public Sector Labor Law," 79 Oregon Law Review 981 (2000); "Petting the Infamous Yellow Dog: The Seattle High School Teachers Union and the State, 1928-1931," 23 Seattle University Law Review 485 ( 2000); "Public Workers: Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919,"38Labor History7 (1997); and "The Rise of Master-Servant and the Fall of Master Narrative: A Review ofLabor Law In America," 15 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 141 (1994).
National Affairs Columnist, National Review
John Fund is National Affairs Columnist for National Review magazine and a on-air analyst on the Fox News Channel. He is considered a notable expert on American politics and the nexus between politics and economics.
He previously served as a columnist and editorial board member for The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including Who's Counting: Bow Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote At Risk (Encounter Books, 2012); Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books, 2008) and The Dangers of Regulation Through Litigation (ATRA Press, 2008). He worked as a research analyst for the California Legislature in Sacramento before beginning his journalism career as a reporter for the syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak.
Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, called him "the Tom Paine of the modern Congressional reform movement." He has won awards from the Institute for Justice, The School Choice Aliance and the Warren Brooks award for journalistic excellence from the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Special Counsel, Hunton Andrews Kurth
After serving on the United State Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2005, Judge Griffith stepped down from the bench in 2020. Currently he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, and Special Counsel in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. Most recently, he was a member of President Biden's Commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of Civic Charity and the Constitution , and the co-author, along with former judges Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell, of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election. https://lostnotstolen.org/ . Before being appointed to the D. C. Circuit, Judge Griffith was the General Counsel at BYU; Senate Legal Counsel, the non-partisan chief legal officer of the U. S. Senate; and a partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Long active in rule-of-law programs in former communist nations, Judge Griffith is a member of the international advisory board of the CEELI Institute in Prague. He is a graduate of BYU and the University of Virginia School of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School
Professor Overton specializes in voting rights and campaign finance. His academic articles on election law have appeared in several leading law journals, including the Texas Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Michigan Law Review. Professor Overton's book “Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression“ was published and released by W.W. Norton.
During Professor Overton’s time in the Obama campaign, transition, and Administration (2007–2010), he was a key leader on the Administration’s landmark efforts to curb special interests, enhance transparency, and increase citizen participation. From 2007–2008, he was Chair of Government Reform Policy for the Obama presidential campaign. On the Obama Transition Team, he served in the Office of the General Counsel and helped write the Administration’s ethics guidelines. He also chaired the Election Assistance Commission Agency Review Team and served as a member of the Federal Election Commission Agency Review Team.
At the beginning of the Obama Administration, Professor Overton took a leave from GW Law School and was appointed the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice in the Office of Legal Policy. In that position, he partnered with White House officials to lead the Administration’s policy efforts on democracy issues. He played a key leadership role in conceptualizing and/or implementing policies related to the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Administration’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in federal elections.
Prior to joining the Law School faculty, he was a member of the law faculty of the University of California, Davis, and served as the Charles Hamilton Houston Fellow at Harvard. Before entering academia, he practiced law at Debevoise & Plimpton in Washington, DC, where he worked on several widely noted cases, including investigations by Congress and the Justice Department into fundraising techniques employed by the Democratic National Committee. Professor Overton also served as a law clerk to Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Professor Overton has served as a commissioner on the Jimmy Carter-James Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, and as well as the Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling. He has also served as a board member of several organizations, including Common Cause, Demos, The Center for Responsive Politics, and the American Constitution Society. His commentaries have appeared in the Washington Post, Roll Call, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times, among others, and he has made numerous appearances on national and local radio and television outlets to discuss election law issues.
Associate Dean for Faculty; Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University Mortiz College of Law
Professor Daniel Tokaji is an authority on the law of elections and democracy. He teaches courses on Election Law, Civil Rights, Civil Procedure, Comparative Law, Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Legislation and Regulation, and the U.S. Legal System. His scholarship addresses questions of voting rights, racial justice, free speech, and the role of the courts in American democracy.
Professor Tokaji is the author of Election Law in a Nutshell (2d ed. 2016), and co-author of Election Law: Cases and Materials (6th ed. 2017) and The New Soft Money (2014). He has written numerous articles and book chapters on a wide variety of election and voting issues, including voting rights, voter ID, voter registration, redistricting, campaign finance regulation. Recent articles include “Gerrymandering and Association,” 59 William & Mary Law Review 2159 (2018), and “Denying Systemic Equality: The Last Words of the Kennedy Court,” 13 Harvard Law & Policy Review 539 (2019). His current research focuses on the challenges facing democracies around the globe, including the free speech issues surrounding digital disinformation and the need for trustworthy electoral institutions.
Media outlets frequently seek Professor Tokaji’s expertise on election and voting issues. He has been quoted in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Columbus Dispatch, USA TODAY, and appeared on TODAY, FOX News, NBC News, and National Public Radio and many other media outlets.
A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale Law School, Professor Tokaji clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before arriving at Ohio State, he was a staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and Chair of California Common Cause.
Professor Tokaji has litigated many civil rights, civil liberties, and election law cases. He was lead counsel in a case that struck down an Ohio law requiring naturalized citizens to produce a certificate of naturalization when challenged at the polls. He also served as counsel in litigation challenging the state’s voting purges. He was also an attorney for plaintiffs in cases that kept open the window for simultaneous registration and early voting in Ohio’s 2008 general election, and that challenged punch-card voting systems in Ohio and California after the 2000 election.
Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
National Affairs Columnist, National Review
John Fund is National Affairs Columnist for National Review magazine and a on-air analyst on the Fox News Channel. He is considered a notable expert on American politics and the nexus between politics and economics.
He previously served as a columnist and editorial board member for The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including Who's Counting: Bow Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote At Risk (Encounter Books, 2012); Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books, 2008) and The Dangers of Regulation Through Litigation (ATRA Press, 2008). He worked as a research analyst for the California Legislature in Sacramento before beginning his journalism career as a reporter for the syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak.
Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, called him "the Tom Paine of the modern Congressional reform movement." He has won awards from the Institute for Justice, The School Choice Aliance and the Warren Brooks award for journalistic excellence from the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Special Counsel, Hunton Andrews Kurth
After serving on the United State Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2005, Judge Griffith stepped down from the bench in 2020. Currently he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, and Special Counsel in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. Most recently, he was a member of President Biden's Commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of Civic Charity and the Constitution , and the co-author, along with former judges Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell, of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election. https://lostnotstolen.org/ . Before being appointed to the D. C. Circuit, Judge Griffith was the General Counsel at BYU; Senate Legal Counsel, the non-partisan chief legal officer of the U. S. Senate; and a partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Long active in rule-of-law programs in former communist nations, Judge Griffith is a member of the international advisory board of the CEELI Institute in Prague. He is a graduate of BYU and the University of Virginia School of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School
Professor Overton specializes in voting rights and campaign finance. His academic articles on election law have appeared in several leading law journals, including the Texas Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Michigan Law Review. Professor Overton's book “Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression“ was published and released by W.W. Norton.
During Professor Overton’s time in the Obama campaign, transition, and Administration (2007–2010), he was a key leader on the Administration’s landmark efforts to curb special interests, enhance transparency, and increase citizen participation. From 2007–2008, he was Chair of Government Reform Policy for the Obama presidential campaign. On the Obama Transition Team, he served in the Office of the General Counsel and helped write the Administration’s ethics guidelines. He also chaired the Election Assistance Commission Agency Review Team and served as a member of the Federal Election Commission Agency Review Team.
At the beginning of the Obama Administration, Professor Overton took a leave from GW Law School and was appointed the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice in the Office of Legal Policy. In that position, he partnered with White House officials to lead the Administration’s policy efforts on democracy issues. He played a key leadership role in conceptualizing and/or implementing policies related to the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Administration’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in federal elections.
Prior to joining the Law School faculty, he was a member of the law faculty of the University of California, Davis, and served as the Charles Hamilton Houston Fellow at Harvard. Before entering academia, he practiced law at Debevoise & Plimpton in Washington, DC, where he worked on several widely noted cases, including investigations by Congress and the Justice Department into fundraising techniques employed by the Democratic National Committee. Professor Overton also served as a law clerk to Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Professor Overton has served as a commissioner on the Jimmy Carter-James Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, and as well as the Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling. He has also served as a board member of several organizations, including Common Cause, Demos, The Center for Responsive Politics, and the American Constitution Society. His commentaries have appeared in the Washington Post, Roll Call, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times, among others, and he has made numerous appearances on national and local radio and television outlets to discuss election law issues.
Associate Dean for Faculty; Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University Mortiz College of Law
Professor Daniel Tokaji is an authority on the law of elections and democracy. He teaches courses on Election Law, Civil Rights, Civil Procedure, Comparative Law, Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Legislation and Regulation, and the U.S. Legal System. His scholarship addresses questions of voting rights, racial justice, free speech, and the role of the courts in American democracy.
Professor Tokaji is the author of Election Law in a Nutshell (2d ed. 2016), and co-author of Election Law: Cases and Materials (6th ed. 2017) and The New Soft Money (2014). He has written numerous articles and book chapters on a wide variety of election and voting issues, including voting rights, voter ID, voter registration, redistricting, campaign finance regulation. Recent articles include “Gerrymandering and Association,” 59 William & Mary Law Review 2159 (2018), and “Denying Systemic Equality: The Last Words of the Kennedy Court,” 13 Harvard Law & Policy Review 539 (2019). His current research focuses on the challenges facing democracies around the globe, including the free speech issues surrounding digital disinformation and the need for trustworthy electoral institutions.
Media outlets frequently seek Professor Tokaji’s expertise on election and voting issues. He has been quoted in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Columbus Dispatch, USA TODAY, and appeared on TODAY, FOX News, NBC News, and National Public Radio and many other media outlets.
A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale Law School, Professor Tokaji clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before arriving at Ohio State, he was a staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and Chair of California Common Cause.
Professor Tokaji has litigated many civil rights, civil liberties, and election law cases. He was lead counsel in a case that struck down an Ohio law requiring naturalized citizens to produce a certificate of naturalization when challenged at the polls. He also served as counsel in litigation challenging the state’s voting purges. He was also an attorney for plaintiffs in cases that kept open the window for simultaneous registration and early voting in Ohio’s 2008 general election, and that challenged punch-card voting systems in Ohio and California after the 2000 election.
Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
Applying Citizens United
Joseph M. Birkenstock, Dean Reuter, Bradley A. Smith
Free Speech and Election Law Practice Group Podcast
As the election season accelerates, our panel of experts discussed the impact of Citizens United,...
Liberty's Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly
Janice Rogers Brown, John Inazu, Douglas Laycock, Lee Liberman Otis
Faculty Division
Ask Americans what they think the First Amendment protects, and they will tell you “freedom...
The National Popular Vote Plan
George C. Edwards, Trent England, John R. Koza, Tara Ross
Federalism & Separation of Powers and Free Speech & Election Law Practice Groups Teleforum
When Alexander Hamilton spoke of the Electoral College, he said: “[If] the manner of it...
Voter Identification and the Right to Vote
Samuel Langholz, Edward Mansfield, Ben Stone, Hans A. Von Spakovsky
Iowa Lawyers Chapter
In recent years, states across the country have considered or implemented stricter voter identification requirements,...
Voter Identification and the Right to Vote
Samuel Langholz, Edward Mansfield, Ben Stone, Hans A. Von Spakovsky
Iowa Lawyers Chapter
In recent years, states across the country have considered or implemented stricter voter identification requirements,...
Speaking Freely in Business
Clark Neily, Dean Reuter
Free Speech & Election Law Practice Group Podcast
The United States Supreme Court is about to make a decision whether to grant cert...
Panel 2: Public Sector Unions
Samuel Estreicher, James T. Lindgren, John O. McGinnis, Joseph Slater
14th Annual Faculty Conference
The Federalist Society's Facutly Division hosted this panel on "Public Sector Unions" on Friday, January...
Panel 2: Public Sector Unions
Samuel Estreicher, James T. Lindgren, John O. McGinnis, Joseph Slater
14th Annual Faculty Conference
The Federalist Society's Facutly Division hosted this panel on "Public Sector Unions" on Friday, January...
Free Speech: Voter Fraud and Voter ID — The Constitution and the Right to Vote
John Fund, Thomas B. Griffith, Spencer A. Overton, Daniel P. Tokaji, Hans A. Von Spakovsky
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Free Speech & Election Law Practice Group hosted this panel on "Voter Fraud and...
Free Speech: Voter Fraud and Voter ID — The Constitution and the Right to Vote
John Fund, Thomas B. Griffith, Spencer A. Overton, Daniel P. Tokaji, Hans A. Von Spakovsky
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Free Speech & Election Law Practice Group hosted this panel on "Voter Fraud and...