Supervising Senior Attorney, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)
Conor Fitzpatrick comes to FIRE by way of Detroit, Michigan, where he was a principal at Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone. Conor has extensive litigation experience at the state and federal level. He has first-chaired multiple jury trials and briefed and argued several eight-figure cases on appeal.
Conor also comes to FIRE with a track record of supporting civil liberties and the First Amendment. Before joining FIRE, he taught First Amendment law as an adjunct professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. He has extensive experience litigating First Amendment cases pro bono on behalf of the incarcerated: His First Amendment work for inmates includes trying a First Amendment free exercise case to a federal jury, which resulted in a six-figure, mid-trial settlement following his cross examination of the key defendant. In another case, Conor secured a published decision from the Sixth Circuit denying qualified immunity to five prison employees, cementing his client’s First Amendment right to peacefully criticize government employees. Conor’s work on these and other cases earned him the 2018 Richard J. Seryak Award for Pro Bono Service.
When not thinking about the First Amendment, Conor enjoys reading, running, and eating sushi. He also avidly supports Detroit’s sports teams, but he rarely enjoys it.
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.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
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.
Former General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, Former United States Ambassador to East Timor
Grover Joseph Rees, a native and resident of Louisiana, served as the first United States Ambassador to East Timor from 2002 to 2006.
From October 2006 until January 2009 Ambassador Rees served as Special Representative for Social Issues in the U.S. Department of State. He was responsible for promoting human dignity, including issues affecting vulnerable persons and the family, within the United Nations system. He served as Acting U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Counsel during the fall 2007 session of the UN General Assembly and also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations.
From 1995 until 2002 Rees was a senior staff member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the United States House of Representatives, where he was responsible for human rights and refugee protection and played a major role in the drafting and enactment of important human rights legislation including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the International Religious Freedom Act, and the Torture Victims Relief Act.
Ambassador Rees also formerly served as General Counsel of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (1991-93), as Chief Justice of the High Court of American Samoa (1986-1991), and as Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the United States (1985-86).
Prior to his work in Washington, Rees served for seven years as a law professor at the University of Texas. He has written and spoken widely on international law, human rights, refugees, and related issues.
Rees obtained his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his law degree from Louisiana State University Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Louisiana Law Review and was selected for the academic honor society Order of the Coif.
Rees was born in New Orleans, the oldest of 12 children. He is married to Lan Dai Nguyen Rees and has one son. He retired from government service in January 2009 and now lives and works in Lafayette, Louisiana.
In addition to English, Ambassador Rees speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese, Samoan, and Tetum.
Senior Vice President, UN Foundation and President, the Better World Campaign
One of nation’s most esteemed experts on U.S.-UN affairs, Peter Yeo leads the Better World Campaign’s strategic engagement with Congress, the Administration, and organizations supporting stronger American leadership on the world stage. Yeo’s leadership has helped advance critical legislation in the U.S. Congress to ensure the country meets its obligations to the United Nations, UN Peacekeeping Operations, and UN agencies and organizations.
Yeo joined the Better World Campaign in 2009 with over twenty years of legislative, analytical, and management experience, including senior roles on Capitol Hill and in the State Department. Prior to arriving at UN Foundation, Yeo spent a decade as Deputy Staff Director on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has worked on a broad range of foreign policy and foreign aid issues, including leading negotiations for the landmark HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 — PEPFAR — as well as the $50 billion reauthorization of the law in 2008. He also shepherded into law several measures dealing with China, Tibet, Burma, and East Timor.
Prior to his work with the Committee, Yeo served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. State Department, where he successfully advocated for repayment of the U.S. arrears to the UN, and was part of the U.S. delegation to the climate negotiations in Kyoto.
Yeo holds an master’s in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Board Member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.
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.
Former General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, Former United States Ambassador to East Timor
Grover Joseph Rees, a native and resident of Louisiana, served as the first United States Ambassador to East Timor from 2002 to 2006.
From October 2006 until January 2009 Ambassador Rees served as Special Representative for Social Issues in the U.S. Department of State. He was responsible for promoting human dignity, including issues affecting vulnerable persons and the family, within the United Nations system. He served as Acting U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Counsel during the fall 2007 session of the UN General Assembly and also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations.
From 1995 until 2002 Rees was a senior staff member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the United States House of Representatives, where he was responsible for human rights and refugee protection and played a major role in the drafting and enactment of important human rights legislation including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the International Religious Freedom Act, and the Torture Victims Relief Act.
Ambassador Rees also formerly served as General Counsel of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (1991-93), as Chief Justice of the High Court of American Samoa (1986-1991), and as Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the United States (1985-86).
Prior to his work in Washington, Rees served for seven years as a law professor at the University of Texas. He has written and spoken widely on international law, human rights, refugees, and related issues.
Rees obtained his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his law degree from Louisiana State University Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Louisiana Law Review and was selected for the academic honor society Order of the Coif.
Rees was born in New Orleans, the oldest of 12 children. He is married to Lan Dai Nguyen Rees and has one son. He retired from government service in January 2009 and now lives and works in Lafayette, Louisiana.
In addition to English, Ambassador Rees speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese, Samoan, and Tetum.
Senior Vice President, UN Foundation and President, the Better World Campaign
One of nation’s most esteemed experts on U.S.-UN affairs, Peter Yeo leads the Better World Campaign’s strategic engagement with Congress, the Administration, and organizations supporting stronger American leadership on the world stage. Yeo’s leadership has helped advance critical legislation in the U.S. Congress to ensure the country meets its obligations to the United Nations, UN Peacekeeping Operations, and UN agencies and organizations.
Yeo joined the Better World Campaign in 2009 with over twenty years of legislative, analytical, and management experience, including senior roles on Capitol Hill and in the State Department. Prior to arriving at UN Foundation, Yeo spent a decade as Deputy Staff Director on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has worked on a broad range of foreign policy and foreign aid issues, including leading negotiations for the landmark HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 — PEPFAR — as well as the $50 billion reauthorization of the law in 2008. He also shepherded into law several measures dealing with China, Tibet, Burma, and East Timor.
Prior to his work with the Committee, Yeo served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. State Department, where he successfully advocated for repayment of the U.S. arrears to the UN, and was part of the U.S. delegation to the climate negotiations in Kyoto.
Yeo holds an master’s in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Board Member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Allison Daniel is an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, focusing on cases in which she can help restore the separation of powers between the branches of government and prevent federal agencies from creating laws through regulatory action. Her commitment to liberty began with an interest in politics and philosophy in high school and college. She was particularly inspired by Ron Paul and the works of Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ayn Rand.
She received her law degree from the Florida State University College of Law, where she served as president of the Federalist Society chapter. She worked as a law clerk for Pacific Legal Foundation in the Sacramento office during her 1L summer. After law school, she joined the Institute for Justice as a staff attorney in the Florida office, where she defended the economic liberty and property rights of clients. Family commitments then led her to Ohio, where she clerked at the Ohio Court of Appeals and served as legal counsel to all statewide elected officeholders at the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
She resides in Southwest Ohio with her husband and their four young children.
Of Counsel, Holtzman Vogel
Erielle Azerrad is Of Counsel with Holtzman Vogel and focuses her practice on commercial litigation, appellate law, and constitutional law matters.
Prior to joining the firm, Erielle clerked for the Honorable Steven J. Menashi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Erielle is also a co-founder of the Center for the Middle East and International Law through the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.
Vice President and Deputy Chief Counsel, U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Jennifer B. Dickey is vice president and deputy chief counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dickey handles a variety of litigation matters for the Chamber.
Dickey joined the Chamber following her service as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She also previously served as Deputy Associate Attorney General, providing strategic oversight of the Civil Division, Civil Rights Division, and Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, as well as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President. In the latter capacity, she provided legal advice on a wide array of executive actions and rulemakings, civil litigation, and judicial nominations.
Dickey also practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis LLP before her government service. She was a commercial and appellate litigator, representing businesses in federal and state courts.
Earlier in her career, Dickey served as a law clerk for the Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Honorable William H. Pryor Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Dickey earned her law degree magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, where she was an Executive Editor of the Duke Law Journal, and her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Dartmouth College.
Associate, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Elizabeth A. Kiernan is a senior associate in the Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, representing clients in their most consequential, high-stakes, and time-sensitive matters. Elizabeth specializes in appellate advocacy and sophisticated briefing. She has successfully argued before the Fifth Circuit and Texas Supreme Court and has supported arguments in various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court and courts across the country.
Elizabeth’s most significant victories include obtaining and preserving at the Texas Supreme Court writs of mandamus directing dismissal of billions of dollars in personal injury and property damage claims across a 200-case, 20,000-plaintiff MDL; securing a landmark U.S. Supreme Court victory allowing an insurer responsible for millions of dollars in bankruptcy claims to be heard on objections to its insureds’ plan of reorganization; and persuading a unanimous Fifth Circuit panel to uphold dismissal of over $12 million in contractual and tort claims.
Chambers and Partners recently named Elizabeth an “Associate to Watch” for Litigation: Appellate (Texas), and she has been recognized as an Appellate “Rising Star” by Thomson Reuters’s Texas Super Lawyers magazine.
Prior to joining Gibson Dunn, Elizabeth earned her B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Alabama and her J.D. with Honors from the University of Chicago Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the Honorable William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She also served as Special Counsel to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley for the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Sarah Welch is an associate in the Firm's Issues & Appeals Practice based in the Cleveland Office of Jones Day.
Ms. Welch's practice focuses on appellate advocacy and significant motions. Before joining Jones Day, she served as a law clerk to the Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Honorable William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the Honorable Jeffrey S. Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
During law school, Ms. Welch participated in briefing cases before the Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals through The University of Chicago Law School's Supreme Court and appellate clinic, as well as through internships with the Ohio and United States solicitors general. She volunteers on the case committee for Ohio's high school mock trial competition.
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Morgan Ratner is an experienced appellate advocate and legal-issues specialist who handles the most important cases around the country. She has argued ten cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, where she has had remarkable success at both the certiorari and merits stages.
Morgan regularly briefs and argues appeals and dispositive motions; provides strategic guidance for trial and administrative proceedings; and counsels clients confronting high-stakes legal issues. She has had particular success helping clients navigate—and, when appropriate, challenge—federal regulations. In the last 18 months, she has twice been named The American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Week” (and her matters have been named three times more), including for prevailing in a landmark Delaware corporate-governance dispute and striking down the FCC’s net-neutrality rules. The American Lawyer named her the 2024 “Young Lawyer of the Year — Litigation”, and Law360 recently profiled her as one of “12 Lawyers Who Are The Future Of The Supreme Court Bar.”
Morgan served for more than four years in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she argued securities regulation, bankruptcy, employment, and intellectual property cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. During her tenure, she also filed more than 150 Supreme Court briefs at the merits and certiorari stages and received a John Marshall Award, DOJ’s highest award offered to lawyers for exceptional service to the Office of the Solicitor General and DOJ.
After graduating Harvard Law School—where she was awarded the Fay Diploma as the top student in her class—Morgan clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court and then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She is a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, a volunteer with Street Law, Inc., and a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Allison Daniel is an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, focusing on cases in which she can help restore the separation of powers between the branches of government and prevent federal agencies from creating laws through regulatory action. Her commitment to liberty began with an interest in politics and philosophy in high school and college. She was particularly inspired by Ron Paul and the works of Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ayn Rand.
She received her law degree from the Florida State University College of Law, where she served as president of the Federalist Society chapter. She worked as a law clerk for Pacific Legal Foundation in the Sacramento office during her 1L summer. After law school, she joined the Institute for Justice as a staff attorney in the Florida office, where she defended the economic liberty and property rights of clients. Family commitments then led her to Ohio, where she clerked at the Ohio Court of Appeals and served as legal counsel to all statewide elected officeholders at the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
She resides in Southwest Ohio with her husband and their four young children.
Of Counsel, Holtzman Vogel
Erielle Azerrad is Of Counsel with Holtzman Vogel and focuses her practice on commercial litigation, appellate law, and constitutional law matters.
Prior to joining the firm, Erielle clerked for the Honorable Steven J. Menashi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Erielle is also a co-founder of the Center for the Middle East and International Law through the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.
Vice President and Deputy Chief Counsel, U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Jennifer B. Dickey is vice president and deputy chief counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dickey handles a variety of litigation matters for the Chamber.
Dickey joined the Chamber following her service as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She also previously served as Deputy Associate Attorney General, providing strategic oversight of the Civil Division, Civil Rights Division, and Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, as well as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President. In the latter capacity, she provided legal advice on a wide array of executive actions and rulemakings, civil litigation, and judicial nominations.
Dickey also practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis LLP before her government service. She was a commercial and appellate litigator, representing businesses in federal and state courts.
Earlier in her career, Dickey served as a law clerk for the Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Honorable William H. Pryor Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Dickey earned her law degree magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, where she was an Executive Editor of the Duke Law Journal, and her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Dartmouth College.
Associate, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Elizabeth A. Kiernan is a senior associate in the Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, representing clients in their most consequential, high-stakes, and time-sensitive matters. Elizabeth specializes in appellate advocacy and sophisticated briefing. She has successfully argued before the Fifth Circuit and Texas Supreme Court and has supported arguments in various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court and courts across the country.
Elizabeth’s most significant victories include obtaining and preserving at the Texas Supreme Court writs of mandamus directing dismissal of billions of dollars in personal injury and property damage claims across a 200-case, 20,000-plaintiff MDL; securing a landmark U.S. Supreme Court victory allowing an insurer responsible for millions of dollars in bankruptcy claims to be heard on objections to its insureds’ plan of reorganization; and persuading a unanimous Fifth Circuit panel to uphold dismissal of over $12 million in contractual and tort claims.
Chambers and Partners recently named Elizabeth an “Associate to Watch” for Litigation: Appellate (Texas), and she has been recognized as an Appellate “Rising Star” by Thomson Reuters’s Texas Super Lawyers magazine.
Prior to joining Gibson Dunn, Elizabeth earned her B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Alabama and her J.D. with Honors from the University of Chicago Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the Honorable William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She also served as Special Counsel to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley for the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Sarah Welch is an associate in the Firm's Issues & Appeals Practice based in the Cleveland Office of Jones Day.
Ms. Welch's practice focuses on appellate advocacy and significant motions. Before joining Jones Day, she served as a law clerk to the Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Honorable William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the Honorable Jeffrey S. Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
During law school, Ms. Welch participated in briefing cases before the Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals through The University of Chicago Law School's Supreme Court and appellate clinic, as well as through internships with the Ohio and United States solicitors general. She volunteers on the case committee for Ohio's high school mock trial competition.
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Morgan Ratner is an experienced appellate advocate and legal-issues specialist who handles the most important cases around the country. She has argued ten cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, where she has had remarkable success at both the certiorari and merits stages.
Morgan regularly briefs and argues appeals and dispositive motions; provides strategic guidance for trial and administrative proceedings; and counsels clients confronting high-stakes legal issues. She has had particular success helping clients navigate—and, when appropriate, challenge—federal regulations. In the last 18 months, she has twice been named The American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Week” (and her matters have been named three times more), including for prevailing in a landmark Delaware corporate-governance dispute and striking down the FCC’s net-neutrality rules. The American Lawyer named her the 2024 “Young Lawyer of the Year — Litigation”, and Law360 recently profiled her as one of “12 Lawyers Who Are The Future Of The Supreme Court Bar.”
Morgan served for more than four years in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she argued securities regulation, bankruptcy, employment, and intellectual property cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. During her tenure, she also filed more than 150 Supreme Court briefs at the merits and certiorari stages and received a John Marshall Award, DOJ’s highest award offered to lawyers for exceptional service to the Office of the Solicitor General and DOJ.
After graduating Harvard Law School—where she was awarded the Fay Diploma as the top student in her class—Morgan clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court and then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She is a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, a volunteer with Street Law, Inc., and a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society.
Director, International Legal Studies Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Michael Newton is an expert on terrorism, accountability, transnational justice, and conduct of hostilities issues. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 90 books, articles, op-eds and book chapters. He has been an expert witness in terrorism related trials and is admitted to the counsel list of the International Criminal Court, where, in 2018, he helped prepare the appeal of Jean-Pierre Bemba and participated in oral arguments in the Appeals Chamber. At Vanderbilt, he developed and teaches the innovative International Law Practice Lab, which provides expert assistance to judges, lawyers, legislatures, governments, and policy makers around the world. Professor Newton is most recently the editor of The United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual: Commentary and Critique, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
An authority on the law of armed conflict, Professor Newton served as the senior adviser to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the U.S. State Department from January 1999 to August 2002, during which he implemented a wide range of policy positions, including U.S. support to accountability mechanisms worldwide. He negotiated the “Elements of Crimes” for the International Criminal Court, and was the senior member of the team teaching international law to the first group of Iraqis who began to think about accountability mechanisms and a constitutional structure in November 2000. He shuttled to Baghdad repeatedly to aid international and Iraqi lawyers and jurists in drafting the Statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal while serving as the International Law Adviser to the Judicial Chambers from 2006 to 2008. He began assisting Iraqi officials, victims and civil society groups on legal issues associated with documentation and investigation of crimes committed by Da’esh on Iraqi soil days after Yazidi victims fled towards Mount Sinjar. He was the U.S. representative on the U.N. Planning Mission for the Sierra Leone Special Court and a founding member of its academic consortium. He is an elected member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law and on the expert roster of Justice Rapid Response. In addition to teaching the Practice Lab, he develops and coordinates externships and educational opportunities for students interested in international legal issues, having supervised more than 150 such opportunities.
Professor Newton has served on the executive council of the American Society of International Law and as an invited expert for the Genocide Prevention Task Force established by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is currently on the Advisory Board of the ABA International Criminal Court Project.
Professor Newton served in the U.S. Army more than 21 years, beginning with his commission from the U.S. Military Academy in May 1984 as an armor officer in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor at Fort Carson, Colorado. After his selection for the Funded Legal Education Program, Newton served as chief of operational law with the Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) during Operation Desert Storm, and as the group judge advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne). His deployments include Northern Iraq on Operation Provide Comfort to assist Kurdish civilians, and Haiti with 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), where he organized and led human rights and rules of engagement education for multinational forces, including police. He has taught international and operational law at the Judge Advocate General's School and Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taught international law at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Director, International Legal Studies Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Michael Newton is an expert on terrorism, accountability, transnational justice, and conduct of hostilities issues. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 90 books, articles, op-eds and book chapters. He has been an expert witness in terrorism related trials and is admitted to the counsel list of the International Criminal Court, where, in 2018, he helped prepare the appeal of Jean-Pierre Bemba and participated in oral arguments in the Appeals Chamber. At Vanderbilt, he developed and teaches the innovative International Law Practice Lab, which provides expert assistance to judges, lawyers, legislatures, governments, and policy makers around the world. Professor Newton is most recently the editor of The United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual: Commentary and Critique, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
An authority on the law of armed conflict, Professor Newton served as the senior adviser to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the U.S. State Department from January 1999 to August 2002, during which he implemented a wide range of policy positions, including U.S. support to accountability mechanisms worldwide. He negotiated the “Elements of Crimes” for the International Criminal Court, and was the senior member of the team teaching international law to the first group of Iraqis who began to think about accountability mechanisms and a constitutional structure in November 2000. He shuttled to Baghdad repeatedly to aid international and Iraqi lawyers and jurists in drafting the Statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal while serving as the International Law Adviser to the Judicial Chambers from 2006 to 2008. He began assisting Iraqi officials, victims and civil society groups on legal issues associated with documentation and investigation of crimes committed by Da’esh on Iraqi soil days after Yazidi victims fled towards Mount Sinjar. He was the U.S. representative on the U.N. Planning Mission for the Sierra Leone Special Court and a founding member of its academic consortium. He is an elected member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law and on the expert roster of Justice Rapid Response. In addition to teaching the Practice Lab, he develops and coordinates externships and educational opportunities for students interested in international legal issues, having supervised more than 150 such opportunities.
Professor Newton has served on the executive council of the American Society of International Law and as an invited expert for the Genocide Prevention Task Force established by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is currently on the Advisory Board of the ABA International Criminal Court Project.
Professor Newton served in the U.S. Army more than 21 years, beginning with his commission from the U.S. Military Academy in May 1984 as an armor officer in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor at Fort Carson, Colorado. After his selection for the Funded Legal Education Program, Newton served as chief of operational law with the Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) during Operation Desert Storm, and as the group judge advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne). His deployments include Northern Iraq on Operation Provide Comfort to assist Kurdish civilians, and Haiti with 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), where he organized and led human rights and rules of engagement education for multinational forces, including police. He has taught international and operational law at the Judge Advocate General's School and Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taught international law at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law and Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law, Columbia Law School
The director of the Center for International Commercial & Investment Arbitration at Columbia Law School, George A. Bermann ’75 LL.M. is a world-renowned authority on comparative law, EU law, international trade contracts, WTO dispute resolution, and transnational litigation and arbitration. For more than four decades, he has been an active international arbitrator in commercial and investment disputes in all sectors, including general commercial contract, construction, intellectual property, energy, oil and gas, competition law, insurance, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, distributorship and franchising, transportation, and employment. He also serves regularly as an expert witness before international arbitral tribunals as well as before courts in arbitral-related cases.
Bermann joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 1975. He founded both the Columbia Journal of European Law and the European Legal Studies Center, where he serves as the director. In addition to teaching full-time at the Law School, he is an affiliated faculty member of the School of Law of Sciences Po in Paris and the MIDS Masters Program in International Dispute Settlement in Geneva.
Bermann was the chief reporter for the American Law Institute (ALI) for its Restatement of the Law, The U.S. Law of International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration, a 12-year project that was completed in 2019; it was the first ALI Restatement on this area of the law. Bermann is also co-author of the UNCITRAL Guide to the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, chair of the Global Advisory Board of the New York International Arbitration Center (NYIAC), co-editor in chief of the American Review of International Arbitration, and founding member of the governing body of the ICC Court of Arbitration and a member of its standing committee.
Associate Dean for Research Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law Director, Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Ingrid Wuerth is a leading scholar of foreign affairs, public international law and transnational litigation. She joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2007, was appointed director of the International Legal Studies Program in 2009, and was appointed director of the Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program in 2018. She was named to the newly endowed Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law in 2015. Professor Wuerth has served on the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law and on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute and was named as a Reporter for the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. She has received numerous honors and fellowships, including the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Fulbright Senior Scholar award, the German Chancellor's Fellowship, election to the German Society of International Law, election to the Order of the Coif and many teaching awards. She clerked for Judge Jan E. DuBois in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and for Judge Jane Roth on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The class of 2018 elected Professor Wuerth to give the commencement address. She is a contributing editor at Lawfare.
Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law and Faculty Director of International Programs, Hofstra University School of Law
Professor Ku’s primary research interest is the relationship of international law to constitutional law. He has also conducted academic research on a wide range of topics including international dispute resolution, international criminal law, and China’s relationship with international law. He teaches courses such as U.S. constitutional law, U.S. foreign affairs law, transnational law, and international trade and business law. Since 2014, he has served as the faculty director of international programs, overseeing Hofstra Law’s study abroad, exchange and LL.M. programs. Professor Ku also teaches Constitutional Law in our online degree programs: Master of Laws in American Law and Master of Arts in American Legal Studies. He has also been selected as the John DeWitt Gregory Research Scholar and as a Hofstra Law Research Fellow. He is a member of the American Law Institute.
He is the co-author, with John Yoo, of Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order (Oxford University Press 2012). He also has published more than 40 law review articles, book chapters and symposia essays. He has given dozens of academic lectures and workshops at major universities and conferences in the United States, Europe and Asia.
He co-founded the leading international law weblog Opinio Juris, which is read daily by thousands worldwide. His essays and op-eds have been published in major news publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the NYTimes.com. He has been frequently interviewed for television news programs and quoted in print and electronic media. He has also signed or submitted amicus briefs to national and international courts and served as an expert witness in both domestic and international proceedings.
Before joining the Hofstra Law faculty, Professor Ku served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and as an Olin Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Virginia Law School. Professor Ku also practiced as an associate at the New York City law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, specializing in litigation and arbitration arising out of international disputes. He has been a visiting professor at the College of William & Mary Marshall- Wythe School of Law in Williamsburg, Virginia; a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Law at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, China; and a Taiwan Fellow at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan. He is a member of the New York Bar and a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.
John C. Jeffries, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Paul B. Stephan is an expert on international business, international dispute resolution and comparative law, with an emphasis on Soviet and post-Soviet legal systems. In addition to writing prolifically in these fields, Stephan has advised governments and international organizations, taken part in cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, the federal courts, and various foreign judicial and arbitral proceedings, and lectured to professionals and scholarly groups around the world on issues raised by the globalization of the world economy. During 2006-07, he served as counselor on international law in the U.S. Department of State, and in 2020-21 as special counsel to the general counsel in the Department of Defense. He was a coordinating reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States.
Stephan received his B.A. and M.A. from Yale University in 1973 and 1974, respectively, and his J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1977. Before returning to Virginia, he clerked for Judge Levin Campbell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. He has taught as a visiting professor at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, the University of Vienna, Münster University, Lausanne University, Melbourne University, University of Pantheon-Assas (Paris II), Sciences Po, Paris I, the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya, Sydney University, the Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen, China, the University of Tartu’s Pärna College, and Liverpool University. He also has visited at Columbia Law School and Duke Law School, and served as a scholar in residence in the London office of Wilmer Hale.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Stephan took part in a variety of projects involving law reform in former socialist states. He worked in Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Albania and Slovakia on behalf of the U.S. Treasury and in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan on behalf of the International Monetary Fund. He also organized training programs for tax administrators and judges from all of the formerly socialist countries under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. His casebooks on international business, international trade and investment, and Doing Business in Emerging Markets are used at law schools both in the United States and abroad. He is the co-author, with Robert Scott, of The Limits of Leviathan: Contract Theory and the Enforcement of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and the author of The World Crisis and International Law: The Knowledge Economy and the Battle for the Future (2023). His current research focuses on the legal issues related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and legal responses to the rise of big data.
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