Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Reed Larson Professor of Labor Law, Ave Maria School of Law and, National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation
John Raudabaugh is a labor lawyer and former Member of the U.S. National Labor Relations Board. He was a partner in law firms representing management concerning domestic and international labor law matters. Currently, he represents employees seeking relief from union and/or employer unfair labor practices. Mr. Raudabaugh has presented testimony to both Senate and House Committees regarding labor law reform. Professor Raudabaugh teaches Labor Law and a Labor Law Practicum at the Ave Maria School of Law. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce and New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations with B.S. and M.S. degrees in labor economics and a J.D. degree from the University of Virginia Law School of Law.
Director of Government Affairs, AFL-CIO
Bill Samuel is the Director of Government Affairs at the AFL-CIO. In addition to serving as the chief lobbyist for the 10 million-member labor federation, Bill chairs the AFL-CIO’s Legislative Committee, which is made up of legislative representatives from the federation’s 54 affiliated unions.
Bill returned to the labor movement in January 2001 after a five-year stint in the Clinton Administration, serving first as Associate Deputy Secretary of Labor under Robert Reich and then Alexis Herman. In 2000, Bill joined the White House staff as senior policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore, serving as the Vice President’s principal advisor on labor policy issues and liaison to organized labor.
From 1984 to 1995, Bill was the chief lobbyist at the United Mine Workers of America. While at the UMWA, Bill lead the successful campaign to win passage of federal legislation guaranteeing lifetime health benefits to over 200,000 retired miners and their dependents. Prior to joining the UMWA, Bill was a legislative representative for the National Treasury Employees Union and the American Federation of Government Employees.
He is a graduate of Oberlin College and the George Washington University Law Center.
General Counsel, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Mark Schneider is the General Counsel of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Prior to that he was Counsel for Political Programs and Associate General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union, and a partner at Jenner & Block LLC, where he was co-chair of the Telecommunications Practice Group and specialized in trial and appellate litigation. Mr. Schneider also has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.
Mr. Schneider has a B.A. from Swarthmore College, an M.Phil. from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. He was a law clerk to Judge James Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court.
President, Harned Strategies LLC
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
Vice President, Economic Policy Institute
Vice president of EPI since 2003, Ross Eisenbrey is a lawyer and former commissioner of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Prior to joining EPI, he worked for many years as a staff attorney and legislative director in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a committee counsel in the U.S. Senate. He served as policy director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 1999 until 2001. He has testified numerous times in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and has written scores of articles, issue briefs, and policy memos on a wide range of labor issues.
Distinguished Fellow, Energy Policy Research Foundation
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an Oxford-educated economist, is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation. She writes and comments regularly on energy, trade law, tariff authority, and regulatory policy, including recent work on Section 301 and executive trade power. From 2022 until February 2026, Diana headed the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation. In President Trump's first term, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation and Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury. She served in the White House under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, including as Chief of Staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, and has testified before Congress on economic and regulatory policy. Diana is the author or coauthor of six books, including Regulating to Disaster, and hundreds of articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Review, Forbes, the UK’s Daily Telegraph and the New York Post.
President, Harned Strategies LLC
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York
William Francis Kuntz II is a United States district judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The United States Senate confirmed him on October 3, 2011. He received his judicial commission on October 4, 2011.
Judge Kuntz was a commercial litigator in private practice in New York, and had been a partner at the law firm of Baker Hostetler since 2005. He has been a partner at several law firms in New York during his career, including Torys LLP from 2001 to 2004, Seward & Kissel LLP from 1994 to 2001, and Milgrim, Thomajan, Jacobs & Lee from 1986 to 1994. In addition, he worked as Counsel at Constantine Cannon from 2004 to 2005, and as an associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP from 1978 to 1986. Since 1987, Kuntz has served as a Commissioner of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, supervising hundreds of investigations into allegations of abuse by members of the New York City Police Department. From 1987 to 2003, he was an adjunct associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, teaching a course in American legal history. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1972 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977. Kuntz also received an M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Harvard University in 1974 and 1979, respectively.
Administrator, Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department of Labor
David Weil was sworn in as the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division on April 5, 2014.
Dr. Weil is an internationally-recognized expert in public and labor market policy; regulatory performance; industrial and labor relations; transparency policy; and supply-chain restructuring and its effects.
Prior to this appointment, Dr. Weil served as a professor of economics and the Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Boston University School of Management. He also served as co-director of the Transparency Policy Project at the Ash Institute at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He has written three books on labor market policy, including the recently published, The Fissured Workplace. He has authored numerous articles and publications in a variety of refereed economics, public policy, management, and industrial relations journals and books, as well as numerous publications in non-academic outlets.
No stranger to the Department’s mission or its work, Dr. Weil has served as an advisor to both the Wage and Hour Division and to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as well as to a number of other government agencies. He also has served as mediator and advisor in a range of labor union and labor/management settings across the globe. In addition to the Department, his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, among others.
Dr. Weil received his B.S. at Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in public policy at Harvard University.
Vice President, Economic Policy Institute
Vice president of EPI since 2003, Ross Eisenbrey is a lawyer and former commissioner of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Prior to joining EPI, he worked for many years as a staff attorney and legislative director in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a committee counsel in the U.S. Senate. He served as policy director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 1999 until 2001. He has testified numerous times in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and has written scores of articles, issue briefs, and policy memos on a wide range of labor issues.
Distinguished Fellow, Energy Policy Research Foundation
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an Oxford-educated economist, is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation. She writes and comments regularly on energy, trade law, tariff authority, and regulatory policy, including recent work on Section 301 and executive trade power. From 2022 until February 2026, Diana headed the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation. In President Trump's first term, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation and Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury. She served in the White House under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, including as Chief of Staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, and has testified before Congress on economic and regulatory policy. Diana is the author or coauthor of six books, including Regulating to Disaster, and hundreds of articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Review, Forbes, the UK’s Daily Telegraph and the New York Post.
President, Harned Strategies LLC
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York
William Francis Kuntz II is a United States district judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The United States Senate confirmed him on October 3, 2011. He received his judicial commission on October 4, 2011.
Judge Kuntz was a commercial litigator in private practice in New York, and had been a partner at the law firm of Baker Hostetler since 2005. He has been a partner at several law firms in New York during his career, including Torys LLP from 2001 to 2004, Seward & Kissel LLP from 1994 to 2001, and Milgrim, Thomajan, Jacobs & Lee from 1986 to 1994. In addition, he worked as Counsel at Constantine Cannon from 2004 to 2005, and as an associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP from 1978 to 1986. Since 1987, Kuntz has served as a Commissioner of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, supervising hundreds of investigations into allegations of abuse by members of the New York City Police Department. From 1987 to 2003, he was an adjunct associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, teaching a course in American legal history. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1972 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977. Kuntz also received an M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Harvard University in 1974 and 1979, respectively.
Administrator, Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department of Labor
David Weil was sworn in as the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division on April 5, 2014.
Dr. Weil is an internationally-recognized expert in public and labor market policy; regulatory performance; industrial and labor relations; transparency policy; and supply-chain restructuring and its effects.
Prior to this appointment, Dr. Weil served as a professor of economics and the Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Boston University School of Management. He also served as co-director of the Transparency Policy Project at the Ash Institute at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He has written three books on labor market policy, including the recently published, The Fissured Workplace. He has authored numerous articles and publications in a variety of refereed economics, public policy, management, and industrial relations journals and books, as well as numerous publications in non-academic outlets.
No stranger to the Department’s mission or its work, Dr. Weil has served as an advisor to both the Wage and Hour Division and to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as well as to a number of other government agencies. He also has served as mediator and advisor in a range of labor union and labor/management settings across the globe. In addition to the Department, his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, among others.
Dr. Weil received his B.S. at Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in public policy at Harvard University.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Commissioner, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Chai R. Feldblum has served as a Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since 2010, having been nominated to serve by President Barack Obama, and confirmed by the Senate, initially for a term ending on July 1, 2013. President Obama nominated her to serve a second term ending on July 1, 2018, and she was confirmed by the Senate on December 12, 2013.
Prior to her appointment to the EEOC, Commissioner Feldblum was a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center where she has taught since 1991. At Georgetown, she founded the Law Center's Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, which represented clients such as Catholic Charities USA, the National Disability Rights Network, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. She also founded and co-directed Workplace Flexibility 2010, a policy enterprise focused on finding common ground between employers and employees on workplace flexibility issues.
As Legislative Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union from 1988 to 1991, Commissioner Feldblum played a leading role in helping to draft and negotiate the ground-breaking Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Later, as a law professor representing the Epilepsy Foundation, she was equally instrumental in drafting and negotiating the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.
Commissioner Feldblum has also worked to advance lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, was one of the drafters of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, and is the first openly lesbian Commissioner of the EEOC. She clerked for Judge Frank Coffin of the First Circuit Court of Appeals and for Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun after receiving her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She received her B.A. degree from Barnard College.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Commissioner, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Chai R. Feldblum has served as a Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since 2010, having been nominated to serve by President Barack Obama, and confirmed by the Senate, initially for a term ending on July 1, 2013. President Obama nominated her to serve a second term ending on July 1, 2018, and she was confirmed by the Senate on December 12, 2013.
Prior to her appointment to the EEOC, Commissioner Feldblum was a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center where she has taught since 1991. At Georgetown, she founded the Law Center's Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, which represented clients such as Catholic Charities USA, the National Disability Rights Network, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. She also founded and co-directed Workplace Flexibility 2010, a policy enterprise focused on finding common ground between employers and employees on workplace flexibility issues.
As Legislative Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union from 1988 to 1991, Commissioner Feldblum played a leading role in helping to draft and negotiate the ground-breaking Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Later, as a law professor representing the Epilepsy Foundation, she was equally instrumental in drafting and negotiating the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.
Commissioner Feldblum has also worked to advance lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, was one of the drafters of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, and is the first openly lesbian Commissioner of the EEOC. She clerked for Judge Frank Coffin of the First Circuit Court of Appeals and for Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun after receiving her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She received her B.A. degree from Barnard College.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The Washington Post
Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987. He joined the paper to cover Maryland politics, and has served in various editing positions including metropolitan editor and national political editor . He has covered the Supreme Court since November 2006. He gave up law school plans for a life in newspapers after taking a journalism class in college. It did not occur to him, as it apparently did to others, that he could do both.
Distinguished Fellow, Energy Policy Research Foundation
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an Oxford-educated economist, is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation. She writes and comments regularly on energy, trade law, tariff authority, and regulatory policy, including recent work on Section 301 and executive trade power. From 2022 until February 2026, Diana headed the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation. In President Trump's first term, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation and Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury. She served in the White House under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, including as Chief of Staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, and has testified before Congress on economic and regulatory policy. Diana is the author or coauthor of six books, including Regulating to Disaster, and hundreds of articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Review, Forbes, the UK’s Daily Telegraph and the New York Post.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Studen, National Women's Law Center
Lara S. Kaufmann is Senior Counsel and Director for Education Policy for At-Risk Students. She works on the advancement of women and girls at school and in the workplace. Lara engages in litigation, advocacy, and public education, with a particular focus on improving educational outcomes for at-risk girls, including pregnant and parenting students. Lara co-authored the Center’s 2012 report, A Pregnancy Test for Schools: The Impact of Education Laws on Pregnant and Parenting Students, as well as its 2009 report, Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation. Before joining the Center, Lara was a Staff Attorney with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, and prior to that she was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago. Lara also worked with the law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery, and was law clerk to then-Chief Judge Marvin Aspen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Lara is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University School of Law.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The Washington Post
Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987. He joined the paper to cover Maryland politics, and has served in various editing positions including metropolitan editor and national political editor . He has covered the Supreme Court since November 2006. He gave up law school plans for a life in newspapers after taking a journalism class in college. It did not occur to him, as it apparently did to others, that he could do both.
Distinguished Fellow, Energy Policy Research Foundation
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an Oxford-educated economist, is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation. She writes and comments regularly on energy, trade law, tariff authority, and regulatory policy, including recent work on Section 301 and executive trade power. From 2022 until February 2026, Diana headed the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation. In President Trump's first term, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation and Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury. She served in the White House under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, including as Chief of Staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, and has testified before Congress on economic and regulatory policy. Diana is the author or coauthor of six books, including Regulating to Disaster, and hundreds of articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Review, Forbes, the UK’s Daily Telegraph and the New York Post.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Studen, National Women's Law Center
Lara S. Kaufmann is Senior Counsel and Director for Education Policy for At-Risk Students. She works on the advancement of women and girls at school and in the workplace. Lara engages in litigation, advocacy, and public education, with a particular focus on improving educational outcomes for at-risk girls, including pregnant and parenting students. Lara co-authored the Center’s 2012 report, A Pregnancy Test for Schools: The Impact of Education Laws on Pregnant and Parenting Students, as well as its 2009 report, Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation. Before joining the Center, Lara was a Staff Attorney with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, and prior to that she was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago. Lara also worked with the law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery, and was law clerk to then-Chief Judge Marvin Aspen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Lara is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University School of Law.
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown Law
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1971, Professor Seidman served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He then was a staff attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service until joining the Law Center faculty in 1976. He teaches a variety of courses in the fields of constitutional and criminal law. He is co-author of a constitutional law casebook and the author of many articles concerning criminal justice and constitutional law. His most recent books are Silence and Freedom (Stanford 2007), Our Unsettled Constitution: A New Defense of Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Yale 2001) and Equal Protection of the Laws (Foundation 2002).
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
Senior Attorney and Counsel for Special Projects, Competitive Enterprise Institute
CEI’s Counsel for Special Projects is Hans Bader. Coming to CEI in 2003, Hans’s prior casework has included suits involving the First Amendment, federalism, and civil rights issues. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in economics and history, and later earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Just before joining CEI, Hans was Senior Counsel at the Center for Individual Rights.
Labor & Employment: 80th Anniversary of the National Labor Relations Act & Congressional Action
Richard A. Epstein, Joan Larsen, John N. Raudabaugh, Bill Samuel, Mark Schneider
2015 National Lawyers Convention
Our nation's private sector labor law is a product of the New Deal and the...
Topics
Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board Push Envelope of Executive Overreach
Much has been written, including on this blog, about the perceived uptick in the amount...
Labor Rules: Union Walk Around Rule and Broadened Joint Employer Standard
Karen Harned
Engage Volume 16, Issue 2
Note from the Editor: This article is about new labor rules, including the so-called union...
The Minimum Wage
Ross Eisenbrey, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Karen Harned, William Kuntz, David Weil
2014 National Lawyers Convention
In January 2014, in his State of the Union Address, President Obama called on Congress...
The Minimum Wage
Ross Eisenbrey, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Karen Harned, William Kuntz, David Weil
2014 National Lawyers Convention
In January 2014, in his State of the Union Address, President Obama called on Congress...
Showcase Panel I: Youth, Employment, and the Law
Jennifer Walker Elrod, Richard A. Epstein, Chai Feldblum, Gail L. Heriot, J.H Verkerke
2014 National Lawyers Convention
This panel will examine intergenerational equity issues raised by employment discrimination laws, including those protecting...
Showcase Panel I: Youth, Employment, and the Law
Jennifer Walker Elrod, Richard A. Epstein, Chai Feldblum, Gail L. Heriot, J.H Verkerke
2014 National Lawyers Convention
This panel will examine intergenerational equity issues raised by employment discrimination laws, including those protecting...
Panel IV: Passion and Prudence in the Political Process: The Debate Over Federal Civil Rights Policy
Robert Barnes, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Gail L. Heriot, Lara S. Kaufmann
Civil Rights in the United States
Emotions sometimes run high in the public debates over race and gender issues. Some claim...
Panel IV: Passion and Prudence in the Political Process: The Debate Over Federal Civil Rights Policy
Robert Barnes, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Gail L. Heriot, Lara S. Kaufmann
Civil Rights in the United States
Emotions sometimes run high in the public debates over race and gender issues. Some claim...
Panel II: Racial Preferences and Promoting Diversity: Are These Policies Taking Us in the Right Direction?
Roger Pilon, Louis Michael Seidman, Stuart S. Taylor, Hans Frank Bader
Civil Rights in the United States
The Obama administration is widely perceived to be an avid proponent of racial preferences. As...