Principal Attorney, Jossey PLLC
Paul H. Jossey is principal attorney at Jossey PLLC. He has practiced law for six years representing clients in both state and federal court in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and Washington, DC.
His wide-ranging practice has included everything from simple contract disputes to First Amendment litigation to international terrorism. Paul has specialized in campaign finance and election law for the past three years. He has now expanded into business startup and capitalization focusing on the crowdfunding provisions of Title III of the JOBS Act of 2012, whose regulations went live on May 16, 2016.
In addition to managing his own firm, Paul is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Competitive Politics where he researches and writes commentary about campaign finance issues. His work has been published in the New York Post, The Hill, The Federalist, The Daily Caller among others.
Prior to starting his own firm, he worked for law firms in Washington, DC and Alexandria, Virginia. After graduating law school he litigated cases for a nonprofit in Atlanta, Georgia.
He is licensed to practice in Georgia, Virginia, and Washington, DC. He holds a Juris Doctor from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
Timothy Massad is currently a Research Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and a consultant on financial regulatory and fintech issues.
Mr. Massad served as Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2014-2017. Under his leadership, the agency implemented the Dodd Frank reforms of the over-the-counter swaps market and harmonized many aspects of cross-border regulation, including reaching a landmark agreement with the European Union on clearinghouse oversight. The agency also declared virtual currencies to be commodities, introduced reforms to address automated trading and strengthened cybersecurity protections.
Previously, Mr. Massad served as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the principal U.S. governmental response to the 2008 financial crisis. During his tenure, Treasury recovered more on all the crisis investments than was disbursed. Mr. Massad was with the Treasury from 2009 to 2014 and also served as a counselor to the Treasury Secretary.
Prior to his government service, Mr. Massad was a partner in the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP. His practice included corporate finance, derivatives and advising boards of directors. He managed the firm’s Hong Kong office from 1998 to 2002 and represented governments and corporations on transactions throughout Asia. Mr. Massad was also one of a small group of lawyers who drafted the original ISDA standard agreements for swaps.
Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Berlau is a senior fellow and Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work focuses on how public policy affects access to capital, entrepreneurship, and investments made by the public and business community alike. In recent years, he has studied the consequences of financial reform efforts passed by Congress like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis including the Dodd-Frank Act, the placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, and the rise of cryptocurrency.
He is also the author of the book George Washington: Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World. The book received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other forums, and was endorsed by eminent historians and scholars such as Richard Brookhiser, Amity Shlaes, and Craig Shirley.
Berlau is a contributing writer for Forbes. His work has been published and cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, National Journal, National Review, American Spectator, Reason Magazine, and more. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including CNBC’s “The Call,” “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell,” Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and Fox Business’ “Cavuto.”
He has testified on the impact of financial regulation before the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A recognized expert on the phenomenon of crowdfunding, Berlau has spoken at prominent conferences such as South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the FinTech Global Expo in San Diego, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit in San Francisco and the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) Summit in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the widely cited paper “Declaration of Crowdfunding Independence: Finance of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
Berlau is an award-winning financial and political journalist. He served as Washington correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily and as a staff writer for Insight magazine, published by The Washington Times. In 2002, he received the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism from Washington’s National Press Club. He was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2003. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1994 with degrees in journalism and economics.
Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice
Robert P. Young, Jr., retired justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, promoted initiatives to measure judicial performance, track public satisfaction, adopt best practices, streamline court processes, and implement technologies that expand public access, increase efficiency, and boost productivity of trial courts. From 2018 to 2019 he served as vice president and general counsel at Michigan State University. Mr. Young previously served 18 years as a member of the Michigan Supreme Court, including as chief justice from 2011 to January 2017. Before that, he was a judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals. Mr. Young has served on the boards of many charitable groups, including the Detroit Urban League, United Community Services of Metropolitan Detroit, and Vista Maria, a resource center for abused and neglected young women and girls. A former commissioner of the Michigan Civil Service Commission, he was a trustee of Central Michigan University, University Liggett School, and the Grosse Pointe Academy. Mr. Young is a former chair of the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce Leadership Detroit. He had been an adjunct professor at Wayne State University Law School for more than 20 years and more recently taught at Michigan State University Law School.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Director of Innovation Policy, International Center for Law & Economics
Kristian Stout, ICLE’s Director of Innovation Policy is an expert in intellectual property, antitrust, telecommunications, and Internet governance. Kristian has been a Fellow at the Internet Law & Policy Foundry, as well as the Eagleton Institute of Politics. Before practicing law, Kristian worked as a technology entrepreneur and a lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University. Kristian served on the board of the New Jersey Leadership Program, and wasthe Chair of the Asset Forfeiture Working Group for the NJ State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He has previously served on the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee for the Federal Communications Commission. Kristian graduated magna cum laude from the Rutgers University School of law, and served on the editorial board of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Legal Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Brent Skorup is a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
Before joining Cato, he was a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University. His research areas include free speech, technology law, Fourth Amendment protections, regulation, and property law. Skorup has published pieces in economics and law journals and in popular media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Reuters, and Wired. He’s appeared as a TV and radio interview guest for news outlets like C‑SPAN, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, and CNBC Asia.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a dissenting opinion at the Illinois Supreme Court, and the ALI's Restatement of the Law of Property have cited his legal research and he has testified as a technology and legal expert in legislative hearings in several states. Skorup has been appointed to several federal and state advisory bodies and he is currently a member of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility Advisory Committee.
Skorup has a BA in economics from Wheaton College and a law degree from the George Mason University School of Law, where he was articles editor for the Civil Rights Law Journal. He was a legal clerk at the FCC’s wireless bureau and Office of General Counsel and at the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
Activism Associate, Institute for Justice
Andrew Meleta is an Activism Associate at the Institute for Justice. He joined the Activism team in 2018 and focuses on municipal regulation and policy and its effect on entrepreneurship. He also co-leads IJ’s Cities Work initiative. Before joining IJ, Andrew worked at the Cato Institute as a fundraising research assistant and as a policy research intern for the Manhattan Institute and Cato. He graduated from George Mason University in 2017 with a B.S. in economics and data analysis. In his free time, Andrew spends time traveling, riding trains, and running.
City Policy Associate, Institute for Justice
Alex Montgomery is IJ’s City Policy Associate. In that role, he produces internal reports and external research products to support activism campaigns.
Currently, Alex’s main focus is fighting for reforms at the grassroots to protect people’s right to earn an honest living. He’s especially interested in reducing red tape that inhibits entrepreneurship, learning from regulatory best-practices in cities across the country.
Alex previously worked at IJ as a Maffucci Fellow. Prior to joining the team, he was a summer fellow at the D.C.-based Hertog Foundation. Born and raised in Western North Carolina, he received his B.A. in Political Science and English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Vice President for Litigation & General Counsel, Goldwater Institute
Jon Riches is the Vice President for Litigation for the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and General Counsel for the Institute. He litigates in federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, regulatory reform, free speech, taxpayer protections, public labor issues, government transparency, and school choice, among others.
Jon has developed and authored several pieces of legislation, including the landmark Right to Earn a Living Act, which provides some of the greatest protections in the country to job-seekers and entrepreneurs facing arbitrary licensing regulations. He also developed legislation eliminating deference to administrative agencies in Arizona—a first-of-its-kind regulatory reform that can serve as a model for the rest of the country.
His work at the Institute has been covered by national media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CBS This Morning, Bloomberg News, and Politico. Jon is also a member of the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project: State and Local Working Group.
Prior to joining the Goldwater Institute, Jon served on active duty in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. While on active duty, Jon represented hundreds of clients, litigated dozens of court-martial cases, and advised commanders on a vast array of legal issues.
He previously clerked for Sen. Jon Kyl on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, worked for the Rules Committee in the Arizona State Senate, and clerked in the Office of Counsel to the President at the White House. Jon received his B.A. from Boston College, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D. from the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law.
Jon served as a presidentially appointed Panel Member on the Federal Service Impasses Panel. He is an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University School of Law. Jon is a native of Phoenix.
Legal Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Brent Skorup is a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
Before joining Cato, he was a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University. His research areas include free speech, technology law, Fourth Amendment protections, regulation, and property law. Skorup has published pieces in economics and law journals and in popular media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Reuters, and Wired. He’s appeared as a TV and radio interview guest for news outlets like C‑SPAN, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, and CNBC Asia.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a dissenting opinion at the Illinois Supreme Court, and the ALI's Restatement of the Law of Property have cited his legal research and he has testified as a technology and legal expert in legislative hearings in several states. Skorup has been appointed to several federal and state advisory bodies and he is currently a member of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility Advisory Committee.
Skorup has a BA in economics from Wheaton College and a law degree from the George Mason University School of Law, where he was articles editor for the Civil Rights Law Journal. He was a legal clerk at the FCC’s wireless bureau and Office of General Counsel and at the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Director of Innovation Policy, International Center for Law & Economics
Kristian Stout, ICLE’s Director of Innovation Policy is an expert in intellectual property, antitrust, telecommunications, and Internet governance. Kristian has been a Fellow at the Internet Law & Policy Foundry, as well as the Eagleton Institute of Politics. Before practicing law, Kristian worked as a technology entrepreneur and a lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University. Kristian served on the board of the New Jersey Leadership Program, and wasthe Chair of the Asset Forfeiture Working Group for the NJ State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He has previously served on the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee for the Federal Communications Commission. Kristian graduated magna cum laude from the Rutgers University School of law, and served on the editorial board of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
Executive Director, International Center for Law & Economics
Ian Adams joined ICLE as Executive Director in April 2020. He is responsible for ICLE’s strategic planning, programmatic implementation, and organizational growth. Ian’s substantive policy work focuses on the disruptive impact of burgeoning technologies on law and regulation, with a particular concentration on automation and the future of work, privacy and insurance.
Earlier in his career, Ian was Vice President of Policy at TechFreedom. Before that, he worked as Associate Vice President of Government Affairs at the R Street Institute and held staff roles in the California and Oregon state legislatures. Ian is also a public policy attorney at the international law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.
Ian is a graduate of Seattle University, with bachelor’s degrees in history and philosophy, and received his juris doctor from the University of Oregon. He is a member of the California, District of Columbia, and Illinois bars.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Paul Avelar is the Managing Attorney of the Institute for Justice Arizona Office. He joined the Institute in March 2010 and litigates free speech, property rights, economic liberty, school choice and other constitutional cases in federal and state courts.
As the head of IJ’s national Braiding Freedom Initiative, Paul represents natural hair braiders across the country to protect their right to earn an honest living. The Initiative uses lawsuits, activism and research to remove laws that require potential braiders to undergo hundreds of costly training hours just to braid hair. Since IJ launched the Braiding Freedom Initiative in 2014, 12 additional states have freed braiders from unnecessary licensing burdens. Paul drafted the model Natural Hair Braiding Protection Act, which has been adopted in Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Texas and South Dakota. He is currently representing braiders in Missouri, where state laws infringe upon their right to earn an honest living.
In his free speech work, Paul has challenged numerous laws that trample First Amendment rights. In Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, he represented candidates and independent groups in a successful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the “matching funds” provision of Arizona’s publicly financed elections system. He represented grassroots groups and individuals in Arizona, Mississippi and Washington, where state laws burdened their political speech by requiring them to register with the government, to navigate complex regulations and to face fines and possible criminal penalties merely because they talked about political issues. In Washington, Paul protected a lawyer’s right to defend, pro-bono, the First Amendment rights of political speakers. Through litigation and legislation, Paul leads the fight against abusive civil forfeiture laws in Arizona and elsewhere.
Paul also co-authored the most comprehensive published study of economic liberty protections in the Arizona Constitution. The Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court appointed Paul to the Task Force on the Review of the Role and Governance Structure of the State Bar of Arizona, where he dissented from the majority report and called on leaders to substantially reform the Bar and state regulation of the practice of law. He often speaks at law schools across the country about constitutional issues and his work at IJ.
Prior to joining IJ-AZ, Paul worked as an attorney in Philadelphia. He clerked for Judge Roger Miner on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Andrew Hurwitz on the Arizona Supreme Court, and Judge Daniel Barker on the Arizona Court of Appeals.
Paul graduated manga cum laude from the Arizona State University College of Law in 2004 and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 2000.
Vice President of Litigation, Southeastern Legal Foundation
Braden H. Boucek serves as Director of Litigation at the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF). His cases at SLF focus on restoring constitutional balance, equal protection, the First Amendment, and property rights. He is an avid defender of America's Founding and a constitutional law professor. He has also actively litigated school choice cases.
Prior to joining SLF, he served as Vice President of Legal Affairs at the Beacon Center of Tennessee, where he worked on economic liberty, dedicated himself to Tennessee's unique constitutional rights, and protecting the free speech rights of professionals.
Braden has been a litigator since 2001. Previously, Braden was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in both Nashville and Memphis for over nine years. During that time, he handled hundreds of cases ranging from Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, Fraud, Counterfeiting, Terrorism and Immigration offenses. Braden has been recognized by his office for performance, winning both the Special Achievement award and Distinguished Service award. Two of his investigations were recognized as the district’s “Case of the Year” by the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. For nearly five years before joining the Department of Justice, Braden served as a prosecutor for the State of Tennessee, first as an Assistant Attorney General and later as an Assistant District Attorney. He has been lead counsel in many jury trials at both the state and federal level. He has also argued dozens of cases before state and federal appellate courts, including the Tennessee Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Braden also served as an extern for the Florida Supreme Court. He obtained his J.D. at Florida State University College of Law, and his B.A. at the University of Richmond.
United States Senator from Oklahoma
Senator Lankford of Oklahoma served four years in the U.S. House of Representatives and was elected to the U.S. Senate to complete an unexpired term on November 4, 2014 and re-elected to a full six-year senate term on November 8, 2016.
As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management, Lankford fights unnecessary and burdensome regulation and advocates for a more restrained federal government.
Personal faith, local decision-making, and opportunity for every person, regardless of their background, are core values for Senator Lankford. Before his time in Congress, from 1995 to 2009, the Senator served as Director of Student Ministry at the Baptist Convention of Oklahoma and Director of the Falls Creek Youth Camp, the largest youth camp in the United States, with more than 51,000 individuals attending each summer.
Committee Assignments:
Senior Vice President, Bipartisan Policy Center
G. William Hoagland is a BPC senior vice president. In this capacity, he helps direct and manage fiscal, health, and economic policy analyses.
Before joining BPC in September 2012, Hoagland served as vice president of public policy for CIGNA Corporation, working with business leaders, trade associations, business coalitions, and interest groups to develop CIGNA policy on health care reform issues at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to joining CIGNA, Hoagland completed 33 years of federal government service, including 25 years on the U.S. Senate staff. From 2003 to 2007, he served as the director of budget and appropriations in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. He assisted in evaluating the fiscal impact of major legislation and helped to coordinate budget policy for the Senate leadership.
From 1982 to 2003, Hoagland served as a staff member and director of the Senate Budget Committee, reporting to U.S. Sen. Pete V. Domenici, chairman and ranking member of the committee during this period. He participated in major federal budget negotiations, including the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Budget Deficit Reduction Act, the 1990 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, and the historic 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement.
In 1981, he served as the administrator of the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service and as a special assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture. He was one of the first employees of the Congressional Budget Office in 1975, working with its first director, Alice Rivlin.
In both 1997 and 2005, National Journal listed him as one of the “Washington 100 Decision Makers” and referred to him as a “bottom-liner who is not a hard-liner.” Roll Call consistently named Hoagland as one of the top 50 Hill staffers. In 2002, he received the James L. Blum Award for Distinguished Service in Budgeting. The National Association of State Budget Officers honored him in 2004 with its Leadership in Budgeting Award, and in 2006 he was inducted as a fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration.
Hoagland is an affiliate professor of public policy at the George Mason University and a board member of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the National Advisory Committee to the Workplace Flexibility 2010 Commission. In 2009, he was appointed to the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform examining the overall structure of the budget, authorization, and appropriations process, and was a member of BPC’s Debt Reduction Task Force that published Restoring America’s Future in November 2010. He coordinated BPC’s 2013 report, A Bipartisan Rx for Patient-Centered Care and System-Wide Cost Containment. In April 2015, he co-chaired the National Academy of Social Insurance report, “Addressing Pricing Power in Health Care Markets.”
Hoagland attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and holds degrees from Purdue University and The Pennsylvania State University. His family’s Indiana family farm was recognized as a “Hoosier Homestead” for having remained in the family for over a century.
Associate Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law
Matthew B. Lawrence is associate professor of law. Lawrence researches and publishes on health care finance, administrative law, and addictions. He has written widely on these subjects with articles published or forthcoming in Columbia Law Review; Florida Law Review; Duke Law Journal; Harvard Law and Policy Review; the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics; New York University Law Review; William & Mary Law Review; and Yale Law Journal, among other journals.
In addition to his teaching and scholarship, Lawrence possesses a wealth of experience in the federal government. He most recently served as a special legal advisor to the US House of Representatives Budget Committee (Majority). Previously, he worked on health care regulatory issues during the Obama and Trump Administrations as a trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Federal Programs Branch and attorney advisor in the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of General Counsel in the Executive Office of the President. In 2016, he received an individual special commendation award for his defense of Affordable Care Act programs while serving as trial attorney in the US Department of Justice.
Before coming to Emory Law Lawrence was assistant professor of law at Pennsylvania State University (Dickinson Law), where he also held a courtesy appointment as assistant professor at Penn State College of Medicine in the Department of Surgery. He was recognized by the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics as a 2017 Health Law Scholar, and is affiliate faculty at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology, where he was previously a fellow.
Lawrence is a graduate of New York University School of Law and Brown University; and he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Senior Fellow - Governance Studies, Brookings Institution
Molly Reynolds is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. She studies Congress, with an emphasis on how congressional rules and procedure affect domestic policy outcomes.
She is the author of the book, "Exceptions to the Rule: The Politics of Filibuster Limitations in the U.S. Senate," which explores creation, use, and consequences of the budget reconciliation process and other procedures that prevent filibusters in the U.S. Senate. Current research projects include work on oversight in the House of Representatives, congressional reform, and the congressional budget process. She also supervises the maintenance of "Vital Statistics on Congress," Brookings’s long-running resource on the first branch of government.
Reynolds received her Ph.D. in political science and public policy from the University of Michigan and her A.B. in government from Smith College, and previously served as a senior research coordinator in the Governance Studies program at Brookings. In addition, she has served as an instructor at George Mason University.
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.
Deep Dive Episode 218 – A Discussion on Stablecoins
Paul H. Jossey, Timothy G. Massad, John Berlau
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
Stablecoins are unique types of digital tokens that have emerged out of the cryptocurrency revolution...
Overturning Poletown: County of Wayne v. Hathcock | Taking Poletown [The FedSoc Films Podcast]
Robert P. Young
For over 20 years, the Michigan Supreme Court ruling in Poletown Neighborhood Council v. Detroit,...
Morissette v. United States [SCOTUSbrief]
Joshua Kleinfeld
Short video featuring Joshua Kleinfeld
Morissette v. United States is a landmark case in American law. How did a case...
Deep Dive Episode 211 – Section 230, Common Law, and Free Speech
Kristian Stout, Brent Skorup, Adam Thierer
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
Social media has become a prominent way for lawmakers, public agencies, experts, and governments to...
Explainer Episode 34 – Institute for Justice's "Barriers to Business" Report
Andrew Meleta, Alex Montgomery, Jonathan Riches
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
"To better understand the challenges small businesses face and to offer recommendations," Institute for Justice's...
Section 230, Common Law, and Free Speech
Brent Skorup, Kristian Stout, Adam Thierer
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
Social media has become a prominent way for lawmakers, public agencies, experts, and governments to...
Topics
The Incoherence of the Biden Administration’s Labor-Market Policies
The Biden administration is pushing two irreconcilable theories about labor markets. One theory argues that...
Tech Roundup Episode 14 – Telematics in Cars and the Regulation of Auto Insurance
Ian David Adams
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
Ian Adams joined the podcast to break down the policy aspects of a recent Twitter...
Explainer Episode 33 – Litigation Update: Shaw v. Metro. Gov't
Paul Avelar, Braden H. Boucek
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
On January 26, the Tennessee State Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Shaw et. al....
Necessary & Proper Episode 74: Can Congress Improve Budget Transparency and Process?
James Lankford, G. William Hoagland, Matthew B. Lawrence, Molly Reynolds, Ilya Shapiro
Some experts argue that the first and most important place for congressional reform is its...