Shareholder, Lawson Huck Gonzalez, PLLC
Jason Gonzalez is an experienced appellate and litigation attorney and regularly consults on executive branch government affairs. He represents businesses and state agencies in state and federal courts in contracts, government procurements, insurance disputes, class actions, tort defense, banking, finance, professional licenses, and elections matters.
Recently, Jason advocated for business association clients in two amicus briefs filed before the Florida Supreme Court, supporting the adoption of the federal summary judgment standard, a development widely viewed as the most significant Florida civil justice system reform in the modern era. In 2019, Florida Politics reported that Jason was representing parties in more pending civil cases at the Florida Supreme Court than any other attorney in the State.
Over the course of his career, Jason has been at the forefront of emerging legal developments, helping to shape Florida’s justice system.
Jason has served on the Florida Supreme Court Nominating Commission, as Chairman of the First District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission and Chairman of the Second Judicial Circuit Judicial Nominating Commission, as well as two terms as General Counsel and former Executive Board Member of the Republican Party of Florida. Prior to co-founding Lawson Huck Gonzalez, Jason served as General Counsel to the Florida Governor.
In 2010, Jason served as lead counsel for Transocean Ltd. in its Florida Panhandle litigation and regulatory matters immediately following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. Over a two-year period, Jason successfully obtained orders dismissing or removing every one of the more than 70 individual and class action lawsuits filed against Transocean in Florida.
Partner, Hunton Andrews Kurth
Mr. Leopold is a Partner with the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth in Washington, DC. He is the former Senate-confirmed general counsel of the U.S. EPA from 2018-2020, and he previously was a litigator at the U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division form 2007-2013. As EPA General Counsel, he counseled on the development and defense of EPA’s most significant rulemakings, including the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, and the Safe Affordable Fuel‐Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule, as well as several pesticide actions. He was personally involved in defending EPA in litigation, including the County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund in the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Leopold’s prior government service also includes working in Florida as general counsel of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. He now represents clients in regulatory advocacy before federal agencies, litigates federal environmental actions, and defends clients with EPA enforcement issues.
Shareholder, Lawson Huck Gonzalez, PLLC
Jason Gonzalez is an experienced appellate and litigation attorney and regularly consults on executive branch government affairs. He represents businesses and state agencies in state and federal courts in contracts, government procurements, insurance disputes, class actions, tort defense, banking, finance, professional licenses, and elections matters.
Recently, Jason advocated for business association clients in two amicus briefs filed before the Florida Supreme Court, supporting the adoption of the federal summary judgment standard, a development widely viewed as the most significant Florida civil justice system reform in the modern era. In 2019, Florida Politics reported that Jason was representing parties in more pending civil cases at the Florida Supreme Court than any other attorney in the State.
Over the course of his career, Jason has been at the forefront of emerging legal developments, helping to shape Florida’s justice system.
Jason has served on the Florida Supreme Court Nominating Commission, as Chairman of the First District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission and Chairman of the Second Judicial Circuit Judicial Nominating Commission, as well as two terms as General Counsel and former Executive Board Member of the Republican Party of Florida. Prior to co-founding Lawson Huck Gonzalez, Jason served as General Counsel to the Florida Governor.
In 2010, Jason served as lead counsel for Transocean Ltd. in its Florida Panhandle litigation and regulatory matters immediately following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. Over a two-year period, Jason successfully obtained orders dismissing or removing every one of the more than 70 individual and class action lawsuits filed against Transocean in Florida.
Partner, Hunton Andrews Kurth
Mr. Leopold is a Partner with the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth in Washington, DC. He is the former Senate-confirmed general counsel of the U.S. EPA from 2018-2020, and he previously was a litigator at the U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division form 2007-2013. As EPA General Counsel, he counseled on the development and defense of EPA’s most significant rulemakings, including the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, and the Safe Affordable Fuel‐Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule, as well as several pesticide actions. He was personally involved in defending EPA in litigation, including the County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund in the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Leopold’s prior government service also includes working in Florida as general counsel of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. He now represents clients in regulatory advocacy before federal agencies, litigates federal environmental actions, and defends clients with EPA enforcement issues.
Of Counsel, Spencer Fane LLP
Anthony J. “A.J.” Ferate has built a multi-faceted background in the areas of the law, policy, energy, campaigns and elections, and defense over the last 20 years.
Through recent representation as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (“OIPA”), A.J. held responsibilities over government efforts outside of the legislative branch on matters as broad as water, electric generation, commodity marketing, land matters, and seismicity. A.J. also maintained responsibility for legal matters at OIPA, including amicus briefing in appellate matters. A.J.’s extensive experience also includes management of public policy strategy for a Fortune 500 company.
For the past eleven years, A.J. has volunteered as General Counsel and spokesman for the Oklahoma Republican Party and has represented a number of elected officials, including U.S. Senator James Lankford, former statewide elected officials, a number of state legislators, and members of Congress.
Additionally, A.J. has assisted elected officials serve their constituents in all branches of government. Early in his career, A.J. held legislative aide duties in the Nebraska Legislature, then went on to work for former Nebraska Treasurer David Heineman. A.J. gained experience in the judiciary while serving Judge Gary L. Lumpkin at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal appellate court in Oklahoma. Following this service, A.J. began work with Denise A. Bode of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, assisting her in her duties regulating 70 percent of Oklahoma’s economy, including oil and gas and electric utilities.
A.J. honorably served ten years as an intelligence analyst for the United States Naval Reserve, including time at the Office of Naval Intelligence in the greater Washington DC area.
Opinion pieces authored or ghostwritten by A.J. have been published in the Seattle Times, Politico, Law360, The Oklahoman, Tulsa World and The Journal Record. A.J. has also been interviewed by national and international newspapers, and has also appeared on national radio programs including NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show and On Point with Tom Ashbrook.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
On March 20, 2018, Judge Elizabeth L. Branch (Lisa) was sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge Branch attended and graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina (B.A., cum laude, 1990), and Emory University School of Law (J.D., with distinction, 1994).
After graduating from law school, Judge Branch served as a federal law clerk to The Honorable J. Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia from 1994 to 1996. Following her clerkship, Judge Branch joined the litigation department of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta as an associate and then a partner.
From 2004 to 2008, Judge Branch was a senior official in the Administration of President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. She served first as the Associate General Counsel for Rules and Legislation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then as the Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U. S. Office of Management and Budget.
She returned to Smith Gambrell in 2008 as a litigation partner. Judge Branch then was appointed to the Court of Appeals of Georgia by Governor Nathan Deal, taking office on September 4, 2012, where she served until March 19, 2018.
Judge Branch is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Eric R. Claeys is Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has written widely in the fields of property, private law, and constitutional law. Professor Claeys’s current research interests focus on flourishing- and labor-based natural rights justifications for property—in American property theory, in intellectual property, and in contemporary regulation of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing. He is a member of the American Law Institute, he serves on the ALI’s Members’ Consultative Group for the first Restatement of Copyright, and he also serves as an adviser to the Restatement (Fourth) of the Law of Property.
Professor Claeys received his JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He received his AB from Princeton University, and he is a former visiting fellow and current member of Princeton’s Politics Department’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. After law school, Professor Claeys clerked for the Hon. Melvin Brunetti, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Hon. William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.
Professor Claeys’s main teaching interests include Property, Torts, Jurisprudence, and Intellectual Property. In recent years, he has also taught Water Law, Remedies, Estates and Trusts, Trade Secrecy, Constitutional Law, Torts, and Oil and Gas law. Spring 2018, he is teaching Torts and Jurisprudence as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
Howard J. and Katherine W. Aibel Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Richard Lazarus is the Howard J. and Katherine W. Aibel Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law, Supreme Court Advocacy, and Torts. Professor Lazarus has represented the United States, state and local governments, and environmental groups in the United States Supreme Court in more than 40 cases and has presented oral argument in 14 of those cases, most recently for respondent in Murr v. Wisconsin (2017). He also filed briefs on behalf of governmental parties in many other regulatory takings cases including Tahoe Sierra Preservation Counsel v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (2002), Palazzolo v. Rhode Island (2001), Suitum v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (1997), Dolan v. City of Tigard (1004), Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992), Nollan v. California Coastal Council (1987), San Diego Gas & Electric v. City of San Diego (1981), and Agins v. City of Tiburon (1980). He writes broadly on topics relating to Supreme Court decision-making, focusing on both advocacy before and within the Court, and on environmental law. He will be publishing next year a book on the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which tells the inside story of the case based on interviews with the relevant Executive Branch officials, competing advocates, and judges and Justices on the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. See Richard Lazarus. The Rule of Five: Making History at the Supreme Court (Harvard University Press 2020).Before joining the Harvard law faculty, he was the Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professor of Law at Georgetown University, where he founded the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute and served as its faculty director. Professor Lazarus previously worked for the Solicitor General's Office (1986-89), where he was Assistant to the Solicitor General. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979 and has a B.S. from the University of Illinois in Chemistry and a B.A. in Economics.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
On March 20, 2018, Judge Elizabeth L. Branch (Lisa) was sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge Branch attended and graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina (B.A., cum laude, 1990), and Emory University School of Law (J.D., with distinction, 1994).
After graduating from law school, Judge Branch served as a federal law clerk to The Honorable J. Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia from 1994 to 1996. Following her clerkship, Judge Branch joined the litigation department of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta as an associate and then a partner.
From 2004 to 2008, Judge Branch was a senior official in the Administration of President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. She served first as the Associate General Counsel for Rules and Legislation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then as the Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U. S. Office of Management and Budget.
She returned to Smith Gambrell in 2008 as a litigation partner. Judge Branch then was appointed to the Court of Appeals of Georgia by Governor Nathan Deal, taking office on September 4, 2012, where she served until March 19, 2018.
Judge Branch is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Eric R. Claeys is Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has written widely in the fields of property, private law, and constitutional law. Professor Claeys’s current research interests focus on flourishing- and labor-based natural rights justifications for property—in American property theory, in intellectual property, and in contemporary regulation of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing. He is a member of the American Law Institute, he serves on the ALI’s Members’ Consultative Group for the first Restatement of Copyright, and he also serves as an adviser to the Restatement (Fourth) of the Law of Property.
Professor Claeys received his JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He received his AB from Princeton University, and he is a former visiting fellow and current member of Princeton’s Politics Department’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. After law school, Professor Claeys clerked for the Hon. Melvin Brunetti, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Hon. William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.
Professor Claeys’s main teaching interests include Property, Torts, Jurisprudence, and Intellectual Property. In recent years, he has also taught Water Law, Remedies, Estates and Trusts, Trade Secrecy, Constitutional Law, Torts, and Oil and Gas law. Spring 2018, he is teaching Torts and Jurisprudence as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
Howard J. and Katherine W. Aibel Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Richard Lazarus is the Howard J. and Katherine W. Aibel Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law, Supreme Court Advocacy, and Torts. Professor Lazarus has represented the United States, state and local governments, and environmental groups in the United States Supreme Court in more than 40 cases and has presented oral argument in 14 of those cases, most recently for respondent in Murr v. Wisconsin (2017). He also filed briefs on behalf of governmental parties in many other regulatory takings cases including Tahoe Sierra Preservation Counsel v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (2002), Palazzolo v. Rhode Island (2001), Suitum v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (1997), Dolan v. City of Tigard (1004), Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992), Nollan v. California Coastal Council (1987), San Diego Gas & Electric v. City of San Diego (1981), and Agins v. City of Tiburon (1980). He writes broadly on topics relating to Supreme Court decision-making, focusing on both advocacy before and within the Court, and on environmental law. He will be publishing next year a book on the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which tells the inside story of the case based on interviews with the relevant Executive Branch officials, competing advocates, and judges and Justices on the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. See Richard Lazarus. The Rule of Five: Making History at the Supreme Court (Harvard University Press 2020).Before joining the Harvard law faculty, he was the Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professor of Law at Georgetown University, where he founded the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute and served as its faculty director. Professor Lazarus previously worked for the Solicitor General's Office (1986-89), where he was Assistant to the Solicitor General. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979 and has a B.S. from the University of Illinois in Chemistry and a B.A. in Economics.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Internet Policy Counsel and Director of Appellate Litigation, TechFreedom
Corbin Barthold is TechFreedom's Internet Policy Counsel and Director of Appellate Litigation.
Corbin clerked for the Hon. Steven D. Merryday (M.D. Fla.) and the Hon. Robert H. Cleland (E.D. Mich.). After his clerkships, he became an associate, and later a partner, in the Los Angeles office of Browne George Ross LLP, where he engaged in high-stakes complex litigation. He then served as Senior Litigation Counsel at Washington Legal Foundation, a D.C. public-interest firm, where his practice focused on appeals involving administrative law, the separation of powers, antitrust, and tech policy.
Corbin received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He also holds a B.A., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of California, San Diego, and an Msc., with distinction, from the London School of Economics.
Vice President of Law & Policy, Property and Environment Research Center
Jonathan Wood is vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). An attorney, Jonathan has litigated environmental and property-rights cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, federal and state appellate courts, and trial courts across the country. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, Reason, and other outlets. And his research has been published in journals such as Environmental Law Reporter, Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Pace Environmental Law Review, and California Western Law Review.
Prior to coming to PERC, Jonathan was a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he litigated cases concerning the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal environmental laws. He was co-counsel for forest landowners in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that private land could not be arbitrarily regulated as critical habitat under the ESA. He also led a successful effort to reform regulation of threatened species to better align the incentives of private landowners with the interests of rare species.
Jonathan has testified before several congressional committees on wildlife conservation and endangered species topics. He has also appeared on national television and radio, including NPR’s All Things Considered, C-Span’s Washington Journal, Stossel, Fox News, and Hill.TV.
Jonathan has a law degree from the New York University School of Law, a masters degree in economic policy from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Texas. He is on the executive committee for the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group and a steering committee member for the Environmental Law Institute’s Emerging Leaders Initiative.
Partner, Consovoy McCarthy Park PLLC
Jeffrey Harris is an experienced litigator who focuses on constitutional, appellate, and regulatory matters. He is currently a partner at Consovoy McCarthy Park PLLC. In 2015, he was named to the Legal Times list of “D.C.’s Rising Stars,” which identified “some of the most accomplished young attorneys in the D.C. area.” Mr. Harris previously served as Associate Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). In that role, he was second in charge of the 50-person office within the Executive Office of the President that reviews all significant federal regulatory actions and coordinates regulatory policy across the federal government.
Before his government service, Mr. Harris was a partner at Bancroft PLLC and Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where his practice focused on Supreme Court, appellate, and complex litigation. Mr. Harris has extensive experience litigating before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has been the lead drafter of more than 100 merits briefs, amicus briefs, and certiorari-stage briefs, and he has contributed to 10 wins in cases before the Court.
Mr. Harris has also litigated numerous high-profile cases in the federal courts of appeals, federal and state trial courts, administrative agencies, and arbitral tribunals. He has successfully argued before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits, achieving wins on behalf of airlines, telecommunications providers, and pro bono clients. He has also argued numerous dispositive motions in federal district court and has participated in the trial of a significant voting rights case.
Mr. Harris served as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Judges David Sentelle and Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He earned his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and his A.B. magna cum laude from Georgetown University. He is a member of the District of Columbia and Virginia bars.
Senior Legal Fellow, the Meese Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
Paul J. Larkin is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Meese Institute for the Rule of Law at Advancing American Freedom. Paul has held various positions in the federal and state governments throughout his career, such as being an attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, Special Agent-in-Charge and Acting Director of the Criminal Investigation Division at the Environmental Protection Agency, and a member of the Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform Commission and of the Juvenile Justice Reform Commission in the Office of Virginia Governor George Allen.
He has also worked at Verizon Communications and two law firms in Washington, D.C. His current research is principally in the fields of drug policy, criminal justice policy, and administrative law and policy. He has published numerous articles in law and public policy journals, both in print and online.
Regulatory Policy Advocate, Public Citizen, Inc.
Amit Narang is an expert on issues related to the federal regulatory process. He served as articles editor of The Administrative Law Review, a widely circulated legal journal focused on regulatory law and policy. He obtained his J.D. from American University-Washington College of Law and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Vice President of Law & Policy, Property and Environment Research Center
Jonathan Wood is vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). An attorney, Jonathan has litigated environmental and property-rights cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, federal and state appellate courts, and trial courts across the country. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, Reason, and other outlets. And his research has been published in journals such as Environmental Law Reporter, Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Pace Environmental Law Review, and California Western Law Review.
Prior to coming to PERC, Jonathan was a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he litigated cases concerning the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal environmental laws. He was co-counsel for forest landowners in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that private land could not be arbitrarily regulated as critical habitat under the ESA. He also led a successful effort to reform regulation of threatened species to better align the incentives of private landowners with the interests of rare species.
Jonathan has testified before several congressional committees on wildlife conservation and endangered species topics. He has also appeared on national television and radio, including NPR’s All Things Considered, C-Span’s Washington Journal, Stossel, Fox News, and Hill.TV.
Jonathan has a law degree from the New York University School of Law, a masters degree in economic policy from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Texas. He is on the executive committee for the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group and a steering committee member for the Environmental Law Institute’s Emerging Leaders Initiative.
Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Josh Blackman is a national thought leader on constitutional law and the United States Supreme Court. Josh’s work was quoted during two presidential impeachment trials. He has testified before Congress and advises federal and state lawmakers. Josh regularly appears on TV, including NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the BBC. Josh is also a frequent guest on NPR and other syndicated radio programs. He has published commentaries in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and leading national publications.
Since 2012, Josh has served as a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. He holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law. Josh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Josh has written more than seven dozen law review articles that have been cited more than a thousand times. Josh was selected as the Jurist of the Year by the Texas Journal of Law & Public Policy, received the inaugural Meese III Originalism Award, and was awarded the Inaugural Joseph Story Award. Josh was selected by Forbes Magazine for the “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy. Josh is the President of the Harlan Institute, and founded FantasySCOTUS, the Internet’s Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracyand posts@JoshMBlackman.
Associate Professor, UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law
Zvi S. Rosen is an Associate Professor at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law and the Faculty Director of the Franklin Pierce Society for Intellectual Property. He has served as a Assistant Professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Law, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, and as a Visiting Scholar and Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
In 2015-2016, he was the Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the U.S. Copyright Office. Mr. Rosen received his J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 2005 and LLM in Intellectual Property in 2006 from the George Washington University Law School. He has practiced at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP as well as smaller firms and his own practice, and clerked for the Hon. Thomas B. Bennett of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Alabama. He has written extensively on the development of modern copyright and trademark law, as well as on bankruptcy law.
Deputy General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office
Kevin R. Amer is deputy general counsel for the United States Copyright Office. He was appointed to the position effective March 3, 2019.
In his position, Amer assists the General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights in providing legal guidance to the Office’s divisions, promulgating regulations governing the administration of the copyright system, advising congressional offices and other federal agencies, and developing legal positions in copyright litigation and other matters.
Amer joined the Copyright Office in 2013 as counsel in the Office of Policy and International Affairs, and served as senior counsel in that office from 2015 to 2019. Before joining the Office, he spent several years in private practice in Washington, DC, focusing on appellate litigation. Previously, he served as a law clerk to the Hon. Charles R. Wilson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Amer earned his JD from Yale Law School. He earned his AB in history and literature from Harvard University.
Recent Developments from the EPA
Jason B. Gonzalez, Matthew Z. Leopold
2020 Annual Florida Chapters Conference
On January 31-February 1, 2020, The Federalist Society's Florida lawyers chapters hosted their annual Florida...
Recent Developments from the EPA
Jason B. Gonzalez, Matthew Z. Leopold
2020 Annual Florida Chapters Conference
On January 31-February 1, 2020, The Federalist Society's Florida lawyers chapters hosted their annual Florida...
Dinosaur Bones & Mineral Rights [POLICYbrief]
Anthony J. Ferate
Short video featuring A.J. Ferate
In 2006, an extraordinary fossil of two dinosaurs engaged in battle was found on a...
Originalism and Constitutional Property Rights Jurisprudence
Lisa Branch, Eric R. Claeys, Richard J. Lazarus, Thomas W. Merrill, Ilya Somin
2019 National Lawyers Convention
On November 16, 2019, the Federalist Society's Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted...
Originalism and Constitutional Property Rights Jurisprudence
Lisa Branch, Eric R. Claeys, Richard J. Lazarus, Thomas W. Merrill, Ilya Somin
2019 National Lawyers Convention
On November 16, 2019, the Federalist Society's Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted...
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument Teleforum: Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian
Corbin K. Barthold, Jonathan Wood
In Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian, the Supreme Court will determine whether the Comprehensive Environmental...
An Unconstitutional Attempt to Address Affordable Housing
Jeffrey M. Harris
Federalist Society Review, Volume 20
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
The Congressional Review Act in an Election Year
Paul James Larkin, Amit Narang, Jonathan Wood
In 2017, Congress and the President used the Congressional Review Act to disapprove 14 agency...
Allen v. Cooper - Post-Argument SCOTUScast
Josh Blackman, Zvi Rosen, Kevin Amer
featuring Zvi Rosen, Josh Blackman, and Kevin Amer
On Nov. 5, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in Allen v. Cooper, which...
Topics
Yim Court Turns Judicial Restraint on its Head
The Washington Supreme Court last week issued an astonishing decision in Yim v. Seattle* that...