Partner, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Brian J. Paul is an appellate lawyer and leads law teams in high-stakes commercial litigation. He has briefed and argued everything from weighty abstract constitutional issues to dollars-and-cents business issues and everything in-between, both on appeal and in trial courts around the country. A member of the American Law Institute, recent past-president of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association and top-tier ranked Chambers appellate lawyer, Brian had one client say about him: “Brian is one of the most respected and skilled appellate lawyers, not only in Indianapolis but across the country. He is trusted to deliver timely guidance on complex issues.” Another said: “He is excellent. I enjoyed working with him. He is able to put things into layman’s terms and explains things really well. His written and oral advocacy are short, crisp and to the point.”
Clients hire Brian to digest the complex, and make the complex simple and compelling for busy, generalist judges. In his writing, he strives to cut through jargon and legalese, and distill things down to what’s important. In his oral advocacy, by intense preparation, he strives to be the advocate whom judges trust for the right answers. In the dozens of cases he has argued, Brian has helped clients win on both sides of the “v.” His recent representations include:
Energy and Environment Correspondent, National Journal
Coral Davenport is the energy and environment correspondent for National Journal. Prior to joining National Journal in 2010, Davenport covered energy and environment for Politico, and before that, for Congressional Quarterly. In 2010, she was a fellow with the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting. From 2001 to 2004, Davenport worked in Athens, Greece, as a correspondent for numerous publications, including the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, covering politics, economics, international relations and terrorism in southeastern Europe. She also covered the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, and was a contributing writer to the Fodor’s, Time Out, Eyewitness and Funseekers’ guidebook series. Davenport started her journalism career at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts, after graduating from Smith College with a degree in English literature.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
ROGER MARTELLA co-leads the Environmental practice group at Sidley Austin LLP. He rejoined Sidley Austin LLP after serving as the General Counsel of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, concluding 10 years of litigating and handling complex environmental and natural resource matters at the Department of Justice and EPA. In 2015, Roger was recognized by Who’s Who Legal as the environmental lawyer of the year globally.
Roger’s practice focuses on three primary areas. First, Roger advises companies on developing strategic approaches to achieve their goals in light of rapidly developing demands to addressclimate change, promote sustainability and utilize clean energy. Second, Roger handles a broad range of environmental and natural resource litigation and mediation. Third, Roger advises multinational companies on compliance with environmental laws in the United States, China, the European Union and other nations.
Roger counsels approximately 50 of the world’s leading conventional and renewable energy, industrial, transportation, agricultural, forestry, and technology companies on bet-the-company environmental issues, regulatory matters, and litigation including transitioning to an era of legal controls addressing greenhouse gas emissions, increasingly stringent pollutant controls, alternative and clean energy, hydraulic fracturing, and sustainability both in the United States and abroad.
Roger employs a strategic, forward-looking approach to solving emerging law and policy issues across the world that have the potential to create both opportunities and risks for domestic and multinational energy and manufacturing companies and industries. Roger’s approach is to build a collaborative and coalition-building framework that seeks the strongest possible results through up front coordination with government, industry, and NGO stakeholders, leveraging strong honest broker relations with government officials and understanding of government approach to realize resolutions that have led to extraordinary favorable resolutions offering significant regulatory relief to industries and pennies-on-the-dollar enforcement settlements for companies.
Roger was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate as EPA General Counsel. In that role, Roger served as EPA’s chief legal advisor supervising an office of 350 lawyers and staff in Washington and 10 regional offices. In particular, Roger led the team responsible for developing for the first time under the Clean Air Act the federal government’s climate change legal framework and options in response to the landmark Supreme Court decision Massachusetts v. EPA, which held greenhouse gases to be air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
Energy and Environment Correspondent, National Journal
Coral Davenport is the energy and environment correspondent for National Journal. Prior to joining National Journal in 2010, Davenport covered energy and environment for Politico, and before that, for Congressional Quarterly. In 2010, she was a fellow with the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting. From 2001 to 2004, Davenport worked in Athens, Greece, as a correspondent for numerous publications, including the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, covering politics, economics, international relations and terrorism in southeastern Europe. She also covered the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, and was a contributing writer to the Fodor’s, Time Out, Eyewitness and Funseekers’ guidebook series. Davenport started her journalism career at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts, after graduating from Smith College with a degree in English literature.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
ROGER MARTELLA co-leads the Environmental practice group at Sidley Austin LLP. He rejoined Sidley Austin LLP after serving as the General Counsel of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, concluding 10 years of litigating and handling complex environmental and natural resource matters at the Department of Justice and EPA. In 2015, Roger was recognized by Who’s Who Legal as the environmental lawyer of the year globally.
Roger’s practice focuses on three primary areas. First, Roger advises companies on developing strategic approaches to achieve their goals in light of rapidly developing demands to addressclimate change, promote sustainability and utilize clean energy. Second, Roger handles a broad range of environmental and natural resource litigation and mediation. Third, Roger advises multinational companies on compliance with environmental laws in the United States, China, the European Union and other nations.
Roger counsels approximately 50 of the world’s leading conventional and renewable energy, industrial, transportation, agricultural, forestry, and technology companies on bet-the-company environmental issues, regulatory matters, and litigation including transitioning to an era of legal controls addressing greenhouse gas emissions, increasingly stringent pollutant controls, alternative and clean energy, hydraulic fracturing, and sustainability both in the United States and abroad.
Roger employs a strategic, forward-looking approach to solving emerging law and policy issues across the world that have the potential to create both opportunities and risks for domestic and multinational energy and manufacturing companies and industries. Roger’s approach is to build a collaborative and coalition-building framework that seeks the strongest possible results through up front coordination with government, industry, and NGO stakeholders, leveraging strong honest broker relations with government officials and understanding of government approach to realize resolutions that have led to extraordinary favorable resolutions offering significant regulatory relief to industries and pennies-on-the-dollar enforcement settlements for companies.
Roger was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate as EPA General Counsel. In that role, Roger served as EPA’s chief legal advisor supervising an office of 350 lawyers and staff in Washington and 10 regional offices. In particular, Roger led the team responsible for developing for the first time under the Clean Air Act the federal government’s climate change legal framework and options in response to the landmark Supreme Court decision Massachusetts v. EPA, which held greenhouse gases to be air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
Senior Counsel, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP
Arthur Gajarsa is a senior counsel in the Litigation/Controversy Department and a member of the Intellectual Property Litigation Practice. He joined the firm in 2012.
Prior to joining WilmerHale, Judge Gajarsa had a long and distinguished career in the judiciary. He was nominated to the Federal Circuit in 1996 by President Clinton, confirmed by the US Senate in 1997 and served for 15 years, retiring in June 2012. Prior to his appointment, Judge Gajarsa was a well-recognized litigator who also practiced corporate law, intellectual property, securities law and general litigation with various law firms as a partner or principal officer. His career includes service at the Department of Commerce, Department of the Interior and Department of Defense.
Judge Gajarsa has represented Native American tribal interests for whom he made several appearances before the US Supreme Court. In 1987, he joined the firm of Joseph, Gajarsa, McDermott & Reiner, P.C., where he continued his international and corporate law interests, including an expansive representation of Native American tribal interests.
After graduation from law school, Judge Gajarsa served as a law clerk for the Honorable Joseph J. McGarraghy of the US District Court in Washington DC. In 1968, he became an associate in the office of the General Counsel of Aetna Life & Casualty. Secretary of the Interior, Walter J. Hickle, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Louis R. Bruce, subsequently appointed him as a special counsel to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior. He remained in that position until 1971.
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986. After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law. Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.
Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of: Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.
In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy.
In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.
He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.
Former Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Judge Michel served for more than 22 years on the Federal Circuit, retiring on May 31, 2010. From December 25, 2004 until his retirement, he also discharged the duties of Chief Judge of this national court, serving simultaneously on the U.S. Judicial Conference -- the Judiciary's governing body -- and by appointment of the Chief Justice on its seven-judge Executive Committee.
He judged several thousand appeals and authored more than 800 opinions, one third concerning intellectual property law. Intellectual Asset Management magazine inducted him into its Hall of Fame and he was designated one of the 50 most influential leaders in intellectual property law in the world. His contributions were also recognized by lifetime achievement and similar awards by the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA); Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation (IPO); the American Bar Association's Intellectual Property Section; Managing Intellectual Property magazine; the Sedona Conference; the Patent and Trademark Office Society (PTOS); the New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Associations; and the William C. Connor, the Giles S. Rich, and the Richard Linn Intellectual Property American Inns of Court. In 2010 the Los Angeles IP Inn was renamed in his honor as the Paul R. Michel IP Inn.
Judge Michel received the Jefferson Medal, the Eli Whitney Award, and the Katz-Kiley Prize as well as Honorary Doctor of Law degrees from the Catholic University of America and the John Marshall Law School. He is a lifetime Member of Honore of FICPI, the international association of private practitioners of intellectual property law. Williams College granted him the Kellogg Award for "outstanding leadership in law and public service."
Judge Michel has written numerous articles on patent law and advocacy, taught related courses and master classes at George Washington University, the University of Akron, and John Marshall law schools, serving as well on their IP advisory boards and on counterpart boards at the universities of California (Berkley), Washington, and Maryland. He co-authored a casebook, Patent Litigation and Strategy (West, 1999) and an August 2010 editorial in the New York Times on strengthening the patent system to promote prosperity and create new jobs.
A frequent speaker at conferences and law schools during his judicial tenure and since, he retired from a lifetime appointment to be free to speak out on the national need for better patent policy and protection of intellectual property and the vital, unmet resource needs of the courts, the PTO, the International Trade Commission, and other IP-related agencies. He was appointed Distinguished Scholar in Residence by IPO, following his retirement. Judge Michel also consults for law firms and their clients in intellectual property litigations, conducting moot courts, mock trials, case evaluations, editing briefs, advising on strategy and providing mediation and arbitration services.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has published extensively on why patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights have been—and should be—legally secured to innovators and creators as property rights. His scholarship has been relied on by the United States Supreme Court, by lower federal courts, and by U.S. federal agencies. He has been invited to testify numerous times before the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on intellectual property legislation. His writings on intellectual property policy have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Investors Business Daily, and in other media outlets. His journal articles can be downloaded here.
Professor Mossoff is a longstanding member of the Executive Committee of the Intellectual Property Practice Group of the Federalist Society, on which he served as Chairperson from 2016-2018, and he is Chair of the Intellectual Property Working Group of the Regulatory Transparency Project of the Federalist Society. He is a Senior Fellow and Chair of the Forum for Intellectual Property at the Hudson Institute, a Visiting Intellectual Property Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding. He is a member of the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of ANSI and he has served as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the IEEE-USA, on which he remains a member in good standing.
Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School
Following his graduation from Harvard Law School, Judge Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. From 1963 to 1965, he was assistant to Commissioner Philip Elman of the Federal Trade Commission. For the next two years, he was assistant to the solicitor general of the United States. Prior to going to Stanford Law School in 1968 as Associate Professor, Judge Posner served as general counsel of the President's Task Force on Communications Policy. He first came to the University of Chicago Law School in 1969, and was Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law prior to his appointment in 1981 as a judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was the chief judge of the court from 1993 to 2000.
Judge Posner has written a number of books, including Economic Analysis of Law (9th ed., 2014); The Economics of Justice (1981); Law and Literature (3rd ed. 2009); The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990); Cardozo: A Study in Reputation (1990); The Essential Holmes (1992); Sex and Reason (1992); Overcoming Law (1995); The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform (1996); Law and Legal Theory in England and America (1996); The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999); Antitrust Law (2d ed. 2001); Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (2003); Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004); Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (2005); How Judges Think (2008); A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (2009); The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy (2010); The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice (coauthored with Lee Epstein and William M. Landes) (2013); and Reflections on Judging (2013). He also wrote books on the Clinton impeachment and Bush v. Gore, many articles in legal and economic journals, and book reviews in the popular press.
He has taught administrative law, antitrust, economic analysis of law, history of legal thought, conflict of laws, regulated industries, law and literature, the legislative process, family law, primitive law, torts, civil procedure, evidence, health law and economics, law and science, and jurisprudence. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Legal Studies and (with Orley Ashenfelter) the American Law and Economics Review. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and he was the President of the American Law and Economics Association from 1995 to 1996 and the honorary President of the Bentham Club of University College, London, for 1998. He has received honorary degrees from leading American and foreign universities, along with a number of awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Award in Law from the University of Virginia in 1994, the Marshall-Wythe Medallion from the College of William and Mary in 1998, the 2003 Research Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, the 2003 John Sherman Award from the US Department of Justice, the Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence from the Federal bar Council in 2005, the Thomas C. Schelling Award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2005, and the Ronald H. Coase Medal from the American Law and Economics Association in 2010.
Senior Counsel, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP
Arthur Gajarsa is a senior counsel in the Litigation/Controversy Department and a member of the Intellectual Property Litigation Practice. He joined the firm in 2012.
Prior to joining WilmerHale, Judge Gajarsa had a long and distinguished career in the judiciary. He was nominated to the Federal Circuit in 1996 by President Clinton, confirmed by the US Senate in 1997 and served for 15 years, retiring in June 2012. Prior to his appointment, Judge Gajarsa was a well-recognized litigator who also practiced corporate law, intellectual property, securities law and general litigation with various law firms as a partner or principal officer. His career includes service at the Department of Commerce, Department of the Interior and Department of Defense.
Judge Gajarsa has represented Native American tribal interests for whom he made several appearances before the US Supreme Court. In 1987, he joined the firm of Joseph, Gajarsa, McDermott & Reiner, P.C., where he continued his international and corporate law interests, including an expansive representation of Native American tribal interests.
After graduation from law school, Judge Gajarsa served as a law clerk for the Honorable Joseph J. McGarraghy of the US District Court in Washington DC. In 1968, he became an associate in the office of the General Counsel of Aetna Life & Casualty. Secretary of the Interior, Walter J. Hickle, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Louis R. Bruce, subsequently appointed him as a special counsel to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior. He remained in that position until 1971.
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986. After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law. Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.
Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of: Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.
In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy.
In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.
He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.
Former Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Judge Michel served for more than 22 years on the Federal Circuit, retiring on May 31, 2010. From December 25, 2004 until his retirement, he also discharged the duties of Chief Judge of this national court, serving simultaneously on the U.S. Judicial Conference -- the Judiciary's governing body -- and by appointment of the Chief Justice on its seven-judge Executive Committee.
He judged several thousand appeals and authored more than 800 opinions, one third concerning intellectual property law. Intellectual Asset Management magazine inducted him into its Hall of Fame and he was designated one of the 50 most influential leaders in intellectual property law in the world. His contributions were also recognized by lifetime achievement and similar awards by the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA); Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation (IPO); the American Bar Association's Intellectual Property Section; Managing Intellectual Property magazine; the Sedona Conference; the Patent and Trademark Office Society (PTOS); the New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Associations; and the William C. Connor, the Giles S. Rich, and the Richard Linn Intellectual Property American Inns of Court. In 2010 the Los Angeles IP Inn was renamed in his honor as the Paul R. Michel IP Inn.
Judge Michel received the Jefferson Medal, the Eli Whitney Award, and the Katz-Kiley Prize as well as Honorary Doctor of Law degrees from the Catholic University of America and the John Marshall Law School. He is a lifetime Member of Honore of FICPI, the international association of private practitioners of intellectual property law. Williams College granted him the Kellogg Award for "outstanding leadership in law and public service."
Judge Michel has written numerous articles on patent law and advocacy, taught related courses and master classes at George Washington University, the University of Akron, and John Marshall law schools, serving as well on their IP advisory boards and on counterpart boards at the universities of California (Berkley), Washington, and Maryland. He co-authored a casebook, Patent Litigation and Strategy (West, 1999) and an August 2010 editorial in the New York Times on strengthening the patent system to promote prosperity and create new jobs.
A frequent speaker at conferences and law schools during his judicial tenure and since, he retired from a lifetime appointment to be free to speak out on the national need for better patent policy and protection of intellectual property and the vital, unmet resource needs of the courts, the PTO, the International Trade Commission, and other IP-related agencies. He was appointed Distinguished Scholar in Residence by IPO, following his retirement. Judge Michel also consults for law firms and their clients in intellectual property litigations, conducting moot courts, mock trials, case evaluations, editing briefs, advising on strategy and providing mediation and arbitration services.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has published extensively on why patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights have been—and should be—legally secured to innovators and creators as property rights. His scholarship has been relied on by the United States Supreme Court, by lower federal courts, and by U.S. federal agencies. He has been invited to testify numerous times before the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on intellectual property legislation. His writings on intellectual property policy have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Investors Business Daily, and in other media outlets. His journal articles can be downloaded here.
Professor Mossoff is a longstanding member of the Executive Committee of the Intellectual Property Practice Group of the Federalist Society, on which he served as Chairperson from 2016-2018, and he is Chair of the Intellectual Property Working Group of the Regulatory Transparency Project of the Federalist Society. He is a Senior Fellow and Chair of the Forum for Intellectual Property at the Hudson Institute, a Visiting Intellectual Property Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding. He is a member of the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of ANSI and he has served as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the IEEE-USA, on which he remains a member in good standing.
Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School
Following his graduation from Harvard Law School, Judge Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. From 1963 to 1965, he was assistant to Commissioner Philip Elman of the Federal Trade Commission. For the next two years, he was assistant to the solicitor general of the United States. Prior to going to Stanford Law School in 1968 as Associate Professor, Judge Posner served as general counsel of the President's Task Force on Communications Policy. He first came to the University of Chicago Law School in 1969, and was Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law prior to his appointment in 1981 as a judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was the chief judge of the court from 1993 to 2000.
Judge Posner has written a number of books, including Economic Analysis of Law (9th ed., 2014); The Economics of Justice (1981); Law and Literature (3rd ed. 2009); The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990); Cardozo: A Study in Reputation (1990); The Essential Holmes (1992); Sex and Reason (1992); Overcoming Law (1995); The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform (1996); Law and Legal Theory in England and America (1996); The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999); Antitrust Law (2d ed. 2001); Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (2003); Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004); Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (2005); How Judges Think (2008); A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (2009); The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy (2010); The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice (coauthored with Lee Epstein and William M. Landes) (2013); and Reflections on Judging (2013). He also wrote books on the Clinton impeachment and Bush v. Gore, many articles in legal and economic journals, and book reviews in the popular press.
He has taught administrative law, antitrust, economic analysis of law, history of legal thought, conflict of laws, regulated industries, law and literature, the legislative process, family law, primitive law, torts, civil procedure, evidence, health law and economics, law and science, and jurisprudence. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Legal Studies and (with Orley Ashenfelter) the American Law and Economics Review. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and he was the President of the American Law and Economics Association from 1995 to 1996 and the honorary President of the Bentham Club of University College, London, for 1998. He has received honorary degrees from leading American and foreign universities, along with a number of awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Award in Law from the University of Virginia in 1994, the Marshall-Wythe Medallion from the College of William and Mary in 1998, the 2003 Research Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, the 2003 John Sherman Award from the US Department of Justice, the Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence from the Federal bar Council in 2005, the Thomas C. Schelling Award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2005, and the Ronald H. Coase Medal from the American Law and Economics Association in 2010.
Partner, Bracewell & Giuliani LLP
Jason Hutt advises energy companies, manufacturers, project developers, investor groups and financial institutions about environmental risks and liabilities associated with regulatory compliance, project development, congressional investigations, internal investigations and corporate transactions. He also assists in the defense of administrative, civil and criminal proceedings involving environmental enforcement agencies at the federal and state levels.
Mr. Hutt counsels clients on current and upcoming regulatory developments at the nexus of environmental and energy policy, with focused attention on natural gas development (including hydraulic fracturing), responses to the Deepwater Horizon incident, and climate change. He is nationally recognized for his work on shale gas issues on behalf of producers, oil field services companies, hedge funds and technology developers.
Mr. Hutt routinely is involved in identifying, evaluating and managing environmental risks and opportunities associated with corporate acquisitions, divestitures and financings, including environmental due diligence, purchase and sale agreement negotiation, and post-closing integration efforts. Within the energy sector, his representative experience includes transactions involving petroleum refineries, liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals, renewable energy projects (e.g., wind, biofuels and geothermal), natural gas processing plants, cogeneration facilities, oil and gas wells, pipelines, propane retailers and synfuel facilities.
Representative work in other sectors involves operations and industries such as chemical manufacturers, oil field services, independent tank terminal operators, glass manufacturing, textiles manufacturing, uranium mining, industrial cleaning operations, hazardous waste management facilities, paper and plastic manufacturing facilities, and medical equipment manufacturing facilities.
Mr. Hutt performs environmental risk evaluations and advises on permit strategy and contract negotiation in relation to project development. His most recent work has involved onshore and offshore LNG import terminals, highway expansions, coal-fired power plant siting on tribal lands, utility privatizations at military bases, international undersea pipelines, interstate undersea electric transmission cables and a pump-storage project.
Distinguished Professor of Law, Widener University Delaware Law School
James R. May is Distinguished Professor of Law, and Chief Sustainability Officer, Widener University (USA). He also serves as co-Director of the Environmental Rights Institute and co-Director of the Dignity Rights Project at Widener University Delaware Law School. May is also an Adjunct Professor of Graduate Engineering, and founded and co-chairs a program on marine policy. May is the editor of Principles of Constitutional Environmental Law (American Bar Association), and co-editor of Shale Gas and the Future of Energy (Edward Elgar), Global Environmental Constitutionalism (Cambridge), Environmental Constitutionalism in Context (Edward Elgar), New Frontiers in Environmental Constitutionalism (United National Environment Programme, forthcoming), Implementing Environmental Constitutionalism(Cambridge, forthcoming), Standards of Environmental Constitutionalism (Cambridge, forthcoming), and Human Rights and the Environment: Indivisibility, Dignity and Legality (Edward Elgar, forthcoming). May is also author or co-author of more than 100 articles and book chapters, and numerous amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. federal courts of appeal on issues including environmental law, constitutional law, comparative constitutional, international environmental law, environmental rights, and human dignity.
May founded two non-profit environmental organizations (the Mid-Atlantic and the Eastern Environmental Law Centers), and has litigated more than 200 public interest environmental claims, including cases throughout the Mid-Atlantic to restore water and air quality, conserve rare species and habitats, and protect biodiversity.
May is a Member of Faculty to the National Judicial College, and a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, for whom he has served as a delegate to Haiti and China. May has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Embassy on legal education in the Philippines, and to the Hungarian Embassy and the Moroccan Human Rights Council on constitutional reform. May is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, serves on numerous boards, and has won numerous awards, including from Pace University, Sierra Club, and the American Canoe Association. He earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas (Bowman Scholar), J.D. from the University of Kansas (Appellate Advocacy Scholar and national moot court champion), and LL.M. in Environmental Law from Pace University, where he was the Feldshuh Fellow and graduated first in class.
May is a member of the bar in the State of Pennsylvania, several federal courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Associate Attorney, Sierra Club Environmental Law Program
Craig Segall started at the Sierra Club in 2008 as an environmental law fellow. Before coming to the Club, Craig was a law clerk to the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and of Stanford Law School, where he spent most of his time in the basement working with Stanford's environmental law clinic. When not practicing law, Craig keeps busy outdoors. In recent years, he has barely beaten a 12-year-old to the top of Mount Whitney, accidentally driven transmission-deep into a salt lake, and, on an ill-advised hike in South Africa, provoked a surprisingly aggressive ostrich.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
Judge Tymkovich, of Denver, Colorado, was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, and confirmed in April 2003. On October 1, 2015 he became Chief Circuit Judge and held this position until October 2022. He was Chair of the US Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources from 2011 to 2015. Since 2008 he has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Election Law. He is a member of the Doyle Inn of Court, the American Law Institute, and the International Society of Barristers. Since he joined the Circuit, Judge Tymkovich has hosted judicial delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, and has also represented the United States in programs at Kiev and Yalta in Ukraine.
Partner, Bracewell & Giuliani LLP
Jason Hutt advises energy companies, manufacturers, project developers, investor groups and financial institutions about environmental risks and liabilities associated with regulatory compliance, project development, congressional investigations, internal investigations and corporate transactions. He also assists in the defense of administrative, civil and criminal proceedings involving environmental enforcement agencies at the federal and state levels.
Mr. Hutt counsels clients on current and upcoming regulatory developments at the nexus of environmental and energy policy, with focused attention on natural gas development (including hydraulic fracturing), responses to the Deepwater Horizon incident, and climate change. He is nationally recognized for his work on shale gas issues on behalf of producers, oil field services companies, hedge funds and technology developers.
Mr. Hutt routinely is involved in identifying, evaluating and managing environmental risks and opportunities associated with corporate acquisitions, divestitures and financings, including environmental due diligence, purchase and sale agreement negotiation, and post-closing integration efforts. Within the energy sector, his representative experience includes transactions involving petroleum refineries, liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals, renewable energy projects (e.g., wind, biofuels and geothermal), natural gas processing plants, cogeneration facilities, oil and gas wells, pipelines, propane retailers and synfuel facilities.
Representative work in other sectors involves operations and industries such as chemical manufacturers, oil field services, independent tank terminal operators, glass manufacturing, textiles manufacturing, uranium mining, industrial cleaning operations, hazardous waste management facilities, paper and plastic manufacturing facilities, and medical equipment manufacturing facilities.
Mr. Hutt performs environmental risk evaluations and advises on permit strategy and contract negotiation in relation to project development. His most recent work has involved onshore and offshore LNG import terminals, highway expansions, coal-fired power plant siting on tribal lands, utility privatizations at military bases, international undersea pipelines, interstate undersea electric transmission cables and a pump-storage project.
Distinguished Professor of Law, Widener University Delaware Law School
James R. May is Distinguished Professor of Law, and Chief Sustainability Officer, Widener University (USA). He also serves as co-Director of the Environmental Rights Institute and co-Director of the Dignity Rights Project at Widener University Delaware Law School. May is also an Adjunct Professor of Graduate Engineering, and founded and co-chairs a program on marine policy. May is the editor of Principles of Constitutional Environmental Law (American Bar Association), and co-editor of Shale Gas and the Future of Energy (Edward Elgar), Global Environmental Constitutionalism (Cambridge), Environmental Constitutionalism in Context (Edward Elgar), New Frontiers in Environmental Constitutionalism (United National Environment Programme, forthcoming), Implementing Environmental Constitutionalism(Cambridge, forthcoming), Standards of Environmental Constitutionalism (Cambridge, forthcoming), and Human Rights and the Environment: Indivisibility, Dignity and Legality (Edward Elgar, forthcoming). May is also author or co-author of more than 100 articles and book chapters, and numerous amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. federal courts of appeal on issues including environmental law, constitutional law, comparative constitutional, international environmental law, environmental rights, and human dignity.
May founded two non-profit environmental organizations (the Mid-Atlantic and the Eastern Environmental Law Centers), and has litigated more than 200 public interest environmental claims, including cases throughout the Mid-Atlantic to restore water and air quality, conserve rare species and habitats, and protect biodiversity.
May is a Member of Faculty to the National Judicial College, and a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, for whom he has served as a delegate to Haiti and China. May has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Embassy on legal education in the Philippines, and to the Hungarian Embassy and the Moroccan Human Rights Council on constitutional reform. May is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, serves on numerous boards, and has won numerous awards, including from Pace University, Sierra Club, and the American Canoe Association. He earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas (Bowman Scholar), J.D. from the University of Kansas (Appellate Advocacy Scholar and national moot court champion), and LL.M. in Environmental Law from Pace University, where he was the Feldshuh Fellow and graduated first in class.
May is a member of the bar in the State of Pennsylvania, several federal courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Associate Attorney, Sierra Club Environmental Law Program
Craig Segall started at the Sierra Club in 2008 as an environmental law fellow. Before coming to the Club, Craig was a law clerk to the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and of Stanford Law School, where he spent most of his time in the basement working with Stanford's environmental law clinic. When not practicing law, Craig keeps busy outdoors. In recent years, he has barely beaten a 12-year-old to the top of Mount Whitney, accidentally driven transmission-deep into a salt lake, and, on an ill-advised hike in South Africa, provoked a surprisingly aggressive ostrich.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
Judge Tymkovich, of Denver, Colorado, was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, and confirmed in April 2003. On October 1, 2015 he became Chief Circuit Judge and held this position until October 2022. He was Chair of the US Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources from 2011 to 2015. Since 2008 he has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Election Law. He is a member of the Doyle Inn of Court, the American Law Institute, and the International Society of Barristers. Since he joined the Circuit, Judge Tymkovich has hosted judicial delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, and has also represented the United States in programs at Kiev and Yalta in Ukraine.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Professor of Law Michael S. Greve joined the faculty of the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University in fall 2012 after having served as John G. Searle Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specialized in constitutional law, courts, and business regulation and served as chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI, Greve was founder and co-director of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm specializing in constitutional litigation.
Greve has served previously as an adjunct professor at a number of universities, including Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities, and has been a visiting professor at Boston College since 2004. He was awarded a PhD and an MA in government by Cornell University. Greve also earned a Diploma from the University of Hamburg in Germany.
A prolific writer, Greve is the author of nine books and a multitude of articles appearing in scholarly publications, as well as numerous editorials, short articles, and book reviews. He is a frequent speaker for professional and scholarly organizations and has made many appearances on radio and television.
In addition Greve has provided congressional and state legislative testimony, has lobbied and consulted in federal agency proceedings, and has provided litigation services and management in over 30 cases, including matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
General Counsel, Prospera Group
Dranias serves as NeWay Capital LLC’s General Counsel, handling all corporate legal matters. Prior to this, he was Senior Litigation Counsel with the Government Accountability & Special Litigation Unit of the Arizona Attorney General. He also serves as Policy Advisor and Research Fellow with the Heartland Institute, as an expert and Speaker’s Bureau member with the Federalist Society, a Law and Civil Liberties Speaker for Students for Liberty, a Council of Scholars member with Compact for America Educational Foundation, as well as an Adjunct Instructor teaching Business Ethics and Law at Grand Canyon University.
Previously, Dranias served as President & Executive Director of Compact for America Educational Foundation where he led national efforts to organize the states to propose and ratify a federal Balanced Budget Amendment. Prior to that, Dranias was General Counsel, Policy Development Director and Constitutional Policy Director at the Goldwater Institute. Dranias led the Institute’s successful challenge to Arizona’s system of government campaign financing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he was an attorney with the Institute for Justice for three years and an attorney in private practice in Chicago for eight years, where he served as Young Lawyers Section co-editor of the Chicago Bar Association Record and earned the Oliver Wendell Holmes Award for his service.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
President, Institute for Liberty and Democracy
Mr. de Soto is currently President of the ILD —headquartered in Lima, Peru— considered byThe Economistas one of the two most important think tanks in the world.Timemagazine chose him as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special May 1999 issue "Leaders for the New Millennium", and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. In its 85th anniversary edition, Forbes named Mr. de Soto as one of 15 innovators “who will reinvent your future”. In January 2000,Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, the German development magazine, described Mr. de Soto as one of the most important development theoreticians of the last millennium. In October 2005, over 20,000 readers ofProspectmagazine of the UK andForeign Policyof the US ranked him among the top 13 “public intellectuals” in the world from the magazines’ joint list of 100.
Mr. de Soto has served as an economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, as President of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization (CIPEC), as CEO of Universal Engineering Corporation (Continental Europe’s largest consulting engineering firm), as a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and as a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank.
Currently, Mr. de Soto, together with his colleagues at the ILD, is focused on designing and implementing capital formation programs to empower the poor in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and former Soviet Nations. Some 30 heads of state have invited him to carry out these ILD programs in their countries. He also co-chairs with former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright the Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Poor,and currently serves as honorary co-chair on various boards and organizations, including the World Justice Project.
Mr. de Soto has published two books about economic and political development: The Other Path, in the mid- 1980s, and at the end of 2000, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Both books have been international bestsellers – translated into some 20 languages
Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
With his work in regulatory takings and other aspects of property law, professor of law Steven Eagle plays an important role in the ongoing dialogue among American legal scholars, lawyers, and judges on the proper interpretation of property rights in the Constitution. He is the author of a leading property treatise and scholarly and popular articles and teaches in programs for judges and the practicing bar.
Professor Eagle came to George Mason in 1987 and also has taught at the law schools of Vanderbilt University, the University of Toledo, and Pace University. He earned his B.B.A. from the City College of New York (1965) and his J.D. from Yale Law School (1970). Professor Eagle teaches the first-year course, Property, Land Use Planning, and an advanced constitutional law seminar on property rights.
Professor of Law, Vermont Law School
John Echeverria is a Professor of Law at Vermont Law School where he teaches Property, Public Law and a wide range of environmental and natural resource law courses. Prior to joining the Vermont Law School faculty in 2009, he served for 12 years as Executive Director of the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. He also was General Counsel of the National Audubon Society and General Counsel and Conservation Director of American Rivers, Inc., and was an Associate for four years in the Washington, D.C. office of Hughes, Hubbard & Reed. He served for one year as law clerk to the Honorable Gerhard A. Gesell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia immediately after graduating from law school.
Professor Echeverria has written several books and numerous scholarly articles on environmental and natural resource law topics. He has published pieces for more general audiences in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has represented state and local governments, environmental organizations, and planning groups in a variety of legal matters at all levels of the federal and state court systems. In 2007, Professor Echeverria received the Jefferson Fordham Advocacy Award from the American Bar Association to recognize outstanding excellence within the area of state and local government law over a lifetime of achievement. In addition to teaching at Vermont Law School, he has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor Echeverria received a JD degree from the Yale Law School. He received a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as a BA degree from Yale College (summa cum laude).
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
President, Institute for Liberty and Democracy
Mr. de Soto is currently President of the ILD —headquartered in Lima, Peru— considered byThe Economistas one of the two most important think tanks in the world.Timemagazine chose him as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special May 1999 issue "Leaders for the New Millennium", and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. In its 85th anniversary edition, Forbes named Mr. de Soto as one of 15 innovators “who will reinvent your future”. In January 2000,Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, the German development magazine, described Mr. de Soto as one of the most important development theoreticians of the last millennium. In October 2005, over 20,000 readers ofProspectmagazine of the UK andForeign Policyof the US ranked him among the top 13 “public intellectuals” in the world from the magazines’ joint list of 100.
Mr. de Soto has served as an economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, as President of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization (CIPEC), as CEO of Universal Engineering Corporation (Continental Europe’s largest consulting engineering firm), as a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and as a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank.
Currently, Mr. de Soto, together with his colleagues at the ILD, is focused on designing and implementing capital formation programs to empower the poor in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and former Soviet Nations. Some 30 heads of state have invited him to carry out these ILD programs in their countries. He also co-chairs with former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright the Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Poor,and currently serves as honorary co-chair on various boards and organizations, including the World Justice Project.
Mr. de Soto has published two books about economic and political development: The Other Path, in the mid- 1980s, and at the end of 2000, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Both books have been international bestsellers – translated into some 20 languages
Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
With his work in regulatory takings and other aspects of property law, professor of law Steven Eagle plays an important role in the ongoing dialogue among American legal scholars, lawyers, and judges on the proper interpretation of property rights in the Constitution. He is the author of a leading property treatise and scholarly and popular articles and teaches in programs for judges and the practicing bar.
Professor Eagle came to George Mason in 1987 and also has taught at the law schools of Vanderbilt University, the University of Toledo, and Pace University. He earned his B.B.A. from the City College of New York (1965) and his J.D. from Yale Law School (1970). Professor Eagle teaches the first-year course, Property, Land Use Planning, and an advanced constitutional law seminar on property rights.
Professor of Law, Vermont Law School
John Echeverria is a Professor of Law at Vermont Law School where he teaches Property, Public Law and a wide range of environmental and natural resource law courses. Prior to joining the Vermont Law School faculty in 2009, he served for 12 years as Executive Director of the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. He also was General Counsel of the National Audubon Society and General Counsel and Conservation Director of American Rivers, Inc., and was an Associate for four years in the Washington, D.C. office of Hughes, Hubbard & Reed. He served for one year as law clerk to the Honorable Gerhard A. Gesell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia immediately after graduating from law school.
Professor Echeverria has written several books and numerous scholarly articles on environmental and natural resource law topics. He has published pieces for more general audiences in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has represented state and local governments, environmental organizations, and planning groups in a variety of legal matters at all levels of the federal and state court systems. In 2007, Professor Echeverria received the Jefferson Fordham Advocacy Award from the American Bar Association to recognize outstanding excellence within the area of state and local government law over a lifetime of achievement. In addition to teaching at Vermont Law School, he has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor Echeverria received a JD degree from the Yale Law School. He received a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as a BA degree from Yale College (summa cum laude).
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
From Hubris to Humility: Who Should Make Decisions About Environmental Law?
John Copeland Nagle, Brian J. Paul
The Indianapolis Lawyers Chapter
On May 16, 2013, the Indianapolis Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society hosted an event...
Environmental Law and Regulation
Coral Davenport, Roger Martella, David B. Rivkin
First Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
On June 11, 2013, the Federalist Society's Executive Branch Review Project held its First Annual...
Environmental Law and Regulation
Coral Davenport, Roger Martella, David B. Rivkin
First Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
On June 11, 2013, the Federalist Society's Executive Branch Review Project held its First Annual...
Is the Patent System Working or Broken? A Discussion with Four Distinguished Federal Judges
Arthur J. Gajarsa, Douglas H. Ginsburg, Paul Redmond Michel, Adam Mossoff, Richard Posner
Intellectual Property Practice Group and the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at George Mason University School of Law
Today, people read almost daily reports about the "broken patent system" in newspaper articles, blogs...
Is the Patent System Working or Broken? A Discussion with Four Distinguished Federal Judges
Arthur J. Gajarsa, Douglas H. Ginsburg, Paul Redmond Michel, Adam Mossoff, Richard Posner
Intellectual Property Practice Group and the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at George Mason University School of Law
Today, people read almost daily reports about the "broken patent system" in newspaper articles, blogs...
Environmental Law: Federalism and the Energy Revolution: Can State and Federal Regulators Adapt to Innovations?
Jason B. Hutt, James R. May, Craig Segall, Timothy M. Tymkovich
2012 National Lawyers Convention
The Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted this panel on "Federalism and the...
Environmental Law: Federalism and the Energy Revolution: Can State and Federal Regulators Adapt to Innovations?
Jason B. Hutt, James R. May, Craig Segall, Timothy M. Tymkovich
2012 National Lawyers Convention
The Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted this panel on "Federalism and the...
The Compact Clause and Interstate Compacts
Michael S. Greve, Nicholas C. Dranias, Dean Reuter
Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group Podcast
The Compact Clause of the Constitution provides that "[n]o State shall, without the Consent of...
Environmental Law: Property Rights: The Forgotten Spark of the Arab Spring
Hernando de Soto, Steven J. Eagle, John D. Echeverria, Donald J. Kochan, Jerry E. Smith
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted this panel on "Property Rights: The Forgotten...
Environmental Law: Property Rights: The Forgotten Spark of the Arab Spring
Hernando de Soto, Steven J. Eagle, John D. Echeverria, Donald J. Kochan, Jerry E. Smith
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted this panel on "Property Rights: The Forgotten...