Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Gary Lawson joined the University of Florida Levin College of Law faculty on July 1, 2024, after twenty-four years at Boston University School of Law and eleven years at Northwestern University School of Law. While at Boston University, he was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in 2022 – the highest faculty honor within the university. He has authored or co-authored nine editions of a textbook on administrative law, a textbook on constitutional law, five university press books, one popular press book, and more than one hundred scholarly articles on topics ranging from aspects of constitutional theory and history to the proof of legal propositions. His works have been cited in more than twenty opinions of United States Supreme Court justices. He is a founding member, and serves on the Board of Directors, of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Richard H. Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. His acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (now in its fourth edition), helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. The Law of Democracy systematically explores legal and policy issues concerning the structure of democratic elections and institutions, such as the role of money in politics, the design of election districts, the regulation of political parties, the design of voting systems, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and similar issues. He has written extensively on the rise of political polarization in the United States, the Voting Rights Act, the dysfunction of America’s political processes, the role of the Supreme Court in overseeing American democracy, the powers of the American President and Congress, and he has criticized excessively “romantic” understandings of democracy. In addition to his scholarship on these issues, he has written on national-security law, the design of the regulatory state, and American constitutional history and theory.
Respect for his expertise in these areas is reflected in frequent citations of his work in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the translation of his work into many languages, and his frequent public lectures and appearances around the world, including his nomination with the NBC News Team for an Emmy Award for coverage of the 2000 Presidential election litigation.
His work has been translated and published in Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In addition to his scholarship, Professor Pildes plays an active role litigating in these areas. He has won two cases before the United States Supreme Court, including a 2015 victory in Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, a case involving race and redistricting. He served as counsel to a group of former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission in litigation defending the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; as counsel in election litigation to the Puerto Rico Electoral Commission; as counsel to the government of Puerto Rico; as a federal court-appointed independent expert on voting rights litigation; and as counsel in successful Supreme Court litigation that challenged the way the United States Tax Court operated. He was also a senior legal advisor to the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of President Obama.
Pildes received his A.B. in physical chemistry summa cum laude from Princeton, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he served as Supreme Court Note Editor on the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing law in Boston, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan Law School, before joining the NYU School of Law in 2001.
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Theodore B. Olson is a Partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C. office; a founder of the Firm’s Crisis Management, Sports Law, and Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Groups.
Mr. Olson was Solicitor General of the United States during the period 2001-2004. From 1981-1984, he was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. Except for those two intervals, he has been a lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. since 1965.
Selected by Time magazine in 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Mr. Olson is one of the nation’s premier appellate and United States Supreme Court advocates. He has argued 65 cases in the Supreme Court and has prevailed in over 75% of those cases. These include the two Bush v Gore cases arising out of the 2000 presidential election; Citizens United v Federal Election Commission; Hollingsworth v Perry, the case affirming the overturning of California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages; Murphy v NCAA, overturning a federal law prohibiting states from authorizing sports betting; and U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security v Regents of the Univ. of Calif., challenging the Trump Administration’s rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”). Mr. Olson’s practice is concentrated on appellate and constitutional law, federal legislation, media and commercial disputes, and assisting clients with strategies for the containment, management and resolution of major legal crises. He has handled cases at all levels of state and federal court systems throughout the United States. Mr. Olson co-authored “Redeeming the Dream, the Case for Marriage Equality” with David Boies. Both were featured in HBO’s award-winning documentary, “The Case Against 8.”
Mr. Olson's Supreme Court arguments have included cases involving separation of powers; federalism; voting rights; the Tenth Amendment; the First Amendment; the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses; jury trial rights; punitive damages; takings of property; the Commerce Clause; administrative law; taxation; criminal law; sports wagering; copyright, patent and antitrust; securities; campaign finance; foreign sovereign immunities; telecommunications; the environment; the internet; the Supremacy Clause; and other federal constitutional and statutory questions. As Solicitor General, during the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Olson was the Government's principal advocate in the United States Supreme Court, responsible for supervising and coordinating all appellate litigation of the United States, and a legal adviser to the President and the Attorney General. As Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration, Mr. Olson was the Executive Branch's principal legal adviser, rendering legal guidance to the President and to the heads of the Executive Branch departments on a wide range of constitutional and federal statutory questions, and assisting in formulating and articulating the Executive Branch's position on constitutional issues.
Mr. Olson has served as private counsel to two Presidents, Ronald W. Reagan and George W. Bush, in addition to serving those two Presidents in high-level positions in the Department of Justice. He has twice been awarded the United States Department of Justice's Edmund J. Randolph Award, its highest award for public service and leadership, and also received the Department of Defense's Distinguished Public Service Award, its highest civilian award, for his advocacy in the courts of the United States, including the Supreme Court. He also received the American Bar Association Medal, its highest award for “exceptionally distinguished service by a lawyer or lawyers to the cause of American jurisprudence.” Mr. Olson is to receive the 2021 Jack Valenti Friend of the White House Fellows Award in the Fall of 2021 to be presented by the White House Fellows Foundation and Association.
Mr. Olson is a member of the Commission on White House Fellowships; a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation; a member of the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society; the Board of Directors of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; and the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial Foundation. He was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in 2007. He served on the President's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from 2006 to 2008; and of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2010 to 2020. He was Co-Chair of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy from 2008-2009, and served two terms on the Board of Directors of the National Center for State Courts.
Mr. Olson is a Fellow of both the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He has been repeatedly listed in legal publications as one of the nation’s leading appellate lawyers. The late New York Times columnist William Safire described Mr. Olson as his generation's "most persuasive advocate" before the Supreme Court and "the most effective Solicitor General in decades.”
Mr. Olson received his law degree in 1965 from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) where he was a member of the California Law Review and Order of the Coif. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of the Pacific, where he was recognized as the outstanding graduating student in both forensics and journalism. He has written and lectured extensively on appellate advocacy, oral communication in the courtroom, civil justice reform, and constitutional and administrative law.
Leitner Family Professor of International Law and Co-Founder & Co-Director of the Center on Asian Americans & the Law, Fordham University School of Law
Thomas H. Lee is the Leitner Family Professor of International Law at Fordham, where he teaches civil procedure, constitutional law, federal courts, international law, and the U.S. law of civil-military relations. His meticulously researched and historically-grounded scholarship has argued that the Eleventh Amendment reflected the classical international law principle that only a sovereign state—not its citizens or subjects— has rights against other sovereign states; that the Alien Tort Statute was a national-security peacekeeping statute, not an international human-rights statute, enacted in 1789 when the United States was a militarily weak state; and that the Natural Born Citizen Clause regarding presidential eligibility reflected natural-law principles of membership by descent as well as domestic birthplace. His current research examines the nature of Article III judicial power and the role of the federal courts in American society.
He is Co-Director of the Center on Asian Americans and the Law, Special Counsel at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, and a Member of the American Law Institute. He was Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, a Member of the ICSID Panel of Conciliators, Adviser to the Constitutional Court of Korea, and Visiting Professor at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Virginia law schools, as well as Faculty Director of International and Graduate Studies at Fordham from 2006 to 2019. Before his academic career, Lee clerked for Judge Michael Boudin of the First Circuit and Justice David Souter of the Supreme Court and served as an active-duty U.S. naval cryptology officer, afloat on submarines and surface combatants and ashore in Korea, Japan, and with the National Security Agency. He holds A.B. (summa cum laude), A.M. (Regional Studies—East Asia), and J.D. degrees from Harvard, where he was Articles Chair of the Harvard Law Review and a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in Government.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Hon. Jennifer Mascott served as Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Separation of Powers Institute at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law before her appointment to the federal bench. On July 16, 2025, President Donald J. Trump nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Delaware), and she was confirmed on October 9, 2025.
Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mascott wrote extensively in administrative and constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and the separation of powers. Her scholarship—published in leading journals including the Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Supreme Court Review—was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal courts. She also contributed Supreme Court commentary for NBC Universal.
Before joining Catholic Law, she was an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of The C. Boyden Gray Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. In 2022 she became co-author of Beermann, Cass & Diver’s Administrative Law: Cases and Materials (9th ed.). In 2023 she received the Justice Joseph Story Award for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and advancing the rule of law.
Judge Mascott also served as a Council Member of the ABA’s Administrative Law Section and as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. She frequently testified before Congress on executive power, regulatory reform, and judicial jurisdiction, and participated in multiple Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
From 2019 to 2021, she took leave from academia to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and later as Associate Deputy Attorney General, where she argued federal cases and assisted with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation. Earlier in her career, she clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and for then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit.
Judge Mascott earned her J.D. summa cum laude from the George Washington University Law School and her B.A. from the same institution.
Director, ENRD, Pacific Legal Foundation
Mark Miller is the Director of the Environment and Natural Resources practice group at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he leads the firm’s efforts to protect individuals and small businesses from government overreach in matters involving land and water, and its efforts to encourage America to better harness its abundant natural resources, including energy resources, minerals, timber, and grazing lands. Mark first joined PLF in 2014.
A seasoned appellate specialist, Mark has litigated several high-profile cases for PLF, including Weyerhaeuser v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co., and United States v. Robertson, all of them unanimous Supreme Court of the United States wins for property owners fighting federal overreach via the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.
In 2020, Mark left PLF to serve as General Counsel and later Chief of Staff for then-South-Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. As Noem’s longest-serving chief of staff, he worked behind the scenes to advance limited government, cut red tape, defend individual rights, and promote free-market principles. In 2023, he returned home to PLF.
A frequent commentator and public speaker, Mark regularly appears in print, on radio and TV, and before legislative committees across the country. His commentary and work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, The View, CBN, and Fox News. He is a regular guest each Thursday morning on SiriusXM’s POTUS channel, offering insight on Supreme Court cases and trends.
Mark earned both his undergraduate and law degrees with honors from the University of Florida. He clerked for U.S. District Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr., and Florida state appellate Judge Emerson R. Thompson, Jr.—two mentors who deepened his commitment to the Bill of Rights, especially the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
Mark serves on the Board of Trustees for the University of Florida College of Law, and he is a member of the boards of directors for both Americans United for Life, the nation’s oldest pro-life non-profit law firm, and Farm of the Child USA, a nonprofit that supports an orphanage and school for children in need in Honduras called La Finca del Niño.
Partner, McGuireWoods
Drawing on his deep experience in private practice and senior government service, John represents corporations, boards and executives facing significant legal, regulatory and reputational risk in criminal, regulatory, civil and congressional proceedings. He has resolved complex, high-stakes investigations through innovative settlements and successfully tried cases both as a federal prosecutor and defense counsel. A past chair of McGuireWoods’ Government Investigations & White Collar Litigation Department, he led the department to recognition by Law360 as a “Practice Group of the Year.”
In addition to his investigations practice, John is frequently called upon to brief and argue appeals in courts across the country. He co-chairs the firm’s Appeals and Strategic Issues Team and has argued appeals in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 11th Circuits. He also routinely advises clients with matters pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Solicitor General’s Office.
Prior to joining McGuireWoods, John served in positions of significant responsibility throughout the government. As associate counsel to the President of the United States, he represented the Office of the President in congressional investigations and other sensitive matters. His primary responsibility included handling issues arising out of the Department of Defense and State Department. In addition, he coordinated with the Department of Justice on litigation implicating the Office of the President. And as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, he tried cases ranging from fraud to violent crime and managed complex grand jury investigations involving fraud, public corruption and other matters.
John served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from 2006 to 2007 and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 2003 to 2004.
Prior to becoming an attorney, John served as a U.S. naval officer, deploying to the Persian Gulf. He led damage control operations on a Ticonderoga Class Cruiser and served as executive officer of a warship assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Command.
John is a member of the McGuireWoods' Recruiting Committee. He previously served as an adjunct professor of appellate and trial advocacy at the University of Richmond T.C. Williams School of Law and he serves as a trustee on the Executive Committee of the VMI Foundation.
Partner-in-Charge Washington, Jones Day
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
Partner, Goldstein & Russell
Tom Goldstein is an appellate advocate, best known as one of the nation’s most experienced Supreme Court practitioners. He has served as counsel to one of the parties in roughly 10% of all of the Court’s merits cases for the past 15 years (more than 100 in total), personally arguing 41. Only 3 lawyers in the Court's modern history have argued more cases in private practice. He has been counsel on more successful petitions for certiorari over the past decade than any other lawyer in private practice. Over the past fifteen years, the firm's petitions for certiorari have been granted at a higher rate than any private law firm or legal clinic.
Perhaps more than any other advocate in practice, Tom represents the complete spectrum of litigants before the Court; his work is not associated with any particular perspective or ideology. For example, as arguing counsel, Tom has prevailed on behalf of bond purchasers, corporate civil defendants (three times), corporate civil plaintiffs (three times), a debtor, employees (twice), a habeas petitioner (three times), an immigrant, investors, an individual civil defendant, an individual criminal defendant, a local government, persons with disabilities, and shareholders.
Tom’s representations span virtually all of federal law. For example, as arguing counsel in the Court, he has prevailed in cases involving arbitration, bankruptcy, civil procedure (twice), disability law, employment discrimination (twice), the Fourth Amendment (twice), free speech (three times), habeas corpus (three times), immigration, labor, securities (twice), and trademarks.
Tom also serves as counsel in particularly significant cases in the courts of appeals. For example, he successfully served as lead counsel for most of the nation's principal retailers in a Second Circuit appeal of the second-largest class action settlement in history. Tom also represents a number of different corporations in patent-related matters in the Federal Circuit.
In addition to practicing law, Tom has taught Supreme Court Litigation at Harvard Law School since 2004, and previously taught the same subject at Stanford Law School for nearly a decade. Tom is also the co-founder and publisher of SCOTUSblog – a web-site devoted to comprehensive coverage of the Court – which is the only weblog ever to receive the Peabody Award.
Tom has received a variety of recognitions for his practice before the Supreme Court and for his appellate advocacy generally. For example, in 2010, the National Law Journal named him one of the nation’s 40 most influential lawyers of the decade. The same publication included him in both of its most recent lists (2006 and 2013) of the nation’s 100 most influential attorneys. Legal Times named him one of the “90 Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Last 30 Years.” GQ named him (erroneously) one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.
Tom is involved in a variety of professional organizations. Among other things, he is a member of the American Law Institute, Secretary-Elect of the ABA Labor and Employment Section, Vice Chair of the Amicus Committee of the ABA Intellectual Property Section, and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Tom previously practiced at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where for a time he served as the principal co-chair of the firmwide litigation practice. Early in his career he was an associate at both Boies Schiller and Jones Day Reavis & Pogue. He clerked for Judge Patricia Wald of the D.C. Circuit.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Hon. Jennifer Mascott served as Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Separation of Powers Institute at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law before her appointment to the federal bench. On July 16, 2025, President Donald J. Trump nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Delaware), and she was confirmed on October 9, 2025.
Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mascott wrote extensively in administrative and constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and the separation of powers. Her scholarship—published in leading journals including the Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Supreme Court Review—was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal courts. She also contributed Supreme Court commentary for NBC Universal.
Before joining Catholic Law, she was an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of The C. Boyden Gray Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. In 2022 she became co-author of Beermann, Cass & Diver’s Administrative Law: Cases and Materials (9th ed.). In 2023 she received the Justice Joseph Story Award for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and advancing the rule of law.
Judge Mascott also served as a Council Member of the ABA’s Administrative Law Section and as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. She frequently testified before Congress on executive power, regulatory reform, and judicial jurisdiction, and participated in multiple Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
From 2019 to 2021, she took leave from academia to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and later as Associate Deputy Attorney General, where she argued federal cases and assisted with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation. Earlier in her career, she clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and for then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit.
Judge Mascott earned her J.D. summa cum laude from the George Washington University Law School and her B.A. from the same institution.
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Elizabeth Papez is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and a member of the firm’s litigation group. Her practice focuses on high-stakes class actions, complex commercial litigation, and related government investigations and appeals.
As a seasoned litigator and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Papez has substantial experience representing clients in the financial services, pharmaceutical, consumer, and product sectors. She regularly handles federal class actions, multidistrict litigation (MDLs) and other complex commercial disputes under federal and state antitrust statutes, banking and securities laws, and false claims acts, as well as parallel regulatory investigations with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Ms. Papez has been repeatedly recognized as one of Benchmark USA’s Top 250 Women in Litigation nationwide, which named her a “client favorite” who is “extremely smart and practical and very charismatic,” and is praised by peers as a “fierce, dynamic, bright, powerhouse of a litigator.” Ms. Papez is also recognized in The Legal 500 for her antitrust and appellate work, and by The Best Lawyers in America 2019 for her appellate practice.
NBC News Justice Correspondent
Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He has been covering the Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court since March 1993. Williams was also a key reporter on the Microsoft anti-trust trial and Judge Jackson's decision.
Prior to joining NBC, Williams served as a press official on Capitol Hill for many years. In 1986 he joined the Washington, DC staff of then Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and a legislative assistant. In 1989, when Cheney was named Assistant Secretary of Defense, Williams was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. While in that position, Williams was named Government Communicator of the Year in 1991 by the National Association of Government Communicators.
A native of Casper, Wyo. and a 1974 graduate of Stanford University, Williams was a reporter and news director at KTWO-TV and Radio in Casper from 1974 to 1985. Working with the Radio-Television News Directors Association, for which he served as a member of its board of directors, he successfully lobbied the Wyoming Supreme Court to permit broadcast coverage of its proceedings and twice sued Wyoming judges over pre-trial exclusion of reporters from the courtroom. For these efforts, he received a First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
B.A., Yale; J.D., University of Chicago. Lee Liberman Otis is the Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President at the Federalist Society. She also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference (ACUS), and as the co-chair of the National Constitution Center's Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board. She previously was a special assistant and an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Department of Energy, an associate in the appellate section of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, an associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and a law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She also served as an assistant professor of law at George Mason, where she taught legislation, federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, civil procedure, and appellate advocacy. Ms. Otis has been an important member of the Federalist Society team since the organization’s beginnings. Together with David McIntosh, she led the effort to start what became the Chicago chapter of the Society. She also helped organize the Society’s first conference at Yale, its second conference at Chicago, and its first Lawyers Division chapter in Washington DC, as well as the effort to incorporate the Society, recruit its permanent staff, and obtain its early funding. She was a Founding Director of the Federalist Society.
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.
Partner, McGuireWoods
Drawing on his deep experience in private practice and senior government service, John represents corporations, boards and executives facing significant legal, regulatory and reputational risk in criminal, regulatory, civil and congressional proceedings. He has resolved complex, high-stakes investigations through innovative settlements and successfully tried cases both as a federal prosecutor and defense counsel. A past chair of McGuireWoods’ Government Investigations & White Collar Litigation Department, he led the department to recognition by Law360 as a “Practice Group of the Year.”
In addition to his investigations practice, John is frequently called upon to brief and argue appeals in courts across the country. He co-chairs the firm’s Appeals and Strategic Issues Team and has argued appeals in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 11th Circuits. He also routinely advises clients with matters pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Solicitor General’s Office.
Prior to joining McGuireWoods, John served in positions of significant responsibility throughout the government. As associate counsel to the President of the United States, he represented the Office of the President in congressional investigations and other sensitive matters. His primary responsibility included handling issues arising out of the Department of Defense and State Department. In addition, he coordinated with the Department of Justice on litigation implicating the Office of the President. And as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, he tried cases ranging from fraud to violent crime and managed complex grand jury investigations involving fraud, public corruption and other matters.
John served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from 2006 to 2007 and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 2003 to 2004.
Prior to becoming an attorney, John served as a U.S. naval officer, deploying to the Persian Gulf. He led damage control operations on a Ticonderoga Class Cruiser and served as executive officer of a warship assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Command.
John is a member of the McGuireWoods' Recruiting Committee. He previously served as an adjunct professor of appellate and trial advocacy at the University of Richmond T.C. Williams School of Law and he serves as a trustee on the Executive Committee of the VMI Foundation.
Partner-in-Charge Washington, Jones Day
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
Partner, Goldstein & Russell
Tom Goldstein is an appellate advocate, best known as one of the nation’s most experienced Supreme Court practitioners. He has served as counsel to one of the parties in roughly 10% of all of the Court’s merits cases for the past 15 years (more than 100 in total), personally arguing 41. Only 3 lawyers in the Court's modern history have argued more cases in private practice. He has been counsel on more successful petitions for certiorari over the past decade than any other lawyer in private practice. Over the past fifteen years, the firm's petitions for certiorari have been granted at a higher rate than any private law firm or legal clinic.
Perhaps more than any other advocate in practice, Tom represents the complete spectrum of litigants before the Court; his work is not associated with any particular perspective or ideology. For example, as arguing counsel, Tom has prevailed on behalf of bond purchasers, corporate civil defendants (three times), corporate civil plaintiffs (three times), a debtor, employees (twice), a habeas petitioner (three times), an immigrant, investors, an individual civil defendant, an individual criminal defendant, a local government, persons with disabilities, and shareholders.
Tom’s representations span virtually all of federal law. For example, as arguing counsel in the Court, he has prevailed in cases involving arbitration, bankruptcy, civil procedure (twice), disability law, employment discrimination (twice), the Fourth Amendment (twice), free speech (three times), habeas corpus (three times), immigration, labor, securities (twice), and trademarks.
Tom also serves as counsel in particularly significant cases in the courts of appeals. For example, he successfully served as lead counsel for most of the nation's principal retailers in a Second Circuit appeal of the second-largest class action settlement in history. Tom also represents a number of different corporations in patent-related matters in the Federal Circuit.
In addition to practicing law, Tom has taught Supreme Court Litigation at Harvard Law School since 2004, and previously taught the same subject at Stanford Law School for nearly a decade. Tom is also the co-founder and publisher of SCOTUSblog – a web-site devoted to comprehensive coverage of the Court – which is the only weblog ever to receive the Peabody Award.
Tom has received a variety of recognitions for his practice before the Supreme Court and for his appellate advocacy generally. For example, in 2010, the National Law Journal named him one of the nation’s 40 most influential lawyers of the decade. The same publication included him in both of its most recent lists (2006 and 2013) of the nation’s 100 most influential attorneys. Legal Times named him one of the “90 Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Last 30 Years.” GQ named him (erroneously) one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.
Tom is involved in a variety of professional organizations. Among other things, he is a member of the American Law Institute, Secretary-Elect of the ABA Labor and Employment Section, Vice Chair of the Amicus Committee of the ABA Intellectual Property Section, and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Tom previously practiced at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where for a time he served as the principal co-chair of the firmwide litigation practice. Early in his career he was an associate at both Boies Schiller and Jones Day Reavis & Pogue. He clerked for Judge Patricia Wald of the D.C. Circuit.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Hon. Jennifer Mascott served as Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Separation of Powers Institute at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law before her appointment to the federal bench. On July 16, 2025, President Donald J. Trump nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Delaware), and she was confirmed on October 9, 2025.
Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mascott wrote extensively in administrative and constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and the separation of powers. Her scholarship—published in leading journals including the Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Supreme Court Review—was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal courts. She also contributed Supreme Court commentary for NBC Universal.
Before joining Catholic Law, she was an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of The C. Boyden Gray Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. In 2022 she became co-author of Beermann, Cass & Diver’s Administrative Law: Cases and Materials (9th ed.). In 2023 she received the Justice Joseph Story Award for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and advancing the rule of law.
Judge Mascott also served as a Council Member of the ABA’s Administrative Law Section and as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. She frequently testified before Congress on executive power, regulatory reform, and judicial jurisdiction, and participated in multiple Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
From 2019 to 2021, she took leave from academia to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and later as Associate Deputy Attorney General, where she argued federal cases and assisted with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation. Earlier in her career, she clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and for then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit.
Judge Mascott earned her J.D. summa cum laude from the George Washington University Law School and her B.A. from the same institution.
Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
B.A., Yale; J.D., University of Chicago. Lee Liberman Otis is the Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President at the Federalist Society. She also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference (ACUS), and as the co-chair of the National Constitution Center's Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board. She previously was a special assistant and an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Department of Energy, an associate in the appellate section of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, an associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and a law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She also served as an assistant professor of law at George Mason, where she taught legislation, federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, civil procedure, and appellate advocacy. Ms. Otis has been an important member of the Federalist Society team since the organization’s beginnings. Together with David McIntosh, she led the effort to start what became the Chicago chapter of the Society. She also helped organize the Society’s first conference at Yale, its second conference at Chicago, and its first Lawyers Division chapter in Washington DC, as well as the effort to incorporate the Society, recruit its permanent staff, and obtain its early funding. She was a Founding Director of the Federalist Society.
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Elizabeth Papez is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and a member of the firm’s litigation group. Her practice focuses on high-stakes class actions, complex commercial litigation, and related government investigations and appeals.
As a seasoned litigator and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Papez has substantial experience representing clients in the financial services, pharmaceutical, consumer, and product sectors. She regularly handles federal class actions, multidistrict litigation (MDLs) and other complex commercial disputes under federal and state antitrust statutes, banking and securities laws, and false claims acts, as well as parallel regulatory investigations with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Ms. Papez has been repeatedly recognized as one of Benchmark USA’s Top 250 Women in Litigation nationwide, which named her a “client favorite” who is “extremely smart and practical and very charismatic,” and is praised by peers as a “fierce, dynamic, bright, powerhouse of a litigator.” Ms. Papez is also recognized in The Legal 500 for her antitrust and appellate work, and by The Best Lawyers in America 2019 for her appellate practice.
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.
NBC News Justice Correspondent
Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He has been covering the Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court since March 1993. Williams was also a key reporter on the Microsoft anti-trust trial and Judge Jackson's decision.
Prior to joining NBC, Williams served as a press official on Capitol Hill for many years. In 1986 he joined the Washington, DC staff of then Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and a legislative assistant. In 1989, when Cheney was named Assistant Secretary of Defense, Williams was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. While in that position, Williams was named Government Communicator of the Year in 1991 by the National Association of Government Communicators.
A native of Casper, Wyo. and a 1974 graduate of Stanford University, Williams was a reporter and news director at KTWO-TV and Radio in Casper from 1974 to 1985. Working with the Radio-Television News Directors Association, for which he served as a member of its board of directors, he successfully lobbied the Wyoming Supreme Court to permit broadcast coverage of its proceedings and twice sued Wyoming judges over pre-trial exclusion of reporters from the courtroom. For these efforts, he received a First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Chief Legal Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Jim Campbell serves as chief legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, where he leads the U.S. Legal Advocacy team. In that role, Campbell oversees all U.S. litigation teams and Allied Legal Affairs.
Prior to joining ADF in March 2023, Campbell was the solicitor general in the office of Nebraska Attorney General Douglas J. Peterson and Michael T. Hilgers. In that role, he represented the state of Nebraska in cases before state and federal courts and oversaw all civil appeals for the state. In February 2023, Campbell argued Biden v. Nebraska before the U.S. Supreme Court, a case in which Nebraska and five other states challenged the Biden administration’s attempt to forgive over $400 billion in federal student loans for over 40 million individuals.
Before joining the Nebraska attorney general’s office in January 2020, Campbell worked as senior counsel with ADF. In that role, he defended his clients’ religious freedom and freedom of speech, with a particular focus on appellate work. Campbell has also authored many articles and legal commentary pieces, including some published by USA Today and The Washington Post.
A native of northeastern Ohio, Campbell earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Akron School of Law, where he graduated summa cum laude in 2006. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Campbell is admitted to the state bars of Ohio, Arizona, and Nebraska. He is also admitted to multiple federal district and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor of Law, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
The Great Dissent: Justice Scalia's Opinion in Morrison v. Olson
Gary Lawson, Richard H. Pildes, Theodore B. Olson
Short video featuring Gary Lawson, Richard Pildes, and Theodore Olson
Thirty years after the decision in Morrison v. Olson, questions raised in Justice Antonin Scalia’s...
Topics
Supreme Court Should Examine National Implications Of California Lead Paint Ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to review a California Court of Appeal’s decision...
Supreme Court Roundup: October Term 2017 [SCOTUSbrief]
Thomas Lee, Jenn L. Mascott
Short video featuring Thomas Lee and Jennifer Mascott
While the Supreme Court’s last term included a number of blockbuster decisions, the majority of...
A Shy Frog, the Administrative State, and Judicial Review of Agency Decision-Making: A Preview of Weyerhaeuser v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service
Mark Miller
Federalist Society Review, Volume 19
Note from the Editor: This article previews one of the first cases of the Supreme...
Supreme Court Preview: What Is in Store for October Term 2018?
John D. Adams, Noel J. Francisco, Tom Goldstein, Jenn L. Mascott, Elizabeth P. Papez, Pete Williams, Lee Liberman Otis, Dean Reuter
Co-Sponsored by the Faculty Division and the Practice Groups
October 1st will mark the first day of oral arguments for the 2018 Supreme Court...
Supreme Court Preview: What Is in Store for October Term 2018?
John D. Adams, Noel J. Francisco, Tom Goldstein, Jenn L. Mascott, Lee Liberman Otis, Elizabeth P. Papez, Dean Reuter, Pete Williams
Co-Sponsored by the Faculty Division and the Practice Groups
October 1st will mark the first day of oral arguments for the 2018 Supreme Court...
Compelled Speech in Masterpiece Cakeshop: What the Supreme Court’s June 2018 Decisions Tell Us About the Unresolved Questions
Jim Campbell
Federalist Society Review, Volume 19
Note from the Editor: This article discusses the unresolved compelled-speech questions in Masterpiece Cakeshop v....
Topics
Live Stream: Supreme Court Preview Panel - What Is in Store for October?
The panel is expected to begin at 12:30 p.m. EDT. Thank you for joining us....
Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky Strikes Down a Vague Ban on Speech in Polling Places, But Future Bans May Be Upheld
Michael R. Dimino
Federalist Society Review, Volume 19
Note from the Editor: This article discusses the Supreme Court’s opinion in Minnesota Voters Alliance...
Topics
Is Public Nuisance Doctrine Becoming an Exception to the Rule of Law?
Is there a growing trend of cases attempting to create a backdoor to traditional standards...