Senior Counsel, America First Legal Foundation
James Rogers is Senior Counsel at America First Legal Foundation, where he litigates in a number of areas, including border security, election integrity, parental rights, and administrative and constitutional law. Before joining America First Legal, from 2021 to 2022, he was Senior Litigation Counsel at the Solicitor General’s Office of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. While there, he spearheaded lawsuits against the Biden Administration’s destructive open borders policies and its COVID19 vaccine mandates. From 2015 to 2021, James was a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked in the Office of the Assistant Legal Advisor for Consular Affairs, at the U.S. Consulate in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and at the U.S. Embassy in Windhoek, Namibia.
Prior to joining the Department of State, he was a commercial litigation partner at Osborn Maledon, a Phoenix-based firm with a #1 litigation ranking from Chambers and Partners. James earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2009, an L.L.M. in International Law from the University of Cambridge in 2008, and a B.A., with honors, in International Studies from Brigham Young University in 2005. He is a sixth-generation Arizonan and lives in Mesa, Arizona, with his four children.
Solicitor General, Iowa Office of the Attorney General
Eric Wessan serves as Iowa’s Solicitor General in the Iowa Attorney General’s Office. In that role, Wessan leads Iowa’s litigation before State and federal appellate courts, including the Iowa and U.S. Supreme Courts. Before that role, Wessan worked on complex commercial litigation at two large law firms in Chicago. Wessan also served as a law clerk for the Honorable James C. Ho on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for the Honorable John F. Kness on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Wessan is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, with honors, and of the University of Chicago.
Judge, United States District Court, Southern District of Florida
On April 4, 2019, Judge Altman was confirmed to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. At 36, he became the youngest federal district court judge in the country—and the youngest federal judge ever appointed in the Southern District of Florida.
Judge Altman received a BA from Columbia University, where he played quarterback on the football team and pitched for the baseball team—earning All-Ivy honors. Judge Altman received his JD from the Yale Law School, where he was projects editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, the Judge clerked on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for the Honorable Stanley Marcus.
Judge Altman then became a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, where he twice received the Director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys’ Award for Superior Performance by a federal prosecutor. In 2013, Judge Altman was named “Federal Prosecutor of the Year” by the Miami-Dade Chiefs of Police and the Law Enforcement Officers’ Charitable Foundation.
In 2014, Judge Altman became a partner at the Miami law firm of Podhurst Orseck, where he represented the victims of airplane crashes and bank fraud conspiracies.
Senior Research Fellow, Pembroke College, University of Oxford; Director, The Quill Project
Dr. Nicholas Cole (MA MPhil DPhil Oxf) studies the political thought of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. He is the director of The Quill Project, based at Pembroke College Oxford, which studies the negotiation of state and Federal constitutional law.
His broader academic interests are the influence of classical political thought on America's first politicians, and the search for a new 'science of politics' in post-Independence America. He studied as an undergraduate and graduate at University College, Oxford, and was a Visiting Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. He has held research and teaching positions at St Peter's College, and within the History Faculty. His doctoral work focused on the use made of classical antiquity by Jefferson's generation, and he retains a strong interest in the reception of classical antiquity in the modern world, about which he has written extensively. He supervises undergraduate and graduate theses on early American politics, the history of American law and institutions, and the history of ideologies and ideas.
Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large, Syndicated Columnist, Host of "The Josh Hammer Show," Article III Project Senior Counsel, Newsweek, Salem Media, Article III Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center
Josh Hammer is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek and host of "The Josh Hammer Show," a podcast, a syndicated radio show, and TV program on Salem News Channel. A syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, Josh is a frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues. He is also senior counsel for the Article III Project and Internet Accountability Project, as well as a Shillman Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a fellow with the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
An outspoken conservative, Josh opines on conservative intellectual trends, contemporary domestic and foreign policy debates, constitutional and legal issues, and the intersection of law, politics and culture. He has been published by many leading outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, National Affairs, American Affairs, The New Criterion, The National Interest, National Review, RealClearPolitics, First Things, City Journal, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, Tablet Magazine, Deseret Magazine, Compact Magazine, Chronicles Magazine, The Spectator, The American Mind, The American Conservative, The European Conservative, American Greatness, American Compass, The Federalist, Blaze Media, TomKlingenstein.com, Townhall, The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller, The Epoch Times, Anchoring Truths, Fortune, Fox Business, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Journal. He has also had legal scholarship published by the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
Josh is a college campus speaker through Young America's Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and clerked for the Hon. James C. Ho on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and as a Fellow with the James Wilson Institute. He is the former host of "America on Trial with Josh Hammer," a one-season daily podcast with The First that covered the unique legal issues surrounding the 2024 presidential election.
Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
Clinical Professor of Law, Emory Law School
As Director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic, Laurie Blank teaches international humanitarian law and works directly with students to provide assistance to international tribunals, non-governmental organizations, and law firms around the world on cutting-edge issues in humanitarian law and human rights. Professor Blank is the co-author of International Law and Armed Conflict: Fundamental Principles and Contemporary Challenges in the Law of War, a casebook on the law of war (with G. Noone, Aspen Publishing 2013). She is also the co-director of a multi-year project on military training programs in the law of war and the co-author of Law of War Training: Resources for Military and Civilian Leaders (USIP 2008, with G. Noone, second edition 2013). In addition, she is the series editor of the ICRC’s teaching supplements on IHL, a member of the American Bar Association’s Advisory Committee to the Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and a member of the Public Interest Law and Policy Group’s High Level Working Group on Piracy. Before coming to Emory, Professor Blank was a program officer in the Rule of Law Program at the United States Institute of Peace. At USIP, she directed the Experts’ Working Group on International Humanitarian Law, in particular a multi-year project focusing on New Actors in the Implementation and Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law.
She is the author of numerous articles and opinion pieces on topics in international humanitarian law, including, most recently, "Extending Positive Identification from People to Places: Terrorism, Armed Conflict and the Identification of Military Objectives" (Utah Law Review); "Losing the Forest for the Trees: Syria, Law and the Pragmatics of Conflict Recognition" (Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law); "Targeted Strikes: The Consequences of Blurring the Armed Conflict and Self-Defense Justifications" (William Mitchell Law Review); "After Top Gun: How Drone Strikes Impact the Law of War" (University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law); "A Square Peg in a Round Hole: Stretching Law of War Detention Too Far" (Rutgers Law Review); "Defining the Battlefield in Contemporary Conflict and Counterterrorism: Understanding the Parameters of the Zone of Combat" (Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law); and "The Application of IHL in the Goldstone Report: A Critical Commentary" (Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law).
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