Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin

Biography

Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.

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Todd J. Zywicki

George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.

Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.

Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”

Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.

Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.

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C. Wallace DeWitt

Securities Lawyer

Biography

C. Wallace represents foreign and domestic financial institutions as to a variety of securities and banking regulatory matters, with a particular focus on the private wealth industry and the cross-border marketing of investment services and financial products.

He regularly represents clients before U.S. federal and state financial regulatory authorities, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. He also represents clients in filing comment letters and amicus briefs in connection with SEC rulemakings.

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J.W. Verret

Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

Associate Professor of Law J.W. Verret joined the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University faculty in 2008. In 2013, he took leave for two years to serve as the Chief Economist and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. He received his JD and MA in Public Policy from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, respectively, in 2006. While in law school, Professor Verret served an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance under the guidance of Prof. Lucian Bebchuk.

Professor Verret then served as a law clerk for Vice-Chancellor John W. Noble of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Prior to joining the faculty at Scalia Law, Professor Verret was an associate in the SEC Enforcement Defense Practice Group at Skadden, Arps in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on corporate law topics, including Delaware's Guidance, co-written with Chief Justice Myron T. Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court. His academic work has been featured in the Yale Journal on Regulation, The Business Lawyer, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and the Virginia Law and Business Review. Professor Verret was selected by the Northwestern Law School Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth for a 2009-2010 Searle-Kaufmann Research Fellowship.

Professor Verret is also a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Working Group on Financial Markets, where he regularly briefs Congressional staff, members of Congress, SEC Commissioners and other financial regulatory agencies on financial regulation topics. He also directs the Corporate Federalism Initiative, where he obtains research grants for a network of students and faculty scholars who study the division between states and the federal government as sources of corporate law. Professor Verret has been invited to testify before various House and Senate Committees four times during the financial crisis of 2009 regarding all of the central provisions of the Obama Administration's 2009 financial regulatory reform proposals. For a full list of Professor Verret's C-Span appearances, including testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jwverret.

Professor Verret has been an invited panelist for various television appearances, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Professor Verret has been quoted in various media on financial regulation and corporate law topics, including the New York Times, CNN Money, the CNN Political Ticker, CNBC, ABC News, Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, The American Banker, The American Lawyer, The Huffington Post, CBS.com, and AP News. Professor Verret's op-eds have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Orange County Register, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Verret is also a regular guest contributor to three of the most noted corporate law and financial regulation law blogs: the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation Forum, Deallawyers.com, and The Conglomerate.

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C. Wallace DeWitt

Securities Lawyer

Biography

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J.W. Verret

Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

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Kenneth T. Cuccinelli

Former Acting Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security

Biography

Senior Fellow for Homeland Security at The Center for Renewing America, Mr. Cuccinelli has been a trial and appellate litigator, including constitutional law, for over 25 years. Additionally, Mr. Cuccinelli served in state government in the Virginia State Senate from 2002-2010, and as Virginia’s Attorney General from 2010-2014. As Virginia’s Attorney General, Mr. Cuccinelli led national litigation against Obamacare and other illegal and unconstitutional federal overreach. He also led Virginia from being among the worst states in fighting human trafficking to becoming one of the best; and his successful prosecutorial efforts resulted in record enforcement against gangs, health care fraud and child predators, all while protecting life and constitutional rights.

Mr. Cuccinelli also served in the federal government, first as the Acting Director of
United States Citizenship & Immigration Services, and then as the Acting Deputy
Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. During his tenure, Mr. Cuccinelli
was a leading spokesman for the administration on immigration, election security and
homeland security issues. He was responsible for planning and managing a budget of
over $50 billion per year, while serving as the chief operating officer for the Department
of the federal government responsible for responding to most forms of crises in the
United States. Mr. Cuccinelli was appointed by the President to serve as an original
member of the Coronavirus Task Force upon the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Following his time in federal service, Mr. Cuccinelli assumed leadership of the joint
Susan B. Anthony List/American Principles Project Election Transparency Initiative, in
which position Mr. Cuccinelli seeks to fend off a federal takeover of state elections while
at the same time advancing election reforms to achieve security, transparency and
accountability in our elections.

Mr. Cuccinelli continues to be a frequent media contributor on the wide array of
subjects in which he is an expert.

Mr. Cuccinelli and his wife, Teiro, grew up and live in Virginia and they have seven
children, two sons-in-law and most joyously of all – four grandchildren (so far).

In his spare time, Mr. Cuccinelli enjoys spending time with his family, reading, shooting,
playing ultimate frisbee and watching college basketball.

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Joseph M. Humire

Executive Director, Center for a Secure Free Society

Biography

Joseph M. Humire is a national security expert, specialized in analyzing Transregional Threat Networks in the Western Hemisphere. Mr. Humire provides regular briefings on countering China, Russia, and Iran’s authoritarian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as combating the convergence of international terrorism and transnational organized crime. Mr. Humire has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress as well as the European and Canadian Parliament and in 2023 was awarded an Order of Defense Merit Medial from the Colombian Armed Forces.

Mr. Humire is a regular national security commentator and contributor for a variety of English and Spanish language media and has a regular weekly radio segment called the #NewWorldReport on the nationally syndicated show and podcast CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor and is the host of the Border Wars Podcast available on all digital platforms. Mr. Humire has published in both languages for various newspapers and academic journals across the Americas and released his first book in 2014 titled Iran’s Strategic Penetration of Latin America, published by Lexington Books. More recently, in 2019, he wrote the foreword for the latest book by Dr. Max G. Manwaring, titled Confronting the Evolving Global Security Landscape published by Praeger Security International.

Mr. Humire currently serves as the executive director of the national security think tank—Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS)—based in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Prior to SFS, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps with a combat tour in Iraq and a multinational training exercise UNITAS in Latin America and the Caribbean. After leaving the military, he graduated from George Mason University with a degree in Economics and Global Affairs. Mr. Humire began building SFS’s global network of more than 100 security scholars in almost 30 countries worldwide as the Director of Institute Relations at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. He is currently a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security and a visiting professor-of-practice at Florida International University’s Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom.

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Ilya Somin

Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.

Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.

Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.

Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.

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Sadie Rose Blanchard

Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School

Biography

Sadie Blanchard teaches and writes about contracts and international business law. Her research examines how legal institutions interact with social forces to shape behavior, especially in markets. Before coming to Notre Dame 2018, she was the Fellow in Private Law at Yale Law School, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute on International Procedural Law in Luxembourg, and a law clerk to The Hon. Charles N. Brower of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, in his capacity as an independent arbitrator in foreign direct investment disputes. She also practiced law in Paris in the international arbitration group of King & Spalding.

Blanchard earned a B.A. in economics summa cum laude from Louisiana State University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

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Jud Campbell

Professor of Law & Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar, Stanford Law School

Biography

Jud Campbell joined the faculty of Stanford Law School in 2023. He previously served as a professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law and as a visiting professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and at Harvard Law School. His academic focus is constitutional history and First Amendment law. His publications include articles in the Stanford Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Texas Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, and Law and History Review. After completing his J.D. at Stanford Law School, he clerked for Judge Diane S. Sykes on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and for Judge José A. Cabranes on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then served as the Executive Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and two master’s degrees from the London School of Economics, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.

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Benjamin Chen

Associate Professor, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law

Biography

Benjamin Chen is an interdisciplinary legal researcher interested in regulatory and judicial institutions. His current research examines the scope for consequentialist reasoning in law, the diffusion of policy through the courts, and the impact of artificial intelligence on justice and its administration.

Benjamin graduated with a J.D., Order of the Coif, from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017 where he also received his Ph.D in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. He is admitted to practice in the State of California. In addition to his legal qualifications, Benjamin holds a M.A. in Philosophy from University College London, a M.S. in Applied Mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique, and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago with a minor in Romance Languages and Literatures.

Before joining the University of Hong Kong, Benjamin was assistant professor in public policy at the National University of Singapore. He was previously a postdoctoral research scholar and lecturer-in-law at Columbia University in the City of New York and served as a judicial law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

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Tara Leigh Grove

Vinson & Elkins Chair in Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law

Biography

Tara Leigh Grove is the Vinson & Elkins Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law. Grove graduated summa cum laude from Duke University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served as the Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Grove clerked for Judge Emilio Garza on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and then spent four years as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Appellate Staff, where she argued fifteen cases in the courts of appeals.

Grove’s research focuses on the federal judiciary, interpretive theory, and the constitutional separation of powers. She has published with such prestigious law journals as the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Texas Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Law Review. Grove has received awards for both her research and her teaching.

In 2021, Grove served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, a bipartisan commission created by President Biden and charged with examining proposals for Supreme Court reform. Since 2022, Grove has worked on the Princeton Initiative on Reclaiming the Constitutional Powers of Congress, which brings together former members of Congress, political scientists, and law professors. Grove serves as the Co-Chair of the section on the Appointments Process for the Princeton Initiative. Grove is a co-author of Low & Jeffries' Federal Courts and the Law of Federal-State Relations, a leading federal courts casebook, and she has served as the Chair of the Federal Courts Section of the Association of American Law Schools. Grove has been a visiting professor at both Harvard Law School and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

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Robert Leider

Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School

Biography

Robert Leider is an Assistant Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. His scholarly interests are in criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law, especially concerning questions about the use of force and the rule of law. He has written on the law of self-defense, the constitutional allocation of military power, and gun control. Among other places, he has published in the Florida Law Review (forthcoming), the Indiana Law Journal, and the Wall Street Journal.

Before joining Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Leider was at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC. He was previously with Mayer Brown LLP and was an Olin-Searle-Smith Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has clerked for Judge Diane S. Sykes, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and Justice Clarence Thomas. Professor Leider earned a BA, summa cum laude, from The George Washington University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in Philosophy (dissertation defended with distinction) from Georgetown University. While at Yale, he served as an articles editor for the Yale Law Journal.

Professor Leider teaches criminal law and torts.

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Tyler B. Lindley

Associate Professor of Law, J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University

Biography

Tyler Lindley joined BYU Law School in 2024 as an Associate Professor of Law. His research centers on the judicial role and the historical evolution of the judiciary in America. He has extensively examined and published on judicial remedies, federal courts, constitutional law, and administrative law. His scholarly contributions have been or will be featured in the Alabama Law Review, BYU Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Wake Forest Law Review.

Professor Lindley holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Brigham Young University (2018) and a Juris Doctor from The University of Chicago Law School (2021). During his legal studies, he served as a judicial extern for Judge Ryan Nelson on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to joining the faculty at BYU Law, he clerked for Chief Judge William Pryor on the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Judge Gregory Katsas on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also served as a Research Fellow at BYU Law between his clerkships.

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Robert T. Miller

Professor of Law and Rouse Chairholder, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

Professor Miller holds an Allison and Dorothy Rouse Chair in Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School. An elected member of the American Law Institute and a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute, Professor Miller is also a Fellow and the Co-Director of the Program on Organizations, Business and Markets at the Classical Liberal Institute at the New York University Law School, an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and an Affiliated Scholar at the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding. Prior to joining George Mason University in 2025, Professor Miller was the F. Arnold Daum Chair in Corporate Finance and Law and a Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, where he had also served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Development.

Professor Miller’s research concerns corporate and securities law, the economic analysis of law, and the philosophy of law. He is particularly interested in applying economic concepts and methods to understand provisions in contracts between sophisticated commercial parties. He has written on material adverse effect clauses under Delaware law, the fiduciary duties of corporate directors, director oversight liability, the history and development of Delaware corporate law, and much more. His articles and working papers are available on his SSRN page.

Professor Miller has been cited by federal and state courts in the United States, including the Delaware Supreme Court and the Delaware Court of Chancery, as well as by the Commercial Court of the United Kingdom and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) in Canada. Additionally, he is a member of the Committee on Mergers, Acquisitions & Corporate Control Contests and a former chair of the Corporation Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association.

Earlier in his career, Professor Miller was a Professor of Law at the Villanova University School of Law and the Associate Director of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University. He has been a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the Cardozo Law School, and an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the Columbia Law School.

Before entering academia, Professor Miller was an associate with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. He earned his J.D. from the Yale Law School where he was a Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal and an Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He earned his M.A. and M.Phil. degrees in philosophy from Columbia University, where he held a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and a Western Civilization Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He earned his B.A. in philosophy and mathematics from Columbia College.

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Christina M. Mulligan

Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

Biography

Professor Mulligan teaches Internet law, intellectual property law, and trusts & estates. Her research addresses efforts to adapt intellectual property law for the digital age, the relationship between law and technology, and theories of constitutional interpretation. Recently, she has written about the Internet of Things, robot punishment, and early translations of the Constitution.

While at Brooklyn, Professor Mulligan researched as a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and taught as a visiting associate professor at Yale Law School. Previously, she taught at the University of Georgia and was a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Her scholarship has been published in a variety of journals and law reviews, including Georgia Law Review, SMU Law Review, and Constitutional Commentary.

Professor Mulligan earned her bachelor’s degree cum laude and her law degree cum laude from Harvard University, where she worked as a production and article editor for the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Before entering academia, she served as a law clerk for Judge Charles F. Lettow of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

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Luke J. Schumacher

Predoctoral Fellow, Columbia Law School

Biography

Luke J. Schumacher is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia and an America in the World Consortium (AWC) predoctoral fellow at Columbia Law School's National Security Law Program.

His research interests are at the intersection of constitutional history, grand strategy, and international relations theory. His academic work has appeared in edited volumes and in the Texas National Security Review. His commentary can be found at Lawfare, War on the Rocks, The National Interest, and elsewhere.

Before beginning doctoral work, Luke served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer, during which time he deployed to Afghanistan, South Korea, and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region with special operations, multinational, and infantry units.

Luke holds a B.S. (with honors) in American politics from the United States Military Academy at West Point, an M.Phil. (with distinction) in political thought and intellectual history from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Rotary Scholar, and a J.D. (with pro bono distinction) from Stanford Law School, where he was a Rumsfeld Foundation Graduate Fellow and a Jacobson Scholar. At Stanford, he co-founded chapters of the Law Students for Israel and the Alexander Hamilton Society. He has served as a law clerk in both a District Attorney’s Office and a U.S. Attorney’s Office and he co-led a pro bono project providing legal support to military veterans in the community and in prisons.

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Brian Gary Slocum

Stearns Weaver Miller Professor, Florida State University College of Law

Biography

Brian G. Slocum joined the FSU College of Law faculty during the summer of 2023, and he will teach Language and Legal Interpretation in the fall. Slocum’s research and teaching experience lie in legislation/statutory interpretation, language and law, administrative law, and contracts. He comes to FSU Law from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, where he held the titles of distinguished professor of law and associate dean for scholarship. He has also served as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, University of California Berkeley School of Law, and University of California Davis School of Law. Slocum has won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship.

Slocum is the author of “Ordinary Meaning: A Theory of the Most Fundamental Principle of Legal Interpretation" (University of Chicago Press 2015), the editor of "Inference, Intention and 'Ordinary Meaning': What jurists can learn about legal interpretation from linguistics and philosophy" (University of Chicago Press 2017), and a co-editor of “Justice Scalia: Rhetoric and the Rule of Law” (University of Chicago Press 2019). He also has published numerous articles in top law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Yale Journal of International Law, and New York University Law Review. Prior to entering academia, Slocum worked at the U.S. Department of Justice and clerked for the Honorable Frank Magill, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

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Keith E. Whittington

David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Biography

Keith E. Whittington is the David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the faculty director of the Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech at Yale. Prior to joining Yale, Professor Whittington was the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He writes about American constitutional law, politics and history and American political thought. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas School of Law, is a member of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, and served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin and completed his Ph.D. in political science at Yale University. His books include Constitutional Interpretation: Textual Meaning, Original Intent, and Judicial Review. His most recent books include You Can't Teach That! The Battle over University Classrooms and Repugnant Laws: Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present.

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J. Joel Alicea

Professor, Associate Dean for Faculty Research, Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law

Biography

José Joel Alicea is the inaugural St. Robert Bellarmine Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty Research, and Director of the Law School’s Center for the Constitution and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. He has also served as a Visiting Professor at Duke Law School and Notre Dame Law School. Prior to joining the Catholic Law faculty, Professor Alicea practiced law for several years at the law firm of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, where he specialized in constitutional litigation. He previously served as a law clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., on the United States Supreme Court and for Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Professor Alicea’s scholarship has focused on constitutional theory. His scholarship has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Yale Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and the Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He has also been active in public debates about constitutional law, testifying before Congress and publishing essays in places like The New York Times, City Journal, and National Affairs.

Professor Alicea is a Fellow at the Columbus School of Law's Center for Religious Liberty and a Nonresident Fellow at The American Enterprise Institute. He is the recipient of several research and teaching awards, including the student-selected Professor of the Year teaching award.

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Eric R. Claeys

Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

Eric R. Claeys is Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has written widely in the fields of property, private law, and constitutional law. Professor Claeys’s current research interests focus on flourishing- and labor-based natural rights justifications for property—in American property theory, in intellectual property, and in contemporary regulation of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing. He is a member of the American Law Institute, he serves on the ALI’s Members’ Consultative Group for the first Restatement of Copyright, and he also serves as an adviser to the Restatement (Fourth) of the Law of Property.

Professor Claeys received his JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He received his AB from Princeton University, and he is a former visiting fellow and current member of Princeton’s Politics Department’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. After law school, Professor Claeys clerked for the Hon. Melvin Brunetti, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Hon. William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.

Professor Claeys’s main teaching interests include Property, Torts, Jurisprudence, and Intellectual Property. In recent years, he has also taught Water Law, Remedies, Estates and Trusts, Trade Secrecy, Constitutional Law, Torts, and Oil and Gas law. Spring 2018, he is teaching Torts and Jurisprudence as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.

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Mark R. Kubisch

Assistant Professor, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law

Biography

Professor Kubisch received his law degree from the University of Notre Dame, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Notre Dame Law Review and earned the Colonel William J. Hoynes Award for having the best academic record in his class. Professor Kubisch clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit during the 2015-2016 term. Prior to teaching at Pepperdine, Professor Kubisch was an associate at Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate litigation and critical motions practice.

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Michael Mannheimer

Professor of Law, Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law

Biography

Mike Mannheimer received his J.D. in 1994 from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar all three years and served as Writing & Research Editor of the Columbia Law Review. After a brief stint as a staff attorney with the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Legal Aid Society in New York City, he clerked for the Hon. Sidney H. Stein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and then for the Hon. Robert E. Cowen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

From 1997 to 1999, he worked as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City, where he practiced general commercial litigation and arbitration encompassing such diverse areas as antitrust, breach of contract, business torts, employment discrimination, ERISA, false advertising, product liability, and civil RICO.

For five years before joining the Chase faculty in 2004, Professor Mannheimer served as Appellate Counsel and then Senior Appellate Counsel at the Center for Appellate Litigation in New York City, where he represented indigent criminal defendants on appeal from their convictions and in related collateral proceedings. He has briefed and/or argued over forty appeals in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, the New York Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He has represented clients at every level of the state and federal judiciaries, from handling sentencing proceedings, motions, and hearings in the New York trial courts to filing cert. petitions in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Professor Mannheimer was Co-Chair of the Kentucky Death Penalty Assessment Team for the American Bar Association. He is also a prolific and eclectic scholar. He has published articles on the death penalty, coerced confessions, and the Establishment, Free Speech, Self-Incrimination, Confrontation, and Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clauses. His work on the use of the premeditation-deliberation formula to distinguish first- and second-degree murder was the winner of the 2010 AALS Criminal Justice Section Junior Scholar Paper Award. His current research focuses on the under-appreciated federalism component of the Bill of Rights.

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Branton J. Nestor

Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP

Biography

Branton Nestor is an associate in the Orange County office of Gibson Dunn. He practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and is a member of the firm’s Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group.

Branton has represented clients in appellate, regulatory, and complex litigation matters across various industries. His experience spans a wide range of subject matters, including constitutional law and administrative law.

He clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Julius N. Richardson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2019, and Westmont College in 2016. His scholarship has been cited at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Branton is a member of the California bar.

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Mark Pickering

Assistant Professor of Law, St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law

Biography

Professor Mark Pickering joined St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law as an Assistant Professor of Law in 2024. Previously he taught philosophy of law at the University of Alabama.

Professor Pickering received a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston University.

His recent research is on the ethical justification of criminal punishment.

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David Upham

Associate Professor of Law,, St. Thomas University College of Law

Biography

David R. Upham is Associate Professor of Law at the St. Thomas University College of Law (Miami) and Senior Fellow in Politics and Law at the University of Dallas, where he once served as Associate Professor and Chair of the Politics Department. He has researched and published extensively in the field of constitutional history, and the history of the Fourteenth Amendment in particular.

He is the author of Taking American Citizenship Seriously: The Recovery of the Fourteenth Amendment (forthcoming, Lexington Books); Plowing Around Obergefell (forthcoming, Notre Dame Law Review, 2025); Prenatal Personhood, State Duties, and Congress's Abortion Power Under the Fourteenth Amendment (Catholic University Law Review, 2025); Interracial Marriage and the Original Understanding of the Privileges or Immunities Clause (Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, 2015); and Note, Corfield v. Coryell and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship (Texas Law Review, 2005).

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Robert Luther

Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University

Biography

Robert Luther III was appointed Associate Professor of Law in 2025 after serving as Distinguished Professor of Law from 2024-2025 and Adjunct Professor of Law from 2019-2024. He teaches and writes on the federal courts, legal and judicial ethics, political law, Congress, and professional sports. He has served at high levels in all three branches of the federal government and recently founded Constitutional Solutions PLLC—a law firm that navigates judicial candidates, judges, elected officials, professional athletes, and executives through high-stakes hearings, investigations, and reputational attacks.

Immediately before joining the Scalia Law faculty, Professor Luther spent over five years in the Washington, D.C. office of Jones Day, where his practice focused on strategic counseling, crisis management, and litigation. Prior to joining Jones Day, he served as Associate Counsel to the President of the United States in the White House Counsel’s Office. In the White House, he co-managed the judicial selection process and supervised the preparation of over 150 federal judicial nominees for their successful U.S. Senate confirmation hearings. The New York Times Magazine referred to his work on judicial selection during this period as “unique in White House history.” Before joining the White House, Professor Luther served as Counsel to then–U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, where he served as a core member of the team that prepared the Senator for confirmation as United States Attorney General. Professor Luther was also a law clerk to Judge Daniel A. Manion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Earlier in his career, Professor Luther practiced civil and appellate litigation at a boutique firm in Williamsburg, Va. and taught at William & Mary Law School.

Professor Luther frequently speaks on the legal profession, political law, and federal judicial selection. His public work has been covered by or appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Fox News, The Hill, Politico, the Washington Examiner, National Law Journal, Law360, The Washington Reporter, and elsewhere, while his scholarship is published in the law journals of nearly twenty universities including three journals of Harvard University. He holds active law licenses in Virginia, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Supreme Court, and half of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

In 2025, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin appointed Professor Luther to the Board of Visitors to Mount Vernon. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves on the Advisory Board of the Wilson Center for Leadership at Hampden-Sydney College. Since 2019, he has helped over 200 of his students secure clerkships with federal judges.

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C. Wallace DeWitt

Securities Lawyer

Biography

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J.W. Verret

Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

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