U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Partner, Rule Garza Howley LLP
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986. After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law. Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.
Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of: Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.
In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy.
In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.
He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.
Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Scott Hemphill teaches and writes about antitrust, intellectual property, and regulation of industry. His research focuses on the law and economics of competition and innovation, and his scholarship ranges broadly, from drug patents to net neutrality to fashion and intellectual property. Hemphill’s recent work examines the antitrust problem of parallel exclusion in concentrated industries and anticompetitive settlements of patent litigation by drug makers. His scholarship has been cited by the US Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court, among others, and has formed the basis for congressional testimony on matters of regulatory policy. Hemphill's writing has appeared in law reviews, peer-reviewed journals, and the popular press, including the Yale Law Journal, Science, and the Wall Street Journal. He joined NYU from Columbia Law School, where he was a professor of law. Hemphill has also served as antitrust bureau chief for the New York Attorney General and clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court. He holds a JD and PhD in economics from Stanford, an AB from Harvard, and an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Sandra Segal Ikuta was confirmed as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 19, 2006. She filled a judgeship vacant since September 1, 2000, when Chief Judge Emeritus James R. Browning took senior status.
Before becoming a U.S. Circuit Judge, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to be deputy secretary and general counsel of the California Resources Agency in January 2004.
Prior to her political appointment, Judge Ikuta was a partner at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She joined the law firm in 1990 as an associate and became a partner in 1997. She specialized in environmental and natural resources law and co-chaired the firm's environmental practice group. She previously served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 1989-90, and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1988-89.
Prior to her legal career, Judge Ikuta took an unorthodox career path, which included serving as the first female editor-in-chief of a national martial arts magazine.
She received her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and a Master of Science from Columbia University School of Journalism. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.
In addition to her duties as an active U.S. Circuit Judge, Judge Ikuta was an appointed member of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor Saikrishna Prakash’s scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and Presidential Powers at the Law School.
Prakash’s most recent book, “The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers,” was published by Harvard Belknap Press in 2020. He also authored “Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive” (Yale University Press, 2015). The former book focuses on the modern presidency while the latter considers the presidency of the Founders.
Prakash has authored over 75 law review articles. Among them are “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” in the Harvard Law Review, “The Indefensible Duty to Defend” in the Columbia Law Review, and “50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend” and “The Executive Power Over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal.
Prakash has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. At the request of Democrats and Republicans, he has testified before Congress on matters of presidential removal, the Mueller Report and how Congress might better check the presidency. He is currently a Miller Center Senior Fellow. In 2015, he received the Roger Traynor award for faculty scholarship. In the same year, he received an honorable mention from the American Society of Legal Writers for his book “Imperial from the Beginning.” He has given named lectures at William & Mary Law School, Princeton University and Toledo Law School, and keynote addresses at several conferences.
Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He subsequently clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War & Peace at Stanford University.
William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and Douglas D. Drysdale Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Lawrence B. Solum is an internationally recognized legal theorist who works in constitutional theory, procedure and the philosophy of law. Solum contributes to debates in constitutional theory and normative legal theory. He is especially interested in the intersection of law with the philosophy of language and with moral and political philosophy. His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the great debate between originalism and constitutional theory. Solum’s original theory of the fundamental nature and purpose of law, “Virtue Jurisprudence,” has been debated and discussed in Asia, Europe and North America. He also works on problems of law and technology, including Internet governance, copyright policy and patent law. His pathbreaking article, “Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences,” published in the early 1990s, is widely acknowledged as far ahead of its time.
Solum received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and received his B.A. with highest departmental honors in philosophy from the University of California at Los Angeles. While at Harvard, he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he worked for the law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore in New York, and then clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Prior to joining the UVA Law faculty in 2020, he was a member of the faculty at Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Illinois, the University of San Diego and Loyola Marymount University, and visited at Boston University and the University of Southern California. He regularly teaches Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law. His other teaching includes seminars in constitutional theory and the philosophy of law as well as courses in conflict of laws, federal courts, intellectual property and internet law and governance.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Sandra Segal Ikuta was confirmed as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 19, 2006. She filled a judgeship vacant since September 1, 2000, when Chief Judge Emeritus James R. Browning took senior status.
Before becoming a U.S. Circuit Judge, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to be deputy secretary and general counsel of the California Resources Agency in January 2004.
Prior to her political appointment, Judge Ikuta was a partner at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She joined the law firm in 1990 as an associate and became a partner in 1997. She specialized in environmental and natural resources law and co-chaired the firm's environmental practice group. She previously served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 1989-90, and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1988-89.
Prior to her legal career, Judge Ikuta took an unorthodox career path, which included serving as the first female editor-in-chief of a national martial arts magazine.
She received her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and a Master of Science from Columbia University School of Journalism. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.
In addition to her duties as an active U.S. Circuit Judge, Judge Ikuta was an appointed member of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor Saikrishna Prakash’s scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and Presidential Powers at the Law School.
Prakash’s most recent book, “The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers,” was published by Harvard Belknap Press in 2020. He also authored “Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive” (Yale University Press, 2015). The former book focuses on the modern presidency while the latter considers the presidency of the Founders.
Prakash has authored over 75 law review articles. Among them are “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” in the Harvard Law Review, “The Indefensible Duty to Defend” in the Columbia Law Review, and “50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend” and “The Executive Power Over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal.
Prakash has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. At the request of Democrats and Republicans, he has testified before Congress on matters of presidential removal, the Mueller Report and how Congress might better check the presidency. He is currently a Miller Center Senior Fellow. In 2015, he received the Roger Traynor award for faculty scholarship. In the same year, he received an honorable mention from the American Society of Legal Writers for his book “Imperial from the Beginning.” He has given named lectures at William & Mary Law School, Princeton University and Toledo Law School, and keynote addresses at several conferences.
Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He subsequently clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War & Peace at Stanford University.
William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and Douglas D. Drysdale Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Lawrence B. Solum is an internationally recognized legal theorist who works in constitutional theory, procedure and the philosophy of law. Solum contributes to debates in constitutional theory and normative legal theory. He is especially interested in the intersection of law with the philosophy of language and with moral and political philosophy. His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the great debate between originalism and constitutional theory. Solum’s original theory of the fundamental nature and purpose of law, “Virtue Jurisprudence,” has been debated and discussed in Asia, Europe and North America. He also works on problems of law and technology, including Internet governance, copyright policy and patent law. His pathbreaking article, “Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences,” published in the early 1990s, is widely acknowledged as far ahead of its time.
Solum received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and received his B.A. with highest departmental honors in philosophy from the University of California at Los Angeles. While at Harvard, he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he worked for the law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore in New York, and then clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Prior to joining the UVA Law faculty in 2020, he was a member of the faculty at Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Illinois, the University of San Diego and Loyola Marymount University, and visited at Boston University and the University of Southern California. He regularly teaches Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law. His other teaching includes seminars in constitutional theory and the philosophy of law as well as courses in conflict of laws, federal courts, intellectual property and internet law and governance.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Partner, Rule Garza Howley LLP
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986. After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law. Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.
Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of: Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.
In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy.
In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.
He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.
Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Scott Hemphill teaches and writes about antitrust, intellectual property, and regulation of industry. His research focuses on the law and economics of competition and innovation, and his scholarship ranges broadly, from drug patents to net neutrality to fashion and intellectual property. Hemphill’s recent work examines the antitrust problem of parallel exclusion in concentrated industries and anticompetitive settlements of patent litigation by drug makers. His scholarship has been cited by the US Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court, among others, and has formed the basis for congressional testimony on matters of regulatory policy. Hemphill's writing has appeared in law reviews, peer-reviewed journals, and the popular press, including the Yale Law Journal, Science, and the Wall Street Journal. He joined NYU from Columbia Law School, where he was a professor of law. Hemphill has also served as antitrust bureau chief for the New York Attorney General and clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court. He holds a JD and PhD in economics from Stanford, an AB from Harvard, and an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Sandra Segal Ikuta was confirmed as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 19, 2006. She filled a judgeship vacant since September 1, 2000, when Chief Judge Emeritus James R. Browning took senior status.
Before becoming a U.S. Circuit Judge, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to be deputy secretary and general counsel of the California Resources Agency in January 2004.
Prior to her political appointment, Judge Ikuta was a partner at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She joined the law firm in 1990 as an associate and became a partner in 1997. She specialized in environmental and natural resources law and co-chaired the firm's environmental practice group. She previously served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 1989-90, and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1988-89.
Prior to her legal career, Judge Ikuta took an unorthodox career path, which included serving as the first female editor-in-chief of a national martial arts magazine.
She received her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and a Master of Science from Columbia University School of Journalism. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.
In addition to her duties as an active U.S. Circuit Judge, Judge Ikuta was an appointed member of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor Saikrishna Prakash’s scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and Presidential Powers at the Law School.
Prakash’s most recent book, “The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers,” was published by Harvard Belknap Press in 2020. He also authored “Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive” (Yale University Press, 2015). The former book focuses on the modern presidency while the latter considers the presidency of the Founders.
Prakash has authored over 75 law review articles. Among them are “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” in the Harvard Law Review, “The Indefensible Duty to Defend” in the Columbia Law Review, and “50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend” and “The Executive Power Over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal.
Prakash has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. At the request of Democrats and Republicans, he has testified before Congress on matters of presidential removal, the Mueller Report and how Congress might better check the presidency. He is currently a Miller Center Senior Fellow. In 2015, he received the Roger Traynor award for faculty scholarship. In the same year, he received an honorable mention from the American Society of Legal Writers for his book “Imperial from the Beginning.” He has given named lectures at William & Mary Law School, Princeton University and Toledo Law School, and keynote addresses at several conferences.
Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He subsequently clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War & Peace at Stanford University.
William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and Douglas D. Drysdale Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Lawrence B. Solum is an internationally recognized legal theorist who works in constitutional theory, procedure and the philosophy of law. Solum contributes to debates in constitutional theory and normative legal theory. He is especially interested in the intersection of law with the philosophy of language and with moral and political philosophy. His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the great debate between originalism and constitutional theory. Solum’s original theory of the fundamental nature and purpose of law, “Virtue Jurisprudence,” has been debated and discussed in Asia, Europe and North America. He also works on problems of law and technology, including Internet governance, copyright policy and patent law. His pathbreaking article, “Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences,” published in the early 1990s, is widely acknowledged as far ahead of its time.
Solum received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and received his B.A. with highest departmental honors in philosophy from the University of California at Los Angeles. While at Harvard, he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he worked for the law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore in New York, and then clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Prior to joining the UVA Law faculty in 2020, he was a member of the faculty at Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Illinois, the University of San Diego and Loyola Marymount University, and visited at Boston University and the University of Southern California. He regularly teaches Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law. His other teaching includes seminars in constitutional theory and the philosophy of law as well as courses in conflict of laws, federal courts, intellectual property and internet law and governance.
Partner, Appellate & Supreme Court Litigation, Goodwin Procter LLP
Willy Jay is a partner in Goodwin’s Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation practice. After ten years leading that practice, he recently became co-chair of Goodwin’s broader Complex Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice. Willy uses his deep experience litigating before the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Courts of Appeals, including more than 80 oral arguments, to help clients formulate winning appellate strategy. His appellate skill led Benchmark Litigation to name him the nationwide Appellate Lawyer of the Year for 2020. A former Assistant to the Solicitor General and Supreme Court clerk, he has argued 17 cases before the Supreme Court, briefed more than 60 Supreme Court cases on the merits, and briefed more than 150 cases at the certiorari stage. In recent years he argued five of the most significant intellectual-property cases at the Court, involving patent, copyright, and trademark law.
Willy has handled cases in every federal court of appeals as well. He has filed more than 300 briefs in federal and state appeals courts and argued in 11 federal circuits. He is a prominent advocate at the Federal Circuit, where he has argued 30 times, filed more than 120 briefs in patent appeals, and been recognized as “Appellate Litigator of the Year" by both Managing IP and LMG Life Sciences. Willy also regularly counsels clients on appellate strategy at the trial level, preparing and arguing key motions and post-trial briefing before district courts and federal and state administrative agencies.
Willy is recognized in Band 1 in two different appellate categories in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, where clients praise him for being "a rocket scientist" whose "spectacular brief writing" and "keen and analytical mind" enable him to “take any issue on appeal.” Another client noted that Willy "is an extraordinary litigator" who "has a unique way of synthesizing complex arguments and making them understandable." Other clients comment that Willy is “A super-efficient appellate litigator who is able to cut straight to the most critical issues and construct simple, persuasive arguments from extremely complex legal and factual records." Forbes named him to its inaugural list of America’s Top 200 Lawyers. Willy is also listed in Legal500 and Best Lawyers in America. Law360 named him an “Appellate MVP.” He has been named “Litigator of the Week” by the AmLaw Litigation Daily.
Willy has particular experience in appellate cases involving intellectual property (including patent, copyright, and trademark law), financial services, administrative law (with a particular focus on pharmaceutical regulation), environmental law, class action practice, federal preemption of state law, and the First Amendment (including campaign finance regulation, election law, and election crimes).
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
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