Assistant City Attorney, City of Arlington City Attorney's Office
Joshua Skinner is an assistant city attorney with the City of Arlington, Texas, with almost two decades of experience in civil rights, employment litigation, local government defense, and appellate advocacy.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law, The University of Utah College of Law
Paul G. Cassell is an internationally recognized legal scholar on criminal and civil justice, crime victims' rights, constitutional law, evidence, judicial process, and other legal issues. Cassell received a B.A. (1981) and a J.D. (1984) from Stanford University, where he graduated Order of the Coif and was President of the Stanford Law Review. He clerked for then-Judge Antonin Scalia when Scalia was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1984-85) and for Chief Justice Warren Burger of the United States Supreme Court (1985-86). Cassell then served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General with the U.S. Justice Department (1986-88) and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (1988 to 1991). Cassell joined the faculty at the College of Law in 1992, where he taught full-time until he was sworn in as a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah in July 2002. In November 2007, he resigned his judgeship to return full-time to the College of Law to teach, write, and litigate concerning issues relating to crime victims' rights and criminal and civil justice reform. Professor Cassell has also published numerous law review articles in journals such as the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. He is a co-author of the nation's only law school textbook on crime victims' rights, Victims in Criminal Procedure (various editions, most recently in its fifth edition published in 2025). Professor Cassell has argued pro bono cases relating to criminal procedure and crime victims' rights before the United States Supreme Court, the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and D.C. Circuits (including the 5th and 11th Circuits en banc), several U.S. District Courts, the Utah Supreme Court, and the Arizona Supreme Court. In 2020, Cassell received the Ronald Wilson Reagan Public Policy Award - National Crime Victims' Service Award from the U.S. Department of Justice. Cassell is a member of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and an inaugural member of the Council on Criminal Justice. He is also an occasional blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy.
Associate Professor, Boston College Law School
David Olson is an associate professor and the Faculty Director of the Program on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He teaches patent law, intellectual property law, antitrust law, and various seminars. His research and writing primarily focus on patents, copyrights, antitrust, and incentives for innovation and competition. Since joining BC Law in 2007, he has been recognized for his teaching excellence and contributions. In 2011, he received the Business & Law Society Faculty Award for Achievement in Business & Law. In 2012, he received the Professor Emil Slizewski Award for Faculty Excellence. For one semester in 2015, Olson served as a visiting professor at Pontifical Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he conducted research and taught a course on intellectual property.
Olson has published scholarly articles on patent law, copyright law, antitrust, music licensing, and first amendment copyright issues. His writing has been cited in Supreme Court and other legal opinions. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on matters of drug patents, FDA regulation, and antitrust.
The media frequently seeks Olson’s insights and opinions. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and Reuters, among others. He has appeared as a guest panelist on WBUR’s Radio Boston, WAMU's Kojo Namdi Show, and Public Radio Canada. His op-eds have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, and The Hill.
Olson came to Boston College from Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, where he conducted research on patent law and litigated copyright fair use impact cases. Before entering academia, Olson practiced law as a patent litigator. He clerked for Judge Jerry Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Prof. Sheley joined the College of Law in 2018. Before coming to OU she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law. She has also served as a Visiting Associate Professor at the George Washington University Law School and an Olin-Searle Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to academia she practiced for several years in the litigation group of the Washington, D.C. offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. While in practice she was commended by the Humane Society of the United States for her pro bono work in the prosecution of dog fighting sponsors. She is proud to have served on the Board of Directors of the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society.
Of Counsel, Christian Legal Society's Center for Law & Religious Freedom
Kim Colby has worked for Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom since graduating from Harvard Law School in 1981. She has represented religious groups in several appellate cases, including two cases heard by the United States Supreme Court. She has filed numerous amicus briefs in federal and state courts. In 1984, she assisted in congressional passage of the Equal Access Act, 20 U.S.C. § 4071, et seq., which protects the right of secondary school students to meet for prayer and Bible study on campus. Ms. Colby has prepared several CLS publications addressing issues about religious expression in public schools, including released time programs, implementation of the Equal Access Act, and teachers’ religious expression.
Ms. Colby graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois with a major in American History and a particular interest in slavery in colonial North America.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, U.S. Department of Justice
Jessie K. Liu was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on September 14, 2017, as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, and took office on September 24, 2017.
Ms. Liu was an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia from 2002 to 2006, prosecuting violent crime, drug trafficking, firearms, and fraud offenses in both the Superior Court and Criminal Divisions, and briefing and arguing appeals in the D.C. Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit. She subsequently served in several senior positions in the U.S. Department of Justice, including as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division, Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General for national security matters, and Deputy Chief of Staff for the National Security Division. Most recently, she was Deputy General Counsel at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, advising the Secretary of the Treasury and other senior Treasury officials on national security, law enforcement, and intelligence issues.
In addition, Ms. Liu has been a partner at the law firms of Morrison & Foerster LLP and Jenner & Block LLP, where her practice focused on litigation, investigations, and compliance.
Ms. Liu clerked for then-Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas. She received her A.B., summa cum laude, from Harvard University in 1995 and her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1998.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
General Counsel, Center for Individual Rights
Darpana Sheth joined CIR as General Counsel in May 2025. She is a nationally recognized constitutional litigator with over two decades of experience serving in in leadership roles at other nonprofit organizations.
Before joining CIR, Darpana served for four years as Vice President of Litigation for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Prior to that, Darpana was a Senior Attorney with the Institute for Justice, where she also served as Director of the Institute’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse.
Before finding her calling as a public-interest attorney, Darpana served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York and worked in private practice as a litigation associate at the Manhattan law firm of Chadbourne & Parke, LLP. She also served as law clerk to the Honorable Jerome A. Holmes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
A native of Philadelphia, Darpana graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History. She earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Professor Derek Muller is a nationally-recognized scholar in the field of election law. His research focuses on the role of states in the administration of federal elections, the constitutional contours of voting rights and election administration, the limits of judicial power in the domain of elections, and the Electoral College.
He has published more than two dozen academic works, and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has testified before Congress, and he is a contributor at the Election Law Blog. He is a co-author on a Federal Courts casebook published by Carolina Academic Press. He is also the co-reporter on a new Restatement of the Law, Election Litigation, an effort led by the American Law Institute.
Professor Muller teaches Election Law, Civil Procedure, and Evidence.
Assistant Professor of Law, Campbell University School of Law
Zachary C. Bolitho joined the Campbell Law School faculty after developing a reputation as a skilled trial and appellate lawyer. He teaches courses in Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, Evidence, Federal Courts, and Trial Advocacy. Bolitho is an accomplished teacher, having been named “Professor of the Year” in both 2014-15 and 2015-16 following a vote of the third-year class.
He took a leave of absence during the 2017-18 academic year to work on the staff of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Bolitho was ultimately promoted to Chief of Staff and Associate Deputy Attorney General, serving as one of the Deputy Attorney General’s principal legal and policy advisors. Additionally, the Attorney General appointed Bolitho to serve as the Department of Justice’s ex officio member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Prior to Campbell Law, Bolitho served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee. During his time as a federal prosecutor, Bolitho handled a wide variety of cases including several high profile matters. In addition to prosecuting cases in U.S. District Court, he briefed and argued cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Before becoming a federal prosecutor, Bolitho was a litigation associate with the law firm Jones Day. He also completed a judicial clerkship with Judge David W. McKeague of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Bolitho received his J.D. from The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law. He graduated summa cum laude, was elected to the Order of the Coif, served as a law review editor, and won a national moot court championship. Before attending law school, Bolitho graduated from Mount Union College where he was the top student in his graduating class.
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Joshua Skinner
On May 27, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Plumhoff v. Rickard. This...
Paroline v. United States - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
John G. Malcolm, Paul G. Cassell
On April 23, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Paroline v. United States....
Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc. - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
David S. Olson
On March 25, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Lexmark International, Inc. v....
Navarette v. California - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Erin Sheley
On April 22, 2014 the Supreme Court issued its decision in Navarette v. California. The...
Town of Greece v. Galloway - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Kim Colby
On May 5, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Town of Greece v....
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Jessie K. Liu
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Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
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Note from the Editor: This article is a discussion about the Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby...
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Darpana Sheth Nunziata
On February 25, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Kaley v. United States....
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Derek T. Muller
On April 2, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election...
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Zachary Bolitho
On March 26, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Castleman....