S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor Richard W. Painter received his B.A., summa cum laude, in history from Harvard University and his J.D. from Yale University, where he was an editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. Following law school, he clerked for Judge John T. Noonan Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and later practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City and Finn Dixon & Herling in Stamford, Connecticut.
He has served as a tenured member of the law faculty at the University of Oregon School of Law and the University of Illinois College of Law, where he was the Guy Raymond and Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Professor of Law from 2002 to 2005.
From February 2005 to July 2007, he was Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel's office, serving as the chief ethics lawyer for the President, White House employees and senior nominees to Senate-confirmed positions in the Executive Branch. He is a member of the American Law Institute and is an advisor for the new ALI Principles of Government Ethics. He has also been active in the Professional Responsibility Section of the American Bar Association.
Professor Painter has also been active in law reform efforts aimed at deterring securities fraud and improving ethics of corporate managers and lawyers. A key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requiring the SEC to issue rules of professional responsibility for securities lawyers was based on earlier proposals Professor Painter made in law review articles and to the ABA and the SEC. He has given dozens of lectures on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to law schools, bar associations, and learned societies, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Painter has on four separate occasions provided invited testimony before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate on securities litigation and/or the role of attorneys in corporate governance.
His book, Getting the Government America Deserves: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2009. He has written op-eds on government ethics for various publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and he has been interviewed several times on government ethics and corporate ethics by national news organizations, including appearances on Lawrence O'Donnell (MSNBC), Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), CNN News, Fox News, National Public Radio All Things Considered, and Minnesota Public Radio News. In 2011, he testified before the U.S. House Government Oversight Committee on partisan political activity by government officials and reform of the Hatch Act. Professor Painter has also given expert testimony in cases involving securities transactions and the professional responsibility of lawyers. He testified as a defense witness in SEC. v. The Reserve Money Market Fund (SDNY, November 2012), a jury trial of an SEC enforcement action against the founders of the world's oldest money market fund that ended with a defense verdict on all of the fraud counts.
Professor Painter is the author of two casebooks: Securities Litigation and Enforcement (with Margaret Sachs and Donna Nagy; West 2003; Second Edition, 2007; Third Edition 2011) and Professional and Personal Responsibilities of the Lawyer (with Judge John T. Noonan Jr.; Foundation 1997; Second Edition, 2001; Third Edition 2011). He has written dozens of articles, book reviews, and essays, including a series of papers and a forthcoming book with Minnesota colleague Claire Hill on the personal responsibility of investment bankers.
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
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.
Assistant Professor, George Mason University School of Law
Elina Treyger is an Assistant Professor at George Mason University School of Law. She is a 2007 graduate of Harvard Law School and holds a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. Prior to joining the Mason Law faculty, Professor Treyger clerked for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and was an Olin/Searle Fellow at Yale Law School.
Associate Professor, UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law
Zvi S. Rosen is an Associate Professor at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law and the Faculty Director of the Franklin Pierce Society for Intellectual Property. He has served as a Assistant Professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Law, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, and as a Visiting Scholar and Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
In 2015-2016, he was the Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the U.S. Copyright Office. Mr. Rosen received his J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 2005 and LLM in Intellectual Property in 2006 from the George Washington University Law School. He has practiced at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP as well as smaller firms and his own practice, and clerked for the Hon. Thomas B. Bennett of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Alabama. He has written extensively on the development of modern copyright and trademark law, as well as on bankruptcy law.
Clinical Professor of Law, Dale E. Fowler School of Law, Chapman University
Senior Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Brian Hodges is a Senior Attorney at PLF’s Pacific Northwest office in Bellevue, Washington. Brian focuses his practice on defending of the right of individuals to make reasonable use of their property, free of unnecessary and oppressive regulations.
In 2013, Brian second-chaired Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District before the U.S. Supreme Court, a case that placed constitutional limits on the government’s common practice of demanding that landowners fund unrelated public projects in exchange for a permit approval. And in the 2008 case, Citizens’ Alliance for Property Rights v. Sims, Brian successfully challenged a Seattle-area ordinance that required all rural property owners to dedicate at least half their land as conservation areas as a mandatory condition of any new development without any showing that rural development would impact the environment.
Brian graduated from Seattle University of Law in 2001 with honors. After which, he served as a judicial clerk at the Washington State Court of Appeals, then entered private practice where he focused on appellate advocacy for several years before joining PLF in 2006.
Brian came to the liberty movement by an uncommon route: the arts. Brian played guitar and keyboards in several Seattle-area bands before eventually studying music composition and literature at the University of Washington—earning two Bachelor’s Degrees and a Master of Arts. Through that experience, he came to firmly believe that the goal of art—indeed, the goal of any creative ambition—is to maximize individual freedom and expression, tempered by personal responsibility and ownership, rather than outside oversight or arbitrary restriction. Carrying that philosophy into law school naturally led him to fight for individual rights.
Shareholder, Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Shreck
With more than 20 years of experience both as a first-chair litigator and in public service, Greg Brower’s practice focuses on civil and criminal litigation, as well as regulatory and enforcement actions, corporate investigations, cybersecurity matters and federal and state government relations.
Most recently, Greg served as the assistant director for the Office of Congressional Affairs at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), serving as the FBI’s chief liaison to Congress on a wide range of critical oversight and investigative matters. He previously served as the FBI’s Deputy General Counsel, managing a diverse portfolio of legal matters, including litigation, privacy, procurement, compliance and ethics. During his time as a senior FBI executive, spanning two administrations, he worked closely with high-ranking officials in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. intelligence community and with key leaders on Capitol Hill. Greg is a regular commentator and contributor on national security, legal and cybersecurity issues, regularly appearing on CNN and MSNBC, and he is the featured contributor on white collar crime and corporate compliance for the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Pulse blog.
Greg has a long history of public service. At the federal level, he previously served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, and as both General Counsel and Inspector General at the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Greg also served at DOJ as Legislative Counsel in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. At the state level, he has served in a variety of public policy roles, including five terms in the Nevada Legislature, where he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has also served on the Nevada Gaming Policy Committee, the Nevada Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice, the Nevada Sentencing Commission and the Nevada Juvenile Justice Commission.
Throughout his career, Greg has served the Nevada legal community as an adjunct professor of law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he has taught courses in national security law and trial advocacy. Before attending law school, Greg served in the U.S. Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer.
Executive Director, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
Norman Reimer is the Executive Director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). Prior to assuming this post, he practiced as a criminal defense lawyer for 28 years, most recently at Gould Reimer Walsh Goffin Cohn LLP in New York City.
Legal Fellow, Center for the Separation of Powers, Pacific Legal Foundation
Alison Somin joined Pacific Legal Foundation in May 2020 as a legal fellow in the Center for the Separation of Powers and part of the equality before the law practice group.
Before joining the Pacific Legal Foundation team, Alison was a special assistant and counsel for over a decade to Gail Heriot, a member of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also has deep roots in the liberty movement. Alison was a Koch Associate at the National Federation for Independent Business Legal Foundation and, during law school, completed summer clerkships at the Institute for Justice and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. She holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in history from Dartmouth College.
Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Journal, Texas Journal of Law and Politics, and The Federalist Society’s Engage magazine and blog.
She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Ilya; two children; and golden retriever Willow. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking and cooking, children’s art projects, and training and exercising Willow.
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.
Senior Counsel, Schaerr Jaffe LLP
Ken Klukowski is senior counsel at the law firm Schaerr Jaffe, focusing on constitutional, administrative, and election law, and the federal courts. He has served in politically appointed positions in the U.S. government, including senior counsel in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and prior to that in the White House as special counsel in the Office of Management and Budget. He was also the constitutional rights advisor on the Presidential Transition Team of President Donald J. Trump. In the private sector, he has worked as a senior fellow of the American Constitutional Rights Union, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, and a legal journalist. He litigates constitutional cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and contributes to media coverage of the nation’s highest court and legal issues. Earlier in his career, Klukowski served as special deputy attorney general of Indiana, and worked on faculty at Liberty University School of Law. His academic works have been published by journals such as the Federalist Society’s Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and his columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and other national publications. His amicus briefs and nine law review articles have been cited by various federal courts and top legal journals. He has participated in numerous Supreme Court cases, and lectured and debated at 100 law school events nationwide. Klukowski received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, studied history at Arizona State University, earned his law degree from Scalia Law School at George Mason University, and served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Alice Batchelder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
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Note from the Editor: This article discusses the Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona...
Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District and Its Implications for Takings Law
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Note from the Editor: This article is about the Supreme Court's decision in Koontz v....
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Maryland v. King: Possibly The Most Important Criminal Procedure Case in Decades An Exchange Between...
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Note from the Editor: This article is about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Fisher...
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Note from the Editor: This article is about civil forfeiture laws. As always, the Federalist...
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Note from the Editor: This article is a discussion about the Establishment Clause issue in...