Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University
In memoriam
Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the
following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.
In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.
Chief Legal Correspondent, CBS News
Jan Crawford is CBS News' chief legal correspondent and contributes regularly to the "CBS Evening News," "CBS This Morning," and "Face the Nation," as well as CBS News Radio and CBSNews.com.
Crawford joined CBS News in October 2009. She had been a regular contributor to CBS News in 2005 to 2006.
Crawford is a recognized authority on the Supreme Court whose 2007 book, "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for the Control of the United States Supreme Court" (Penguin Press), gained critical acclaim and became an instant New York Times Bestseller. She began covering the Court in 1994 for the Chicago Tribune and went on to become a law and political correspondent for all ABC News programs, a Supreme Court analyst for The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer on PBS and a legal analyst for CBS News' "CBS Evening News" and "Face the Nation." She has reported on most of the major judicial appointments and confirmation hearings of the past 15 years and amassed crucial sources in the White House, the Justice Department and Congress along the way.
Chief Justice John Roberts granted his first network television interview to Crawford, just one of the rare interviews she was able to obtain with a total of five of the Court's current members, as well as retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Crawford also sat down with then-86-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens in his first television interview, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer.
Crawford's in-depth reports on the Bush Administration's legal war on terror and her exclusive reports on controversial interrogation techniques used for terror suspects have received wide acclaim and been credited with being a catalyst for congressional hearings. Washingtonian Magazine named her one of Washington's top journalists.
Crawford began her journalistic career at the Tribune in 1987, joining the legal affairs beat in 1993, after her graduation from the University of Chicago Law School. The newspaper awarded Crawford its highest award in 2001, for her role on a team of reporters covering the presidential election of 2000, and the legal battles over the White House. She won the same prize for her 13-part series on the post-civil rights South, a project that brought her back to her native Alabama.
Crawford graduated from the University of Alabama in 1987. She has taught journalism at American University and frequently speaks about the Court to universities, law schools, legal organizations and civic groups across the country. She is a member of the New York Bar. She and her family live in Washington D.C.
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, was born in Trenton, New Jersey, March 11, 1936. He married Maureen McCarthy and has nine children- Ann Forrest, Eugene, John Francis, Catherine Elisabeth, Mary Clare, Paul David, Matthew, Christopher James, and Margaret Jane. He received his A.B. from Georgetown University and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School, and was a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University from 1960-1961. He was in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio from 1961-1967, a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia from 1967-1971, and a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago from 1977-1982, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University and Stanford University. He was chairman of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law, 1981-1982, and its Conference of Section Chairmen, 1982-1983. He served the federal government as General Counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy from 1971-1972, Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 1972-1974, and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1974-1977. He was appointed Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982. President Reagan nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat September 26, 1986.
Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Professor Friedman is one of the country’s leading authorities on constitutional law and the federal courts. He is a prolific scholar, working at the intersections of law, politics and history. Friedman teaches a wide variety of courses including Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, and Criminal Procedure. He writes extensively about judicial review, constitutional law and theory, federal jurisdiction and judicial behavior. His scholarship appears regularly in the nation’s top law and peer-edited reviews. He is the author of widely-recognized The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2009), which examines the history of the relationship between popular opinion and the Supreme Court, from 1776 to the present. Along with his co-author Stephen Burbank, Friedman co-edited and contributed to Judicial Independence at the Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Approach, which questions common assumptions about the nature of judicial independence and how it can be protected. The book has been cited and relied upon countless times by scholars and policymakers alike. Professor Friedman is a frequent contributor to the nation's leading journals, both on-line and print. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, Politico andThe New Republic, among others.
Professor Friedman is a frequent speaker at events of all sorts. Given the interdisciplinary nature of his work, Professor Friedman regularly appears at conferences in law, political science and history. He is a founder and co-convener of the “roughly biennial” Constitutional Theory Conference. He organizes many multi-disciplinary conferences, including one on Modeling Law, and another – done under the auspices of the American Constitution Society – on Reconstruction: America’s Second Founding. He presents papers regularly at home and abroad. He has been a visiting scholar and lecturer at the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Groupe d’Etudes et de Recherches sur law Justice Constitutionnelle Aix-en-Provence, Sciences-Po in Aix-en-Provence, and Hong Kong University.
Professor Friedman regularly serves as a litigator or litigation consultant in a variety of matters in the federal and state courts. He has represented a wide range of clients, both public and private. Notably, he represents both civil liberties claimants and state and local governments. He has been active in the areas of reproductive rights, the jurisdictional allocation of cases between the federal and state courts, and the proper scope of the federal government’s commerce power. He has filed a number of amicus briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Actively engaged in a range of important service activities, at NYU Professor Friedman created the Academic Careers Program and founded and is now co-director of the Furman Academic Program. Both programs are dedicated to preparing young scholars for academic careers. In the past he was extensively involved with the American Judicature Society, was President of the Tennessee Civil Liberties Union, served on the Board of the State and Local Legal Center, and on the steering committee of New York University’s Institute for Law and Society. He recently completed a term as Vice Dean of New York University School of Law.
Professor Friedman graduated from the University of Chicago and received his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center. He clerked for the Honorable Phyllis A. Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and also worked as a litigation associate at Davis, Polk & Wardwell in Washington D.C. He was a professor at Vanderbilt Law School before joining the NYU faculty in 2000. In 1995 he won the Clarence Darrow Award from the ACLU of Tennessee for his work in defense of civil liberties.
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 1982
B.A., University of Chicago, 1978
Adjunct Professor, Fordham University School of Law
Ms. McAvoy is an attorney, a former federal prosecutor and former in-house counsel for financial institutions. She specializes in Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing issues. She is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and heads Fordham’s Adjunct Faculty Committee. Ms. McAvoy has been politically active as well, including having run for the position of Comptroller of the City of New York as Rudy Giuliani’s running mate. She also was on John McCain’s NY Steering Committee and was Co-Chair of NY Women for McCain during his most recent presidential bid.
She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. John’s University in 1984, where she graduated summa cum laude as valedictorian and was NYS debate champion. Ms. McAvoy received a Juris Doctor degree from Fordham Law School in 1987 where she participated as a member of its National Moot Court team.
Ms. McAvoy began practicing law as a litigation associate at Mudge Rose Guthrie & Ferdon. After that she became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the EDNY’s Civil and Criminal Divisions, where she received awards from both the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She practiced in US District Court, the US Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit, Surrogate’s Court and US Bankruptcy Court. Civil cases she handled included employment discrimination, forfeitures, medical malpractice, suits brought against government employees, Social Security disability, personal injury and tax cases. The criminal matters she handled included money laundering, bank robbery, mail fraud, illegal weapons sales, insurance fraud, credit card fraud, Food Stamp fraud, counterfeiting and narcotics violations.
After leaving the US Attorney’s Office, Ms. McAvoy became Senior Attorney at Morgan Stanley, where she was in charge of anti-money laundering prevention efforts and the reporting of suspicious activity. She also handled insider trading matters, fraud issues, general securities litigation and criminal matters. She received an award from the U.S. Secret Service for her work and as a member of the Securities Industry Ad Hoc Bank Secrecy Act Group she assisted the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board in drafting suspicious activity regulations relating to the securities industry.
Ms. McAvoy thereafter joined Citigroup, where she was Senior Legal Counsel for Citigroup Corporate Security and Investigative Services, providing legal advice on fraud issues, corporate security, investigations and anti-money laundering compliance for Citigroup’s businesses, including Citibank, Travelers Insurance, Salomon Smith Barney and Primerica Financial Services.
Since 2000 Ms. McAvoy has been doing private consulting work for the financial industry. She has conducted extensive training for banks, securities firms, the NASD and law enforcement. She has also participated in internal corporate investigations and look-backs at financial institutions, has helped institutions develop appropriate policies and procedures and has acted as an expert consulting witness for law firms. She also continues to teach at Fordham Law School as an adjunct professor and remains active in politics.
Ms. McAvoy has provided legal, political and business commentary on a variety of television networks and on radio. She is a regular commentator on foxnews.com’s Strategy Room and has appeared on various programs on the Fox Cable News Channel including The O’Reilly Factor. She is a legal contributor for the Grinder Show on NY 970 The Apple, a nationally broadcast radio show which also streams live on the internet.
Deputy District Attorney, Philadelphia District Attorney's Office
Ronald Eisenberg heads the Law Division of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. The 60 lawyers in the division handle appeals, habeas corpus and civil litigation, and legislative matters. Mr. Eisenberg has appeared at all levels of the state and federal court system, and has argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court.
Mr. Eisenberg is a member of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Investigating Grand Jury Task Force and the Advisory Committee for the Pennsylvania Suggested Standard Criminal Jury Instructions. He has represented his office on the Pennsylvania Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions, was an adjunct professor at Temple University School of Law, teaching legal writing and research, and has served on the Pennsylvania Criminal Rules and Appellate Rules Committees. He is a past president and current board member of the Association of Government Attorneys in Capital Litigation, a national organization of capital prosecutors.
Mr. Eisenberg received his bachelor's degree from Haverford College in 1978 and his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1981.
J.D., University of Pennsylvania
B.A., Haverford College
Former Solicitor General of Texas
Jonathan F. Mitchell is Principal at Mitchell Law PLLC. He received his law degree with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an articles editor of The University of Chicago Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.
After graduating from law school, Mr. Mitchell clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. He then served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice from 2003 through 2006. After leaving the Department of Justice, Mr. Mitchell served as a Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University Law Center, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Law School from 2006 through 2008, and an Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason University from 2008 through 2010.
In 2010, Mr. Mitchell was appointed Solicitor General of Texas, a position he held until January 2015. After leaving the Texas Solicitor General’s office, Mr. Mitchell served as the Searle Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law before joining the Hoover Institution as a Visiting Fellow from 2015 to 2016. Mr. Mitchell also served as a Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School before opening his own law firm in 2018.
Mr. Mitchell has published numerous works of scholarship in top-10 law journals, and he has written articles on textualism, national-security law, criminal law and procedure, judicial review and judicial federalism, and the legality of stare decisis in constitutional adjudication.
Mr. Mitchell has argued eight times before the Supreme Court of the United States, and more than 20 times in the federal courts of appeals. He has also argued before Supreme Court of Texas and in numerous trial courts. Mr. Mitchell has authored the principal merits brief in 11 Supreme Court cases, and has written and submitted more than 20 amicus curiae briefs in the Supreme Court.
Mr. Mitchell devised the novel enforcement mechanism in the Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as Senate Bill 8, which avoids pre-enforcement judicial review by prohibiting government officials from enforcing the statute and empowering private citizens to bring lawsuits against those who violate it. This produced an end-run around Roe v. Wade and allowed Texas and other states to impose pre-viability abortion bans despite the continued existence of Roe.
Senior Legal Counsel, Pacific Legal Foundation
Before becoming an attorney, James had been a productive member of society working as an exploration geologist in the late 1970s throughout the southwestern United States. However, after several years of dealing with irrational government bureaucrats and environmental policies untethered from reality, James decided that what the world needs is more lawyers — if they are willing to fight for rationality in regulatory regimes, property rights, and liberty.
James attended the University of Arizona College of Law in Tucson, where he served as an editor for the Law Review and received a J.D. degree in 1983. He had previously received a Masters degree in geological sciences from Brown University and an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in New York. James received the Professional Achievement Award from the University of Arizona Alumni Association in 2018.
James has worked with Pacific Legal Foundation since 1983, litigating cases from Alaska to Florida. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group’s Executive Committee, a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and an honorary member of Owners Counsel of America, an organization comprised of eminent domain attorneys who represent property owners. The Owners Counsel awarded James its Crystal Eagle award in 2013. In 2022, James was awarded the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize at the William & Mary College of Law. The prize is awarded annually to an individual whose work has advanced the cause of property rights and has contributed to the overall awareness of the important role property rights occupy in the broader scheme of individual liberty.
In 2001, James successfully argued a major property rights case, Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, before the United States Supreme Court, a case which affirmed that rights in regulated property do not disappear when land is bought and sold. He has written extensively on all aspects of property rights and environmental law and frequently speaks on these subjects throughout the nation.
When James is not suing the government he enjoys skiing faster than he should, bicycling, hiking, swimming, and spending quality time with his wife, family, and grandchild.
Mr. Burling’s book Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis is available now on Amazon.
James is a member of the bar only in the states of Alaska and California.
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy
Marie Gryphon is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Legal Policy. As an attorney in private practice, she worked on ERISA, securities, class action, commercial contract, legal malpractice, and constitutional law cases. She has also been a legal and policy analyst with the Cato Institute, working on issues related to education policy.
Mr. Mirengoff is a retired attorney in Washington, D.C. and is a blogger at powerlineblog.com.
President, JCN
Carrie Campbell Severino is the president of the JCN, and co-author with Mollie Hemingway of the bestselling book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court. As a go-to expert on the confirmation process, Mrs. Severino has been extensively quoted in the media. She regularly appears on television, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and ABC’s This Week.
Severino writes and speaks on a wide range of judicial issues, including the constitutional limits on government, the federal nomination process, and state judicial selection. She has testified before Congress on constitutional questions and briefed Senators on judicial nominations, and regularly files briefs in high-profile Supreme Court cases. She was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.), Duke University (B.A., Biology), and Michigan State University (M.A., Linguistics).
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Paul J. Schierl Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Professor Richard W. Garnett teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, criminal law, the First Amendment, and law and religion. He is a leading authority on questions and debates regarding religious freedom and church-state relations, and is the founding director of Notre Dame Law School’s Program on Church, State, and Society.
Garnett clerked for the late Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Rehnquist, and also for the late Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Richard S. Arnold. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1995 and his B.A., summa cum laude, from Duke University in 1990. He joined the faculty in 1999 after practicing law in Washington, D.C. with Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin.
Justice Scalia, Originalism, and Employment Division v. Smith
Lawyers Convention Annual Dinner
2010 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCAn Evening Discussion with Seth Stern
Los Angeles, CaliforniaIs There a Constitutional Right to Same-Sex Marriage?
St. Louis, MissouriHolland v. Florida - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Ronald Eisenberg
On June 14, 2010, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Holland v. Florida. In...
Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates, P. A. v. Allstate Ins. Co. - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Jonathan Mitchell
On March 23, 2010, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates,...
Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
James S. Burling
On June 17, 2010, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment,...
Milavetz v. United States - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Marie Gryphon
On March 8, 2010, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Milavetz v. United States....
What’s Right (and Wrong) with the Confirmation Process . . . And Elena Kagan
New York, New YorkSolicitor General Kagan’s Confirmation Hearing
Paul E. Mirengoff, Carrie Campbell Severino, Adam Winkler, Richard W. Garnett
UPDATED: 11 AM, July 8, 2010 On May 10, 2010 President Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena...