Appellate Counsel, Theodore Cooperstein PLLC
Theodore Cooperstein currently is an appellate attorney in the boutique law firm of Theodore Cooperstein PLLC, available for criminal and civil appeals in both state and federal courts. A former career prosecutor with twenty five years of service in the US Department of Justice, he was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of Mississippi, and has served as a Military Intelligence Officer in the Army Reserves from 1989 to 2011, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. During the Trump Administration, he was appointed and served as the General Counsel of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Prior to joining the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Cooperstein served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland. He previously had served as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, and as Assistant General Counsel in the FBI Office of the General Counsel.
A.B., Dartmouth College; J.D., Stanford University; LL.M., Comparative and International Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Masters of Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College
Shareholder, Kirton McConkie
R. Shawn Gunnarson is a shareholder with Kirton McConkie in Salt Lake City.
Director of Asian Studies and Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Dan Blumenthal is the director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on China issues for over a decade. From 2001 to 2004, he served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the Department of Defense. Additionally, he served as a commissioner on the congressionally-mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission since 2006-2012, and held the position of vice chairman in 2007. He has also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Mr. Blumenthal is the co-author of “An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century” (AEI Press, November 2012).
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Of Counsel, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
John focuses his practice on labor and employment litigation and counseling employers on mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, downsizing, plant relocations, union representation elections, labor negotiations, strikes and lockouts, NLRB unfair labor practices, arbitration, wage and hour, wrongful discharge and equal employment. John, a former NLRB General Counsel and Labor Department official, was selected as a global leader in the field of employment & labor law in The International Who's Who of Labor and Employment Lawyers by Law Business Research, The Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers.
John earned his B.A. from Brown University and both his J.D. and LL.M. from Georgetown.
Partner, O'Melveny & Myers LLP
Walter Dellinger is an influential authority on appellate and Supreme Court decisions, lending his experience as a former Solicitor General and decades of legal knowledge to amicus briefs, a multitude of pro bono clients, and public and private companies involved in bet-the-company litigation. A frequent commentator for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and major television networks, Walter holds the designation of the Douglas B. Maggs Emeritus Professor of Law at Duke University. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal and recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Lawyer.
Walter, who formerly served as O’Melveny’s Diversity and Inclusion Partner, helped convince the US Supreme Court that proponents of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, did not have standing to appeal a court order invalidating it. That ruling, Hollingsworth v. Perry, cleared the way for marriage equality in California and eventually nationwide.
Walter served as Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 1993 to 1996. He was acting Solicitor General for the 1996-97 Term of the US Supreme Court. During that time, Walter argued nine cases before the Court, the most by any Solicitor General in more than 20 years. His arguments included cases dealing with physician-assisted suicide, the line item veto, the cable television act, the Brady Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the constitutionality of remedial services for parochial school children.
Walter has served as Special Counsel to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange in connection with the NYSE’s transformation into a publicly held company and its acquisition of an electronic trading company.
After serving in early 1993 in the White House as an advisor to the President on constitutional issues, Walter was nominated by the President to be Assistant Attorney General. He was confirmed by the Senate in October 1993 and served for three years. As head of the OLC, Walter issued opinions on a wide variety of issues, including: the President's authority to deploy United States forces in Haiti and Bosnia; whether the trade agreements required treaty ratification; and a major review of separation of powers questions. He provided extensive legal advice on questions arising out of the shutdown of the federal government, on national debt ceiling issues, and on loan guarantees for Mexico.
Walter has published articles on constitutional issues for scholarly journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Duke Law Journal, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New Republic, and the London Times. He has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Belgium and has given lectures to university faculties in Florence, Siena, Nuremberg, Copenhagen, Leiden, Utrecht, Tilburg, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, and has delivered major lectures at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Chicago, and other US law schools. He has testified more than 25 times before committees of Congress.
In private practice, Walter’s arguments before the United States Supreme Court have included Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. v. Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Alabama v. North Carolina, Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, Heller v. District of Columbia, Jackson v. Birmingham School District, Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington, US Airways v. Barnett, Utah v. Evans, Hunt v. Cromartie, and Hunt v. Easley. His most notable Court of Appeals and state supreme court arguments include Martha Stewart v. United States, Whiteside v. United States, and Exxon v. Alabama, LCI v. Phillips.
General Counsel, Department of the Army
Mr. Benedict S. Cohen was appointed by President Bush to serve as the General Counsel for the Department of the Army effective on August 4, 2006. Mr. Cohen has twenty years of experience in high-level positions across the federal government, with a principal focus on national security and foreign policy. Prior to his current position, he served as the Managing Executive for Policy and Counselor to Chairman Cox at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he focused on legal and policy issues facing the agency and enhancing the Commission’s crisis-management and homeland-security capabilities. Prior to taking this position, he served as staff director of the Committee on Homeland Security of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he managed the transition from select committee to full standing committee status and the passage of authorization legislation for the Department of Homeland Security and of legislation reforming DHS’ homeland security grant program.
Mr. Cohen has also served as Deputy General Counsel (Environment & Installations) for the Defense Department, in which capacity he spearheaded DoD’s Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative, a multifaceted legislative, regulatory, and resource-management program to ensure sustainability of the military’s test and training capabilities and foster better environmental stewardship. He also provided legal support for DoD’s installation initiatives, and served as a principal spokesman for the Department on environmental and installations issues. He has also served in senior positions in the White House Counsel’s Office, the congressional leadership staff, and the Department of Justice, as well as serving in two law firms.
Mr. Cohen graduated from Yale magna cum laude in 1980 with a B.A. in history, and from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, having served as an Associate Editor of the Law Review. He clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He lives in American University Park in Washington, D.C. His wife is an attorney in private practice. He has two children, aged eight and ten.
Scholar in Residence, The Constitution Project
Louis Fisher is Scholar in Residence at the Constitution Project. Previously he worked for four decades at the Library of Congress as Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers (Congressional Research Service, from 1970 to 2006) and Specialist in Constitutional Law (the Law Library, from 2006 to 2010). During his service with CRS he was research director of the House Iran-Contra Committee in 1987, writing major sections of the final report. Fisher's specialties include constitutional law, war powers, budget policy, executive-legislative relations, and judicial-congressional relations.
After completing his doctoral work in political science at the New School for Social Research in 1967, he taught full-time at Queens College for three years. Later he taught part-time at Georgetown University, American University, Catholic University law school, Indiana University, Catholic University, the College of William and Mary law school, and Johns Hopkins University. Currently he is a Visiting Professor at the William and Mary law school.
His books include President and Congress (1972), Presidential Spending Power (1975), The Constitution Between Friends (1978), The Politics of Shared Power (4th ed. 1998), Constitutional Conflicts Between Congress and the President (6th ed. 2014), Constitutional Dialogues (1988),American Constitutional Law (with Katy J. Harriger, 10th ed. 2013), Presidential War Power (3rd ed. 2014), Political Dynamics of Constitutional Law (with Neal Devins, 5th ed. 2011), Congressional Abdication on War and Spending (2000), Religious Liberty in America: Political Safeguards (2002), Nazi Saboteurs on Trial: A Military Tribunal & American Law (2003; 2d ed. 2005), The Politics of Executive Privilege (2004), The Democratic Constitution (with Neal Devins, 2004), Military Tribunals and Presidential Power: American Revolution to the War on Terrorism (2005), In the Name of National Security: Unchecked Presidential Power and the Reynolds Case (2006), The Constitution and 9/11: Recurring Threats to America’s Freedoms (2008), The Supreme Court and Congress: Rival Interpretations (2009), On Appreciating Congress: The People’s Branch (2010), Defending Congress and the Constitution (2011), On the Supreme Court: Without Illusion and Idolatry(2013), and The Law of the Executive Branch: Presidential Power (2014). His textbook in constitutional law is available in two paperbacks:Constitutional Structures: Separation of Powers and Federalism and Constitutional Rights: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. With Leonard W. Levy he edited the four-volume Encyclopedia of the American Presidency (1994).
He has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award (for Presidential Spending Power and Constitutional Dialogues). The encyclopedia he co-edited was awarded the Dartmouth Medal. In 1995 he received the Aaron B. Wildavsky Award “For Lifetime Scholarly Achievement in Public Budgeting” from the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management. In 2006 he received the Neustadt Book Award for Military Tribunals and Presidential Power. In 2011 he received the Walter Beach Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the National Capital Area Political Science Association for strengthening the relationship between political science and public service. In 2012 he received the Hubert H. Humphrey Award from the American Political Science Association in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist. The July 2013 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics includes a symposium on "Law and (Disciplinary) Order: A Dialogue about Louis Fisher, Constitutionalism, and Political Science.
Dr. Fisher has been invited to testify before Congress more than 50 times on such issues as war powers, state secrets privilege, NSA surveillance, executive spending discretion, presidential reorganization authority, Congress and the Constitution, the legislative veto, the item veto, the Gramm-Rudman deficit control act, executive privilege, committee subpoenas, executive lobbying, CIA whistleblowing, covert spending, the pocket veto, recess appointments, the budget process, the balanced budget amendment, biennial budgeting, and presidential impoundment powers.
He has been active with CEELI (Central and East European Law Initiative) of the American Bar Association, traveling to Bulgaria, Albania, and Hungary to assist constitution-writers; participating in CEELI conferences in Washington, D.C. with delegations from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lithuania, Romania, and Russia; serving on CEELI "working groups" on Armenia and Belarus; and assisted in drafting constitutional amendments for the Kyrgyz Republic. As part of CRS delegations he traveled to Russia and Ukraine to assist on constitutional questions. For the International Bar Association he helped analyze the draft constitutions for Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
He is the author of more than 500 articles in law reviews, political science journals, encyclopedias, books, magazines, and newspapers. He has been invited to speak in Albania, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Oman, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates. The topics include a range of constitutional, political, and institutional issues.
George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs, Emeritus, Hoover Institution
Abraham D. Sofaer was appointed the first George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1994. Named in honor of former US secretary of state George P. Shultz, the appointment is awarded to a senior scholar whose broad vision, knowledge, and skill will be brought to bear on the problems presented by a radically transformed global environment.
Sofaer's work focuses on the power over war within the US government and on issues related to international law, terrorism, diplomacy, and national security. His most recent books are Taking on Iran: Strength, Diplomacy, and the Iranian Threat(Hoover Institution Press, 2013) and The Best Defense?: Legitimacy and Preventive Force (Hoover Institution Press, 2010).
From 1985 to 1990, he served as a legal adviser to the US Department of State, where he resolved several interstate matters, including the dispute between Egypt and Israel over Taba, the claim against Iraq for its attack on the USS Stark, and the claims against Chile for the assassination of Orlando Letelier. He received the Distinguished Service Award in 1989, the highest state department award given to a non–civil servant.
From 1979 to 1985, Sofaer served as a US district judge in the Southern District of New York. From 1969 to 1979, he was a professor of law at Columbia University School of Law and wrote War, Foreign Affairs, and Constitutional Power: The Origins.From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, after clerking for Judge J. Skelly Wright on the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, and the Honorable William J. Brennan Jr. on the US Supreme Court. He practiced law at Hughes, Hubbard and Reed from 1990 to 1994.
A veteran of the US Air Force, Sofaer received an LLB degree from New York University School of Law in 1965, where he was editor in chief of the law review. He holds a BA in history from Yeshiva College (1962). Sofaer is a founding trustee of the National Museum of Jazz in Harlem and a member of the board of the Koret Foundation.
His research papers are available at the Hoover Institution Archives.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, The Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also the Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War; Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare; and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
He is a co-author of volumes 1 and 2 of R. Rossum, G. Tarr, V. Munoz & J. Yoo American Constitution Law (Routledge, 2026), and a co-editor of the eight-volume series on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, We Hold These Truths, with Yuval Levin and Adam White of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, Seoul National University, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Keio University, Trento University, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of Founding Forward, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Ulysses Grant Institute, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Originalism Lectureship.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Retired Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Upon his resignation as the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State in January 1993, Mr. Williamson rejoined Sullivan & Cromwell's Washington, D.C. office. He originally joined the Firm in 1964 after graduating from New York University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review. He became a partner of the Firm in 1971, moved to its London office in 1976, returned to its New York office in 1979, moved to its Washington, D.C. office in 1988 and became Of Counsel in 2007. In 2018, he retired from the firm.
At Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Williamson engaged in a broad and wide-ranging domestic and international financing and transactions practice, as well as advice with respect to corporate governance issues, the United States’ economic sanctions laws, the ethics rules applicable to government officials and the immunities of foreign sovereigns and international organizations.
Mr. Williamson has been an active participant on panels and other forums involving public international law and national security issues, such as the domestic and international bases for the use of force, the role of the United States with respect to the International Criminal Court, the law of the sea and the application of international legal principles in the war against terrorism.
Mr. Williamson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, the Executive Committees of the Business and Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD and the U.S. Council for International Business, the United States Advisory Board of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and the Board of Directors of Triton Oil & Gas Limited.
Mr. Williamson has served on the Boards of Regents and Trustees of the University of the South and as chair of the Board of Regents. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a higher education watchdog.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Dennis Jacobs is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He became Chief Judge on October 1, 2006. At the time of his appointment in 1992, he was a partner in the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Judge Jacobs received his B.A. degree from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1964; his M.A. degree from New York University in 1965; and his J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law in 1973.
Judge Jacobs was a lecturer in the English Department of Queens College of the City University of New York from 1967 until 1969. He was in private practice from 1973 with the New York law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, serving as a partner there from 1980 until his judicial appointment.
In 1997-2004, Judge Jacobs was a member of the Committee on Judicial Resources of the Judicial Conference of the United States; starting in 1999 he was chair of that committee.
Judge Jacobs is a native of New York City.
Former United States National Security Advisor
John R. Bolton served as Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor from April 2018 to September 2019.
Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Bolton served as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI); of counsel at Kirkland & Ellis; a contributor to FOX News Channel and FOX Business Network; and his op-ed articles were regularly featured in major media publications.
Ambassador Bolton was appointed as United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations on August 1, 2005 and served until his resignation in December 2006. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Bolton served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from May 2001 to May 2005.
Other positions he has previously held include Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs at the Department of State, 1989-1993; Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, 1985-1989; Assistant Administrator for Program and Policy Coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1982-1983 and General Counsel, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1981-1982.
Ambassador Bolton is the author of Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the U.N. and Abroad, published by Simon and Shuster (November 2007) and How Barack Obama is Endangering our National Sovereignty, published by Encounter Books (April 2010).
Ambassador Bolton was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale College in 1970, and received his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1974. He currently resides in Maryland with his wife, Gretchen. They have one daughter, Jennifer Sarah, who also graduated from Yale College, and received her MBA and SM degrees from MIT in 2014 and is currently a senior manager at Nissan’s facility in Nashville.
Senior Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia School of Law, George Mason University; Retired Professor, Distinguished Fellow and Co-Founder, Center for National Security Law, University of Virginia School of Law (1987-2020)
Robert F. Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law. He co-founded the Center for National Security Law with Professor John Norton Moore in April 1981 and served as its associate director for 39 years, except for two periods of government service in the 1980s and during 1994-95, when he occupied the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He retired from UVA in January 2020 and currently serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the GMU National Security Institute. He also served briefly in 2020 as President of the Crime Prevention Research Center—one of the most respected pro-Second Amendment groups in the country—while its founder, Dr. John Lott, was on leave of absence.
A former Army captain and veteran of two tours in Vietnam, Turner served as a research associate and public affairs fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace before spending five years in the mid-1970s as national security adviser to U.S. Senator Robert P. Griffin, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (where Turner anticipated by seven years the Supreme Court’s landmark INS v. Chadha decision, striking down legislative vetoes). He also served in the executive branch during the Reagan administration as a member of the Senior Executive Service, first in the Pentagon as special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for policy, then in the White House as counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, and at the State Department as principal deputy and then acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs. In 1986, he became the first president of the congressionally established United States Institute of Peace.
A former three-term chairman of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security (and for many years editor of the ABA National Security Law Report), Turner also chaired the Executive-Congressional Relations Subcommittee of the ABA Section on International Law and Practice and chaired or co-chaired the National Security Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group for several years.
Turner taught undergraduate courses at Virginia on international law, U.S. foreign policy, the Vietnam War and foreign policy and the law in what is now the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. In addition, he co-taught National Security Law and advanced national security law seminars on the Indochina War and on war and peace with Moore at the Law School.
The author or editor of 18 books and monographs (including co-editor of the Center's 1,600-page National Security Law & Policy casebook, National Security Law Documents, and Legal Issues in the Struggle Against Terror) and numerous articles in law reviews and other professional journals, Turner has also contributed articles to most of the major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today. In an op-ed published in The International Herald Tribune in September 1990, he and Moore were the first to call for a war-crimes trial for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and for international controls over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and the following month he wrote the lead story in The Washington Post Sunday Outlook Section, “Killing Saddam: Would It Be a Crime?,” arguing that Hussein would be a lawful target during Operation Desert Storm. (His reasoning contributed to the modern legal justification for drone strikes targeting specific terrorist leaders.) Three years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turner published an op-ed in USA Today entitled: “In Self-defense, U.S. Has Right to Kill bin Laden.”
In July 2007, he co-authored an article in The Washington Post with former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General P.X. Kelley, “War Crimes and the White House,” criticizing the use of unlawful “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the Central Intelligence Agency. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon he authored an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Saigon’s Fall Still Echoes Today,” noting that after the war ended, Hanoi admitted it had made a decision in 1959 to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and start sending troops, weapons and supplies into South Vietnam to overthrow its government — just as the United States had charged. In 2010 Turner received the first “person of the year” award from SACEI, a major Vietnamese-American human rights organization.
A frequent lecturer and debater, Turner has spoken at more than 100 law schools around the nation and in other fora — taking on as many as four opponents at a time. His debate opponents have included former or future deans of Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Berkeley law schools. Following a 1987 debate against Dean Harlan Cleveland (Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) in which Turner defended the legality of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan Administration, the host student debating societies awarded Turner the victory by an 85-to-15 percent margin.
Turner has also written and lectured widely on University of Virginia founder and America’s third president Thomas Jefferson. In 2000-2001 he chaired the Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission. In his 2012 book Master of the Mountain, Jefferson critic Henry Wiencek described Turner as “Jefferson’s chief scholarly defender."
A former distinguished lecturer at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Turner is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Academy of Political Science, the Committee on the Present Danger, The Heterodox Academy, and other professional organizations. He maintained a 4.0 gpa as a graduate student at Stanford in History and Political Science and in the UVA Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and was the first person admitted directly to the UVA academic law doctorate (SJD) program without first being required to earn an LL.M. master’s degree. He was selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Law less than two years after graduating from law school and Who’s Who in the World before he reached the age of 40. Turner has testified before more than a dozen different congressional committees on issues of international or constitutional law and other topics.
President, Norton Regulatory Strategies and Former Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior
Gale Norton has three decades of experience handling energy, natural resources, and environmental issues. As Secretary of the Interior, 2001-2006, she played a key role in shaping national energy policies. A member of President George W. Bush’s Cabinet, Norton was responsible for managing over 20% of the land area of the United States, a Fortune-500-sized budget, and a workforce of 70,000 employees.
In the face of crises including the September 11th attacks and the War on Terror, increasing domestic energy production became a major focus for Norton’s term. She oversaw lands and offshore areas that produced a third of America's domestic oil, natural gas, and coal. She was actively involved in consideration of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, offshore and onshore oil and gas production, coal mine leasing and reclamation, hydroelectric generation, as well as biomass, wind and geothermal development.
Norton led efforts that resolved 70-year-old interstate disputes on the Colorado River and instituted a west-wide water conservation program. She championed the President's Healthy Forest Initiative and Cooperative Conservation.
Norton returned to Colorado as General Counsel for Royal Dutch Shell Unconventional Oil, 2007-2010. She was a member of Shell’s global legal leadership team, and handled legal, regulatory and governmental issues for Shell’s oil shale and in-situ oil sands projects, primarily in Colorado and Alberta.
As an attorney, Norton has handled multi-billion-dollar and high-profile litigation involving products liability, antitrust, taxation, environmental and constitutional issues, including arguing cases before the US Supreme Court and negotiating one of the largest lawsuit settlements in history. Norton served two terms as the elected Attorney General of Colorado, 1991-1999.
Norton’s background also includes serving as senior counsel at Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber, P.C.; Associate Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior; Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture; National Fellow of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; and Senior Attorney for Mountain States Legal Foundation. Norton has a B.A., J.D. and honorary Ph.D. from the University of Denver, and an honorary Dr. Eng. from the Colorado School of Mines. She has chaired the National Park Foundation and the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission.
Norton is currently a Senior Advisor for Clean Range Ventures, an energy technology venture capital firm. She serves on boards for the Federalist Society, the Reagan Alumni Association, and the University of Colorado Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute. She and her husband, John Hughes, are avid international travelers, golfers, skiers and outdoor enthusiasts.
The War on Terrorism: Law Enforcement or National Security?
Theodore Cooperstein, R. Shawn Gunnarson, Daniel Blumenthal, Robert Parker, George J. Terwilliger
George Terwilliger*Theodore Cooperstein**Shawn Gunnarson***Daniel Blumenthal****Robert Parker***** The horrific events of September 11th were immediately labeled...
Summary of Federal Employment and Reemployment Rights of Members of the Uniformed Services
John S. Irving
by John Irving, Kirkland & EllisAs you may know the federal government recently has ordered...
Separation of Powers and Foreign Policy
Walter E. Dellinger, Benedict S. Cohen, Louis Fisher, Abraham D. Sofaer, John C. Yoo, Edwin D. Williamson
Following are excerpts from a panel discussion entitled "Separation of Powers and Foreign Policy" which...
Panel Proceedings: The Pinochet Case & Head of State Immunity
Kenneth Roth, Jeffrey Greenbaum, Jeremy A. Rabkin, Dennis Jacobs, John R. Bolton
Editor's Note: This issue is dedicated to a panel discussion on International Law and Head...
Critical Infrastructure Protection: A New Era of National Security
Walter Gary Sharp
Computers and computer-dependent systems permeate everyone's daily life. From local, state, and federal government decision...
International Law Really is Law
Robert F. Turner
On September 25, 1997, the International and National Security Law Practice group co-hosted a debate...
Do as I Say, Not as I Do: The Story of Environmental Non-Compliance at Federal Facilities
Gale A. Norton
The old saying, "Do as I say, not as I do," fairly describes the Federal...