Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law
Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.
Prior to assuming this position, from 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science. Before that he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. He also has taught at DePaul College of Law and UCLA Law School.
He is the author of eleven books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century (Picador Macmillan) published in November 2018, and two books published by Yale University Press in 2017, Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable and Free Speech on Campus (with Howard Gillman).
He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He writes a regular column for the Sacramento Bee, monthly columns for the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.
In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.
Professor of Law, High Point School of Law
Scott Gaylord directs High Point Law’s Appellate Litigation Clinic and serves as a Professor of Law, teaching Constitutional Law and related upper-level elective courses. The Appellate Clinic works with students to write and file briefs in significant court cases, including appeals before the United States Supreme Court.
Professor Gaylord is a prominent Constitutional Law scholar with an impressive background in both academia and legal practice. He has authored or co-authored 18 substantial law review articles, co-authored a Constitutional Law casebook, and has written more than 35 amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and federal circuit courts on prominent national cases involving religious liberty and free speech. He is a frequent speaker on constitutional law and First Amendment topics at law schools across the country and has regularly provided commentary on ongoing constitutional issues to national media outlets, including th eNew York Times, USA Today, the Diane Rehm Show, NPR, The National Constitution Center, and Bloomberg Law.
Professor Gaylord also started an appellate advocacy clinic at his former law school and currently serves on the North Carolina Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, along with holding many other service and leadership roles. Prior to joining the academy in 2007, he practiced complex civil and commercial litigation with the Charlotte firm of Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson, and he clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Professor Gaylord earned his B.A. in philosophy and English, summa cum laude, from Colgate University, his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his J.D. from Notre Dame Law School, where he also graduated summa cum laude.
Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Partner, King & Spalding LLP
A partner in the FDA and Life Sciences practice at King & Spalding LLP, Marisa Maleck focuses on litigation, regulatory matters and public policy, with a focus on consumer products. As a former senior counsel at a bio-tech company and in private practice, Marisa has substantial experience with and is skilled in providing creative solutions in the face of uncertainty.
Marisa represents clients in a variety of matters with a focus on FDA-regulated products like food, beverages, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, wellness products, cosmetics, tobacco and cannabis. As a former senior counsel at an FDA-regulated biotech company and as a former partner in King & Spalding’s Litigation and Global Disputes practice group, she handled hundreds of suits in a multi-district litigation, multiple agency inquiries, an FTC lawsuit and 10+ state Attorney Generals actions. With a special focus on consumer fraud, social-media marketing and personal injury/wrongful death lawsuits, Marisa has successfully drafted and/or argued appellate briefs and critical motions in numerous cases—including class actions and complex litigation—before the U.S. Supreme Court, federal and state courts of appeals, and federal and state trial courts. She has also advocated tirelessly for her clients through engagement with agencies and policy-makers. She also advises her clients about legal risk (and how to avoid it) in investigations, enforcement actions, private litigation and private-equity investments.
Marisa also advocates for her clients’ interests in the court of public opinion. She is often solicited for her balanced legal analysis by members of the media. Marisa has appeared on (tv/radio) MSNBC, MSN, CNBC and NPR, and in (print) Newsweek, the National Law Journal, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Politico.
In addition, Marisa has an active pro-bono practice representing indigent defendants through federal appellate appointments as part of the Criminal Justice Act program and as a screener for the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project.
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.
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
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
Former Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, DC Circuit
Robert Heron Bork served as Solicitor General, acting Attorney General, and judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge Bork passed away in December 2012.
Tribute to Judge Robert Bork by John McGinnis - Event Audio/Video
Celebration of the Life of Robert Heron Bork 1927-2012
Judge Robert H. Bork: His Life and Legacy - Practice Group Podcast
A Conference Discussing the Contributions of Judge Robert H. Bork - June 26, 2007
Attorney and Legal Commentator
John Shu is an attorney and legal commentator. His focus areas include constitutional law, securities & corporate law, antitrust law, administrative law, politics, and international affairs. Mr. Shu has lectured and published on a wide variety of issues.
Mr. Shu served President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush. He also served Judge Stanley Sporkin, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was Director of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, and Judge Paul Roney, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, who was Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
Mr. Shu is a member of the National Committee on U.S. - China Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Foreign Policy Association.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
BRADFORD A. BERENSON is a litigator in the Washington, D.C., office whose practice focuses on the defense of white collar criminal cases, investigations by government agencies and congressional committees, and other civil or constitutional matters that present unusual legal, public relations, or political risks. He has defended criminal cases at every stage of development, from internal investigations and grand jury proceedings through trials, sentencings, and appeals. Mr. Berenson’s practice has included criminal matters in the fraud, environmental, health care, pharmaceutical, and public corruption areas. In addition, Mr. Berenson served as a consultant to Independent Counsel David M. Barrett in the prosecution of former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros. He has also handled a variety of civil and appellate cases in federal court.
From January 2001 through January 2003, Mr. Berenson served as Associate Counsel to the President of the United States. In the White House, he worked on a wide variety of legal, legislative and policy issues associated with the Bush Administration’s relations with Congress, its justice and domestic policy initiatives, and the war on terrorism. These included judicial selection, responses to congressional oversight and investigations, the USA Patriot Act, the Military Order authorizing the use of military commissions, detainee and anti-terrorism litigation, presidential action against terrorist financing, and the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Berenson has also provided commentary on legal matters in the mainstream media, publishing articles in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Washington Times and making appearances on news and public affairs programming on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN and Fox News Channel. He was a consultant to ABC News in connection with the departures of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor from the Supreme Court and the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts, Harriet Miers and Justice Alito.
Mr. Berenson holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale University, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was Supreme Court editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following graduation, he clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
Andrew is a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and a former federal prosecutor with more than 25 years of experience in civil and criminal litigation. He represents clients in federal and state courts in complex civil litigation and in rulemaking and investigations before numerous federal and state agencies, including the Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Election Commission, Federal Communications Commission and state attorneys general.
Professor from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center
Adjunct Scholar and Former Director, Project On Criminal Justice, Cato Institute
Tim Lynch is an attorney specializing in criminal law, constitutional law, and civil liberties. He is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the former director of Cato’s Project on Criminal Justice. His research interests include all aspects of constitutional criminal procedure, overcriminalization, the drug war, and police and prosecutorial misconduct. In 2000, he served on the National Committee to Prevent Wrongful Executions. Lynch also prepares amicus briefs before appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving constitutional rights. He is the editor of In the Name of Justice: Leading Experts Reexamine the Classic Article “The Aims of the Criminal Law” and After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century.
Lynch has published a variety of articles in both the law journals and in opinion pieces for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers. He has appeared on The PBS NewsHour, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. Lynch is a member of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and Supreme Court bars. He earned both a BS and a JD from Marquette University.
Mr. Lynch can be reached via his personal website.
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Professor, University of Hawai'i - Manoa
Davianna Pomaika'i McGregor is a Professor and founding member of the Ethnic Studies Department at UH-Manoa. She is a historian of Hawai'i and the Pacific. Davianna grew up in the ahupua'a of Kaiwi'ula in the Kapalama district of O'ahu and spent her summers with grandparents in Waiakea, Hilo, Hawai'i. She currently resides on O'ahu and Moloka'i. As a member of the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana she helps to steward the lands of Kaho'olawe - Kohemalamalama O Kanaloa.
Her ongoing research endeavors have focused on documenting the persistence of traditional Hawaiian cultural customs, beliefs, and practices in rural Hawaiian communities, including the island of Moloka'i; the districts of Puna and Ka'u on Hawai'i; Ke'anae-Wailuanui on Maui and Waiahole-Waikane on O'ahu. This work is featured in her UH Press book, 2007, Na Kua'aina: Living Hawaiian Culture.
In 2006 she conducted studies which resulted in the following technical reports: Hurricane Evacuation Behavior Study for Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with Jon Matsuoka, December 31, 2006.
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