Vice President of Law & Policy, Property and Environment Research Center
Jonathan Wood is vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). An attorney, Jonathan has litigated environmental and property-rights cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, federal and state appellate courts, and trial courts across the country. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, Reason, and other outlets. And his research has been published in journals such as Environmental Law Reporter, Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Pace Environmental Law Review, and California Western Law Review.
Prior to coming to PERC, Jonathan was a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he litigated cases concerning the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal environmental laws. He was co-counsel for forest landowners in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that private land could not be arbitrarily regulated as critical habitat under the ESA. He also led a successful effort to reform regulation of threatened species to better align the incentives of private landowners with the interests of rare species.
Jonathan has testified before several congressional committees on wildlife conservation and endangered species topics. He has also appeared on national television and radio, including NPR’s All Things Considered, C-Span’s Washington Journal, Stossel, Fox News, and Hill.TV.
Jonathan has a law degree from the New York University School of Law, a masters degree in economic policy from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Texas. He is on the executive committee for the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group and a steering committee member for the Environmental Law Institute’s Emerging Leaders Initiative.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Distinguished Professor of Law, Jamie L. Whitten Chair of Law and Government, University of Mississippi School of Law
Professor Ronald J. Rychlak is the Jamie L. Whitten Chair of Law and Government and Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi. He is a legal advisor to the Holy See’s delegation to the United Nations and chair of the Mississippi Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He serves as the university’s Faculty Athletic Representative and is on the executive committee of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). In 2019 he received the university’s highest research and publication recognition, the “Distinguished Research and Creative Achievement Award” based upon his reputation for scholarly activity and leadership roles in professional societies. In 2023, he received the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, the University’s highest award in honor of service, for “placing service to others and the community before oneself, while embodying the qualities of honesty, morality, ethics, integrity, responsibility, determination, courage, and compassion.” In 2024, he was voted “Outstanding Law Professor” by the law school student body.
Ron is the author, co-author, or editor of twelve books and over 100 articles. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican called his book, Hitler, the War, and the Pope “definitive” in its response to charges made against the leader of the Catholic Church during World War II. He has been published in Notre Dame Law Review, UCLA Law Review, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other periodicals and journals. Media appearances include CNN, ABC, Fox News, The National Geographic TV Network, The Military Channel, C-SPAN, and more.
Ron and his wife Claire are proud of their six children, two sons-in-law, one daughter-in-law, and three granddaughters. They live in Oxford, Mississippi.
Senior Vice President and Litigation Director, Institute for Justice
Dana Berliner serves as Senior Vice President and Litigation Director at the Institute for Justice, where she has worked as a lawyer since 1994.
The focus of Dana’s litigation at IJ has been property rights. She successfully represented the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym and mentoring program for at-risk youth, which challenged the city of National City’s authorization of taking the CYAC’s property for private development; the California Court of Appeal ruled in 2013 that the authorization of eminent domain was invalid and that National City had violated California’s Public Records Act. Dana also represented the home and business owners in Norwood, Ohio, who, on July 26, 2006, secured a unanimous ruling from the Ohio Supreme Court that the city could not take their property for a privately owned shopping mall and “lifestyle center.” Along with co-counsel Scott Bullock, she represented the homeowners in Kelo v. New London, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities could condemn property because other uses may produce an increase in tax dollars and jobs. Dana, along with many others at IJ, worked to turn the nationwide outrage caused by the decision into new state statutes, constitutions and judicial decisions that cut back on eminent domain abuse. She secured a ruling that the Village of Port Chester, N.Y., violated due process in its use of eminent domain to secure waterfront property. Since 2008, Dana has been recognized every year as a “Best Lawyer” in eminent domain and condemnation law by the publication Best Lawyers in America.
On issues of free speech and economic liberty, Dana successfully defended Carla Main and Encounter Books, who wrote and published a book about eminent domain abuse in Texas and across the country, against a defamation suit brought by a developer who stood to receive property taken by eminent domain. She secured a victory in favor of two New Orleans entrepreneurs in a federal First Amendment challenge to the city of New Orleans’ ban on sidewalk book vending. As trial counsel, Dana also secured a ruling that the Nevada Transportation Services Authority violated the rights of several would-be limousine entrepreneurs by subjecting them to an onerous and arbitrary licensing process that gave undue power to existing companies opposing competition. And she successfully represented an aspiring teacher of African hair braiding in Mississippi, as well as two of her students, challenging restrictions on learning and teaching African hair braiding in Mississippi.
In 2012, Dana became IJ’s Litigation Director. She now oversees all of IJ’s litigation, helping other attorneys craft both their major legal theories and their day-to-day litigation strategies. And she helps to set the litigation directions that IJ will take. In 2016, Dana began her role as IJ’s Senior Vice President.
Dana authored Opening the Floodgates: Eminent Domain Abuse in the Post-Kelo World, a report on the use and threatened use of eminent domain for private development in the year since the Kelo decision. Dana also authored Public Power, Private Gain: A Five-Year, State-by-State Report Examining the Abuse of Eminent Domain, the first-ever nationwide study on the abuse of eminent domain, released in 2003.
Dana has been quoted in The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, NPR and The Washington Post as well as on various radio and television broadcasts, including 60 Minutes.
Dana received her law and undergraduate degrees from Yale University where she was a member of the Yale Law Journal and represented clients through the legal services program. After law school, she clerked for Judge Jerry Smith on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Dana Berliner is a member of the DC and Pennsylvania bars.
Christie v. NCAA: Anti-Commandeering or Bust
Jonathan Wood, Ilya Shapiro
Note from the Editor: This article argues that the Supreme Court should find unconstitutional the...
Legal Problems with Online Gambling
Ronald J. Rychlak
Not long ago, Nevada and Atlantic City, New Jersey stood out from the rest of...
Public Power, Private Gain: The Abuse of Eminent Domain
Dana Berliner
YOU MAY BE REQUIRED TO MOVE WITHIN 90 DAYS AFTER YOU RECEIVE THIS NOTICE. IF...