Director of Property Rights Litigation, Pacific Legal Foundation
Robert Thomas is Pacific Legal Foundation’s director of its Property Rights practice group. He is an expert on property rights, takings, land use, and eminent domain issues.
After more than three decades in private practice in Hawaii and California representing property owners in takings, eminent domain, and land use cases, Robert joined PLF’s team of freedom fighters in 2021.
He has litigated cases in both state and federal court. As counsel for the property owners in County of Hawaii v. C&J Coupe Family Limited Partnership, he helped establish the rule that courts are not mere “rubber stamps” when a local government is taking property by eminent domain. Another case, Hamilton ex rel. Lethem v. Lethem, held that a parent’s liberty interest in raising and disciplining his child included a right to fair procedures, including notice and a judicial hearing before the family court could restrict parent-child contact.
Robert is a frequent speaker on property rights, takings, land use, and eminent domain issues nationwide. He also regularly publishes scholarly and practical articles in his area of practice, most recently including, “Hoist the Yellow Flag and Spam® Up: The Separation of Powers Limitation on Hawaii’s Emergency Authority”, 43 U. Haw. L. Rev. 71 (2020) and “Evaluating Emergency Takings: Flattening the Economic Curve”, 29 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1145 (2021).
An elected member of the American Law Institute, Robert received his LLM, with honors, from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and his JD from the University of Hawaii School of Law, where he served as editor of the Law Review. He also serves as the inaugural Joseph T. Waldo Visiting Chair in Property Rights Law at William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he teaches upper-division courses in eminent domain, land use, property rights, and property law.
When he’s not working, you might find Robert writing and publishing his blog on land use, property, and takings law, inversecondemnation.com, one of the most widely read blogs on those subjects.
Richard E. Nelson Eminent Scholar Chair in Local Government Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Michael Allan Wolf joined the faculty of the University of Florida Levin College of Law in August, 2003, as the first occupant of the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law. Professor Wolf has been teaching and writing for more than three decades in the areas of land-use planning, property, local government, constitutional, environmental, and urban revitalization law; and legal and constitutional history. He earned his B.A. degree from Emory University, his J.D. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, and his A.M. (history) and Ph.D. (History of American Civilization) degrees from Harvard University. Professor Wolf, who was Professor of Law and History at the University of Richmond, held his first law teaching appointment at Oklahoma City University and has also served as a visiting professor, first at the University of Richmond, then at American University.
Since 2000, Professor Wolf has been the General Editor of Powell on Real Property (17 volumes), the most prominent treatise in the area that is regularly cited by state and federal courts. Other recent books include Land Use Law (with Daniel R. Mandelker, 2015-), The Supreme Court and the Environment: The Reluctant Protector (2012), Land Use Planning and the Environment: A Casebook (with Charles M. Haar, 2010), Powell on Real Property: Michael Allan Wolf Desk Edition (a one-volume abridgement of the treatise, 2009), The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler (2008), and Strategies for Environmental Success in an Uncertain Judicial Climate (editor and contributor, 2005). His writings have also appeared in a wide variety of law and law-related journals (including the Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Fordham Law Review), many of them contributions to symposia on topics in land-use regulation, environmental law, eminent domain, and regulatory takings. His commentaries have been featured in national newspapers and on National Public Radio.
Associate Professor of Law, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
Jonathan Green is an Associate Professor of Law at Arizona State University teaching Civil Procedure and Statutory Interpretation. His scholarship focuses on the history of political and legal thought. He is especially interested in the history of constitutionalism, theories of interpretation, and the concept of judicial power. His research has been published in the Arizona State Law Journal, the Journal of the History of Ideas, Modern Intellectual History, and the Historical Journal.
Prior to joining the ASU faculty in 2024, Professor Green was a Harry A. Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago. He previously clerked for Judge Neomi Rao of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and worked as a litigation associate at DLA Piper in Philadelphia.
Professor Green holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he was a joint recipient of Prince Consort & Thirwall Prize, awarded annually for the best dissertation in the Cambridge History Faculty. He also received his MPhil from Cambridge, and earned his B.A., summa cum laude, from Northwestern University.
Judge, United States Tax Court
Senior Judge.. B.A. Harvard College, 1979; J.D. University of Chicago Law School, 1983. Admitted to New York and District of Columbia Bars; U.S. Supreme Court; DC, Second, Fifth and Ninth Circuits; Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, Court of Federal Claims. Practiced in New York as an Associate, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, 1983-85; Sullivan & Cromwell, 1987-1991; served as Clerk to the Hon. Alex Kozinski, Ninth Circuit, 1985-87; and in Washington as Counsel to Commissioners, United States International Trade Commission, 1991-96; Counsel, Miller & Chevalier, 1996-2001; Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, 2001-03. Member, American Bar Association (Litigation and Tax Sections). Appointed by President George W. Bush as Judge, United States Tax Court, on June 30, 2003.
Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of the new book The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction (Cambridge 2026). His previous books include A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). He is also the author of the casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 3d ed. 2025).
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
Partner, Torridon Law PLLC
Mike Fragoso is an experienced legal and policy strategist who represents clients before all three branches of the federal government. Most recently he served as chief counsel to the Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY). He has negotiated consequential legislation, managed successful congressional oversight, and prepared individuals for the most contentious Senate hearings.
As chief counsel to Leader McConnell, Mike was the Leader’s primary legal advisor and managed the “last mile” of any legislation touching on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He ran the 2024 reauthorization of FISA Section 702 and was involved at the highest levels of the appropriations and budget-reconciliation processes. Mike also repeatedly represented Leader McConnell as counsel of record at the Supreme Court. Leader McConnell said of Mike that he’s “equally at home in the high-minded philosophical discourse of the legal community and the urgent pragmatism of congressional dealmaking,” and that he “maintains a firm grasp on the realm of the possible” but “knows which screws to twist.” He observed that Mike “is so exceptionally competent that he often produces from his desk the work that would normally require, literally, teams of outside counsel.”
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).
Solicitor General, West Virginia
Michael Williams is the Solicitor General for the State of West Virginia. In that role, Michael represents the State in appeals before state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Michael also coordinates strategic affirmative litigation on the State’s behalf, including litigation against the federal government.
Before joining the Attorney General’s Office, Michael co-led the complex briefing and appeals group at a Michigan boutique firm, representing Fortune 50 companies and others in actions across the country. He also practiced in the litigation groups of two Washington, D.C. firms and clerked with the Appellate Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine.
Michael’s work has been honored with a Best Brief Award from the National Associationof Attorneys General and a Leader in the Law Award from Michigan Lawyers Weekly. He often speaks and writes on appellate-related issues.
Michael clerked twice in the Fourth Circuit: once with then-Chief Judge Deborah Chasanow of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and later with Judge G. Steven Agee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He attended George Washington University Law School and Bates College.
Retired, Winston & Strawn LLP
Jerry Loeser is of counsel in the Chicago office of Winston & Strawn, and his practice focuses on banking regulation. He has extensive experience in counseling financial services clients on, among other things, bank acquisitions, privacy, financial modernization, the USA PATRIOT Act, Basel II and III, lending limits, capital, trust, affiliate transactions, and Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC, and CFPB regulations.
Prior to working at large corporate law firms, Jerry was chief regulatory and compliance counsel for Comerica Bank, where he also served as senior vice president and deputy general counsel and as general counsel of its retail bank division. Before that, he served as chief regulatory in-house counsel at Wells Fargo & Co. Jerry began his legal career advising the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C.
Acting Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Office of Professional Responsibility, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Brian M. Fish is currently the Senior Advisor to the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security where he works on immigration and law enforcement issues. Previously, he was a trial attorney with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he represented the Department of Homeland Security in removal hearings before the U.S. Immigration Court. Additionally, he was a Special Assistant United States Attorney and a Baltimore City homicide prosecutor. He is a member of the Federalist Society's Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group Executive Committee and the President of its Baltimore Lawyers Chapter. He earned his B.A. from LaSalle University in 1992 and his J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law in 1998.
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.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Euclid at 100: The Past, Present, and Future of Zoning in America
Isaiah McKinney, Robert H. Thomas, Michael A. Wolf
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Village of Euclid v....
2026 Supreme Court Roundup - Baltimore
Baltimore Lawyer Chapter
Baltimore, MDFormalism and the Fate of the Republic—Defending the Judiciary from Itself
Jonathan Green, Mark V. Holmes, Ilan Wurman
Featuring: Prof. Jonathan A. Green, Associate Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Prof....
Is the Federal Judicial Center Putting a Thumb on the Scale for A Climate Agenda?
Michael Fragoso, Carrie Campbell Severino, Michael R. Williams
The Federal Judicial Center describes itself as “the research and education agency of the judicial...
Baltimore Lawyer Chapter Holiday Party
Baltimore Lawyer Chapter
Baltimore, MDTopics
Nowhere to Live?
In over 40 years of litigating environmental and property rights cases on behalf of small...
Surprise, the Only Constant
Julius L. Loeser
A review of Alex Pollock & Howard Adler, Surprised Again! The COVID Crisis and the...
Topics
The Meaning of “Regulate Commerce” to the Constitution’s Ratifiers: An Update
Constitutional Background The constitutional justification for much of the federal regulatory and administrative apparatus rests...
Topics
Fairness and Impartiality Must Guide State-Court Climate Litigation
After a key Supreme Court jurisdictional decision reached earlier this year, action around climate litigation...
Courthouse Steps Decision: United States v. Hansen
Brian M. Fish
On Friday, June 23, 2023, the Supreme Court released its decision in United States v....