Founding Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and the chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, “one of the Nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above The Law 2017). The National Law Journal recently wrote that Mr. Cooper’s “brilliant legal career has so far spanned five decades and thrust Cooper into the spotlight in some of the most historic moments of the country’s modern history.” He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. He has been lead trial counsel in numerous complex, weeks-long trials in federal courts throughout the country. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the 10 best litigators in Washington D.C., Mr. Cooper’s work has been reported in numerous press accounts, and he has been called a “powerhouse attorney” (Fortune 2015), “a hard-nosed litigator” (Washington Post 2017), and “one of the country’s most in-demand civil litigators and a Washington legal institution unto himself” (The American Spectator 2014).
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978–79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of, among other things, appellate matters. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office responsible for providing legal opinions and advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues covering the full spectrum of federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.
In 1988 he returned to private practice as a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.
Mr. Cooper has represented a wide range of public and private clients in highly complex constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, healthcare, banking, intellectual property, elections, campaign finance, administrative, commercial, and government contract cases. He has led trial teams in cases that have won judgments and settlements valued in the billions of dollars and that have established ground-breaking constitutional precedents.
Much of Mr. Cooper’s practice has involved representing high-profile clients in nationally prominent matters, including: the State of Florida in a First Amendment suit brought by the Disney Company concerning its autonomous regulatory authority over its Disney World property; the Commonwealth of Virginia in a suit seeking to enjoin the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls; 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team falsely accused of rape by officials of Duke University and the City of Durham; Harper Lee in a copyright dispute with the heirs of Gregory Peck; high-ranking former government officials such as former Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr, and Ambassador John Bolton; several Governors and United States Senators; over 100 Members of Congress; and many state, territorial, and local government bodies and officials. He has also represented and advised government officials and public figures in connection with sensitive private issues that needed to be, and were, resolved discreetly without becoming matters of public record.
In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he served for three terms. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the American Law Institute (since 1993) and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (since 1996). He is also an active member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, which in 2010 named him Republican Lawyer of the Year and in 2016 honored him with its Edwin Meese III Award.
Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 26 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues, including the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to administrative agencies, the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of federal courts, statehood bills for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the impeachment of President Clinton.
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence; Director, James Madison Program, Princeton University
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has several times been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore, he holds the degrees of J.D. and M.T.S. from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., D.C.L., and D.Litt. from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-one honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Bradley Prize, the Irving Kristol Award of the American Enterprise Institute, and Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. His books include Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and In Defense of Natural Law (both published by Oxford University Press), as well as The Clash of Orthodoxies and Conscience and Its Enemies (both published by ISI Books).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Eric is an appellate and trial litigator who represents plaintiffs and defendants in high-stakes litigation and regulatory matters. His practice focuses on constitutional law, government regulation, antitrust, and class actions. A former United States Supreme Court clerk, Special Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, and Deputy Attorney General for the state of Alabama, Eric’s experience serving at the highest levels of state and federal government informs every aspect of his approach to litigation and regulatory issues.
Eric has briefed and argued high-stakes appeals and dispositive motions in a variety of state and federal courts and briefed multiple matters at the United States Supreme Court. He has served as lead or co-lead counsel in regulatory, constitutional, and consumer-protection suits, including a pathbreaking suit challenging the Department of Commerce’s regulations governing census apportionment. Eric’s experience ranges across wide variety of substantive areas, including antitrust, civil rights, criminal law, energy, insurance, healthcare, securities and corporate law, defamation and privacy law, Indian law, gambling regulation, and international judgment enforcement.
Before joining the firm, Eric was a law clerk to the Hon. Samuel A. Alito at the United States Supreme Court and Chief Judge William H. Pryor at the Eleventh Circuit. Eric also served as a special counsel to Senator Lindsey Graham in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and as a Deputy Attorney General and the Assistant Solicitor General for the State of Alabama.
Associate, Pallas Partners LLP
Brianna represents plaintiffs and defendants at all stages of complex commercial litigation. She has particular experience in antitrust, capital markets, and cross border litigation.
Brianna’s recent experience includes representing institutional investors in connection with appraisal litigation in the Cayman Islands and Japan, including in precedent-setting Section 1782 discovery proceedings in federal courts across the United States.
Brianna formerly clerked for Judge Charles R. Wilson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
President and Founder, International Center for Law & Economics
Geoffrey A. Manne is the president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a distinguished fellow at Northwestern Law School’s Searle Center on Law, Regulation, & Economic Growth. In April 2017 he was appointed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, and he recently served for two years on the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee.
Mr. Manne earned his JD and AB degrees from the University of Chicago and is an expert in the economic analysis of law, specializing in competition, telecommunications, consumer protection, intellectual property, and technology policy.
Prior to founding ICLE, Manne was a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. From 2006-2009, he took a leave from teaching to develop Microsoft’s law and economics academic outreach program. Manne has also served as a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. He practiced antitrust law and appellate litigation at Latham & Watkins, clerked for Hon. Morris S. Arnold on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked as a research assistant for Judge Richard Posner. He was also once (very briefly) employed by the FTC.
Mr. Manne’s publications have appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Supreme Court Economic Review, and the Arizona Law Review, among others. With former FTC Commissioner, Joshua Wright, Manne is the editor of a volume from Cambridge University Press entitled, Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law Under Uncertainty: Regulating Innovation. Manne has also testified on several occasions before Congress and at the FCC and FTC, and he regularly files written comments and amicus briefs on key antitrust, IP, and telecommunications issues. His analysis is frequently published in popular print and broadcasting outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Foreign Affairs, NPR, and Bloomberg, among others.
Manne is a member of the American Law and Economics Association, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics. He blogs at Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com) (of which he is also the co-founder), is a contributor at WIRED, and tweets at @geoffmanne. His scholarly publications are available at http://ssrn.com/author=175541.
Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford Law School
Doug Melamed practiced law for 43 years before spending the 2014-15 academic year at the Law School as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law. He was appointed Professor of the Practice of Law in 2015.
From 2009 until 2014, Professor Melamed was Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Intel Corporation and was responsible for overseeing Intel’s legal, government affairs and corporate affairs departments. Prior to joining Intel in 2009, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of WilmerHale, a global law firm in which he served as a chair of the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group. His practice included appellate and trial court litigation, counseling, and representing clients in matters before government law enforcement and regulatory agencies. He joined WilmerHale’s predecessor in 1971. From 1996 to 2001, Professor Melamed served in the U.S. Department of Justice as Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division and, before that, as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
Professor Melamed has received numerous professional awards and honors. He has been the Distinguished Visitor from Practice and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and he has authored numerous articles on antitrust and on law and economics. He is a member of the boards of directors of the Nasdaq exchanges and the American Law Institute and a Contributing Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal. He was for many years a member of the Yale University Council and a member of the board of trustees of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Charles M. Merrill of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Cleveland-Marshall Solo Practice Incubator, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Cleveland-Marshall Solo Practice Incubator, joined the faculty in the fall of 2002. He has taught courses in Antitrust, Banking Regulation, Business Organizations, Law & Economics, Administrative Law, Legislation and the Regulatory State, and a seminar concerning the theory of the firm. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and the Antitrust Modernization Commission. He is author of Apple, Antitrust, and Irony (Harvard Univ. Press 2016) and Antitrust Examples & Explanations, co-author (with Theresa Gabaldon of George Washington University) of a casebook on business organizations from Aspen Publishing, and co-author of Sullivan, Grimes & Sagers, The Law of Antitrust, a leading hornbook. His articles have appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, and other leading journals. He has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Huffington Post, and National Public Radio, and he is a frequent panelist and lecturer.
He frequently participates in important antitrust litigation, by consulting with plaintiffs and enforcement officials pro bono and authoring briefs amicus curiae in federal courts of appeals. He is a member of the American Law Institute, a Senior Fellow of the American Antitrust Institute, and a leadership member of the ABA Antitrust Section. In 2015 he was awarded the University's campus-wide Distinguished Research Award for Faculty. The law school's alumni association has awarded him the Walter G. Stapleton Award for Faculty Excellence and he has twice been elected Teacher of the Year by the students at large.
Before joining the faculty, Professor Sagers practiced law for four years in Washington, D.C., first at Arnold & Porter and then at Shea & Gardner. He earned his law and public policy degrees at the University of Michigan and was an editor of the Michigan Law Review. Hailing originally from the peaceful obscurity of small-town Iowa, Professor Sagers lives with his wife and two sons in the nicest little town in America, Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
Professor of Clinical Law, Brooklyn Law School
Jodi S. Balsam is Professor of Clinical Law at Brooklyn Law School and a nationally recognized expert on Sports Law. She directs the BLS Sports Law Clinic and Sports Law Externship Program. She teaches Sports Law at both BLS and NYU School of Law, and has also taught the subject at New York Law School, University of New Hampshire School of Law, Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany, Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, Hungary, and the MESGO Executive Masters Program in Global Sport Governance. Professor Balsam has served as an arbitrator for the National Collegiate Athletic Association on complex infractions cases, and now serves as a neutral for FAIR Sports, which hears cases involving college athletics.
Professor Balsam frequently writes and speaks on sports law topics, including as co-author of Weiler’s Sports and the Law, a leading casebook in the field. Her publications and presentations have addressed antitrust challenges to sports leagues and organizing bodies, sports trademarks, athletes’ rights of free expression and name/image/likeness exploitation, sports gambling and integrity, sports league governance, and the role of the sports agent. She frequently appears in the media on legal issues in sports, including NBC Sports/The Golf Channel, ESPN, Law360 Sports and Betting, The Athletic, Front Office Sports, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. She is on the editorial boards of Law360-Sports & Betting, the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, and the international sports law newsletter LawInSport.
Before joining academia, Professor Balsam was the National Football League's Counsel for Operations and Litigation, where she managed litigation in all areas of law, oversaw a variety of policy and operational matters, negotiated and drafted contracts for League special events including the Super Bowl, and administered the League's internal dispute resolution processes and compliance program. Prior to the NFL she was a litigator with the New York office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she represented sports and entertainment clients in antitrust matters and complex commercial litigation. She served as a law clerk for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge Charles Brieant of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A graduate of Yale College, Professor Balsam received her law degree from NYU School of Law.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Jesse, the former third-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Justice, helps clients with their most difficult litigation and regulatory issues─whether that means defending against an enforcement action, pursuing high-stakes litigation and appeals, navigating regulatory thickets at federal and state agencies, or crafting a comprehensive strategy to manage a crisis. He approaches these problems with the knowledge gained both from his broad private-practice experience and from having served at the highest levels of federal and state government.
Jesse has experience across a range of substantive and regulatory areas. He has sued the federal government and has also been one of its top law-enforcement officials; he has represented states and has also navigated their regulatory agencies on behalf of clients; and he has represented companies in business disputes, both as defendants and plaintiffs.
Before joining the firm, Jesse was the Acting Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice. In that role, he oversaw the civil and criminal work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment and Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. During Jesse’s tenure, the Associate’s office closely managed the Department’s most significant litigation, including matters involving large financial institutions, healthcare companies, automakers, energy companies, and state and local governments. In addition, Jesse served as Chair of DOJ’s Regulatory Reform Task Force and Vice Chair of DOJ’s Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud. Jesse regularly provided legal and strategic advice to the highest-level decision makers in the federal government, including the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, general counsels across the spectrum of federal agencies, and White House officials.
Jesse served for three years as the secretary of Florida’s labor, economic-development, and land-use agency, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Before that, he served as Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott’s general counsel.
Jesse maintains offices in both Washington D.C. and Florida. From Washington, he focuses on federal litigation and crisis management. In Florida, in addition to federal litigation, Jesse employs his knowledge of state government and regulation to help clients in courts across the state, from trial through the Florida Supreme Court.
Jesse currently serves on the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, the body that provides the governor with nominees for appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Jesse is also a fellow at the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he writes and speaks about administrative law.
Chief Deputy Attorney General
Ryan Newman is currently Chief Deputy Attorney General for Florida Office of the Attorney General.
During the first Trump Administration, he served as Counselor to the United States Attorney General for national security and international affairs, Deputy General Counsel (Legal Counsel) for the Department of Defense, and Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice. Prior to serving in the Executive Branch, Ryan was Chief Counsel to United States Senator Ted Cruz during the 114th Congress.
Ryan served as a law clerk to the Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the United States Supreme Court, the Honorable Richard J. Leon on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and the Honorable J.L. Edmondson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Prior to law school, Ryan was an armor officer in the United States Army assigned to the 1st Squadron, 10th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (Buffalo Soldiers). He deployed to Iraq in 2003 for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Ryan graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1998. He earned his law degree with high honors from The University of Texas School of Law in 2007.
Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Jesse, the former third-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Justice, helps clients with their most difficult litigation and regulatory issues─whether that means defending against an enforcement action, pursuing high-stakes litigation and appeals, navigating regulatory thickets at federal and state agencies, or crafting a comprehensive strategy to manage a crisis. He approaches these problems with the knowledge gained both from his broad private-practice experience and from having served at the highest levels of federal and state government.
Jesse has experience across a range of substantive and regulatory areas. He has sued the federal government and has also been one of its top law-enforcement officials; he has represented states and has also navigated their regulatory agencies on behalf of clients; and he has represented companies in business disputes, both as defendants and plaintiffs.
Before joining the firm, Jesse was the Acting Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice. In that role, he oversaw the civil and criminal work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment and Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. During Jesse’s tenure, the Associate’s office closely managed the Department’s most significant litigation, including matters involving large financial institutions, healthcare companies, automakers, energy companies, and state and local governments. In addition, Jesse served as Chair of DOJ’s Regulatory Reform Task Force and Vice Chair of DOJ’s Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud. Jesse regularly provided legal and strategic advice to the highest-level decision makers in the federal government, including the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, general counsels across the spectrum of federal agencies, and White House officials.
Jesse served for three years as the secretary of Florida’s labor, economic-development, and land-use agency, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Before that, he served as Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott’s general counsel.
Jesse maintains offices in both Washington D.C. and Florida. From Washington, he focuses on federal litigation and crisis management. In Florida, in addition to federal litigation, Jesse employs his knowledge of state government and regulation to help clients in courts across the state, from trial through the Florida Supreme Court.
Jesse currently serves on the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, the body that provides the governor with nominees for appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Jesse is also a fellow at the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he writes and speaks about administrative law.
President and Founder, International Center for Law & Economics
Geoffrey A. Manne is the president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a distinguished fellow at Northwestern Law School’s Searle Center on Law, Regulation, & Economic Growth. In April 2017 he was appointed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, and he recently served for two years on the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee.
Mr. Manne earned his JD and AB degrees from the University of Chicago and is an expert in the economic analysis of law, specializing in competition, telecommunications, consumer protection, intellectual property, and technology policy.
Prior to founding ICLE, Manne was a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. From 2006-2009, he took a leave from teaching to develop Microsoft’s law and economics academic outreach program. Manne has also served as a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. He practiced antitrust law and appellate litigation at Latham & Watkins, clerked for Hon. Morris S. Arnold on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked as a research assistant for Judge Richard Posner. He was also once (very briefly) employed by the FTC.
Mr. Manne’s publications have appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Supreme Court Economic Review, and the Arizona Law Review, among others. With former FTC Commissioner, Joshua Wright, Manne is the editor of a volume from Cambridge University Press entitled, Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law Under Uncertainty: Regulating Innovation. Manne has also testified on several occasions before Congress and at the FCC and FTC, and he regularly files written comments and amicus briefs on key antitrust, IP, and telecommunications issues. His analysis is frequently published in popular print and broadcasting outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Foreign Affairs, NPR, and Bloomberg, among others.
Manne is a member of the American Law and Economics Association, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics. He blogs at Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com) (of which he is also the co-founder), is a contributor at WIRED, and tweets at @geoffmanne. His scholarly publications are available at http://ssrn.com/author=175541.
Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford Law School
Doug Melamed practiced law for 43 years before spending the 2014-15 academic year at the Law School as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law. He was appointed Professor of the Practice of Law in 2015.
From 2009 until 2014, Professor Melamed was Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Intel Corporation and was responsible for overseeing Intel’s legal, government affairs and corporate affairs departments. Prior to joining Intel in 2009, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of WilmerHale, a global law firm in which he served as a chair of the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group. His practice included appellate and trial court litigation, counseling, and representing clients in matters before government law enforcement and regulatory agencies. He joined WilmerHale’s predecessor in 1971. From 1996 to 2001, Professor Melamed served in the U.S. Department of Justice as Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division and, before that, as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
Professor Melamed has received numerous professional awards and honors. He has been the Distinguished Visitor from Practice and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and he has authored numerous articles on antitrust and on law and economics. He is a member of the boards of directors of the Nasdaq exchanges and the American Law Institute and a Contributing Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal. He was for many years a member of the Yale University Council and a member of the board of trustees of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Charles M. Merrill of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Cleveland-Marshall Solo Practice Incubator, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Cleveland-Marshall Solo Practice Incubator, joined the faculty in the fall of 2002. He has taught courses in Antitrust, Banking Regulation, Business Organizations, Law & Economics, Administrative Law, Legislation and the Regulatory State, and a seminar concerning the theory of the firm. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and the Antitrust Modernization Commission. He is author of Apple, Antitrust, and Irony (Harvard Univ. Press 2016) and Antitrust Examples & Explanations, co-author (with Theresa Gabaldon of George Washington University) of a casebook on business organizations from Aspen Publishing, and co-author of Sullivan, Grimes & Sagers, The Law of Antitrust, a leading hornbook. His articles have appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, and other leading journals. He has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Huffington Post, and National Public Radio, and he is a frequent panelist and lecturer.
He frequently participates in important antitrust litigation, by consulting with plaintiffs and enforcement officials pro bono and authoring briefs amicus curiae in federal courts of appeals. He is a member of the American Law Institute, a Senior Fellow of the American Antitrust Institute, and a leadership member of the ABA Antitrust Section. In 2015 he was awarded the University's campus-wide Distinguished Research Award for Faculty. The law school's alumni association has awarded him the Walter G. Stapleton Award for Faculty Excellence and he has twice been elected Teacher of the Year by the students at large.
Before joining the faculty, Professor Sagers practiced law for four years in Washington, D.C., first at Arnold & Porter and then at Shea & Gardner. He earned his law and public policy degrees at the University of Michigan and was an editor of the Michigan Law Review. Hailing originally from the peaceful obscurity of small-town Iowa, Professor Sagers lives with his wife and two sons in the nicest little town in America, Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
Associate, Pallas Partners LLP
Brianna represents plaintiffs and defendants at all stages of complex commercial litigation. She has particular experience in antitrust, capital markets, and cross border litigation.
Brianna’s recent experience includes representing institutional investors in connection with appraisal litigation in the Cayman Islands and Japan, including in precedent-setting Section 1782 discovery proceedings in federal courts across the United States.
Brianna formerly clerked for Judge Charles R. Wilson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Professor of Clinical Law, Brooklyn Law School
Jodi S. Balsam is Professor of Clinical Law at Brooklyn Law School and a nationally recognized expert on Sports Law. She directs the BLS Sports Law Clinic and Sports Law Externship Program. She teaches Sports Law at both BLS and NYU School of Law, and has also taught the subject at New York Law School, University of New Hampshire School of Law, Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany, Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, Hungary, and the MESGO Executive Masters Program in Global Sport Governance. Professor Balsam has served as an arbitrator for the National Collegiate Athletic Association on complex infractions cases, and now serves as a neutral for FAIR Sports, which hears cases involving college athletics.
Professor Balsam frequently writes and speaks on sports law topics, including as co-author of Weiler’s Sports and the Law, a leading casebook in the field. Her publications and presentations have addressed antitrust challenges to sports leagues and organizing bodies, sports trademarks, athletes’ rights of free expression and name/image/likeness exploitation, sports gambling and integrity, sports league governance, and the role of the sports agent. She frequently appears in the media on legal issues in sports, including NBC Sports/The Golf Channel, ESPN, Law360 Sports and Betting, The Athletic, Front Office Sports, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. She is on the editorial boards of Law360-Sports & Betting, the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, and the international sports law newsletter LawInSport.
Before joining academia, Professor Balsam was the National Football League's Counsel for Operations and Litigation, where she managed litigation in all areas of law, oversaw a variety of policy and operational matters, negotiated and drafted contracts for League special events including the Super Bowl, and administered the League's internal dispute resolution processes and compliance program. Prior to the NFL she was a litigator with the New York office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she represented sports and entertainment clients in antitrust matters and complex commercial litigation. She served as a law clerk for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge Charles Brieant of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A graduate of Yale College, Professor Balsam received her law degree from NYU School of Law.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Jesse, the former third-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Justice, helps clients with their most difficult litigation and regulatory issues─whether that means defending against an enforcement action, pursuing high-stakes litigation and appeals, navigating regulatory thickets at federal and state agencies, or crafting a comprehensive strategy to manage a crisis. He approaches these problems with the knowledge gained both from his broad private-practice experience and from having served at the highest levels of federal and state government.
Jesse has experience across a range of substantive and regulatory areas. He has sued the federal government and has also been one of its top law-enforcement officials; he has represented states and has also navigated their regulatory agencies on behalf of clients; and he has represented companies in business disputes, both as defendants and plaintiffs.
Before joining the firm, Jesse was the Acting Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice. In that role, he oversaw the civil and criminal work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment and Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. During Jesse’s tenure, the Associate’s office closely managed the Department’s most significant litigation, including matters involving large financial institutions, healthcare companies, automakers, energy companies, and state and local governments. In addition, Jesse served as Chair of DOJ’s Regulatory Reform Task Force and Vice Chair of DOJ’s Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud. Jesse regularly provided legal and strategic advice to the highest-level decision makers in the federal government, including the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, general counsels across the spectrum of federal agencies, and White House officials.
Jesse served for three years as the secretary of Florida’s labor, economic-development, and land-use agency, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Before that, he served as Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott’s general counsel.
Jesse maintains offices in both Washington D.C. and Florida. From Washington, he focuses on federal litigation and crisis management. In Florida, in addition to federal litigation, Jesse employs his knowledge of state government and regulation to help clients in courts across the state, from trial through the Florida Supreme Court.
Jesse currently serves on the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, the body that provides the governor with nominees for appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Jesse is also a fellow at the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he writes and speaks about administrative law.
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