Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Patrick J. Bumatay was confirmed as a U.S. Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in December 2019. He is based in San Diego, California.
Prior to his appointment, Judge Bumatay served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, where he was a member of the Appellate and Narcotics Sections. He also served as a Counselor to the Attorney General on criminal law issues, including on national opioid strategy and combating transnational organized crime. Judge Bumatay has also worked in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of the Associate Attorney General, and the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. Judge Bumatay has twice received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award.
Judge Bumatay previously worked as an associate at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, and Bohrer in New York, New York. Judge Bumatay clerked for the Honorable Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Honorable Sandra L. Townes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Judge Bumatay earned his B.A., cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Former Attorney General, Arizona
During 8 years as Arizona Attorney General (2003-2011), Terry Goddard focused on protecting consumers and fighting trans-national organized crime. In 2010, he received the Kelly-Wyman Award, the highest recognition given by his fellow state Attorneys General.
As Mayor of Phoenix from 1984 to 1990, Terry increased citizen participation in government culminating in the Phoenix Futures Forum and the Billion Dollar Bond Issue in 1988. He was elected president of the National League of Cities in 1988 and recognized as Municipal Leader of the Year.
Recently, Terry’s political activity has been focused on getting a nonpartisan initiative to stop dark money from purchasing political ads in Arizona on the November ballot and approved by 72% of Arizona voters.
Terry retired as a commander after 27 years in the Naval Reserve. He practices law, works to revitalize and return to public use an historic church and teaches at the ASU College of Law. He is President of the Central Arizona Project board, the elected administrators of the canal system bringing water from the Colorado River to central Arizona. He lives in downtown Phoenix with his wife Monica, a tortoise, many cats and (occasionally) their recent ASU graduate son.
Of Counsel, Cashion Gilmore & Lindemuth
In addition to his experience as a litigator and appellate advocate, Scott Kendall offers a depth of expertise as a strategic consultant. He is well known for his work across all levels of government, across jurisdictions, and across political parties to design approaches that bring his clients positive results and disrupt negative outcomes.
Scott’s practice also includes providing guidance in matters related to strategic communications, as well as campaign and election law. He has represented organizations and individuals in proceedings before the Alaska Public Offices Commission and the Federal Elections Commission.
Scott’s campaign and election clients have included candidates for local, statewide, and national office as well as industry coalitions, non-profits, ballot measure groups, and independent campaign expenditure organizations (known as “superPACs”). In 2010, Scott was counsel to U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski’s historic, and successful, write-in campaign for reelection. In 2014, Scott drafted a successful statewide ballot measure aimed at protecting the world famous Bristol Bay salmon fishery.
From 2015 to 2016, Scott left the practice of law to serve as Campaign Coordinator for Senator Murkowski’s successful 2016 reelection campaign. And from 2016 to 2018 Scott served as Chief of Staff to Alaska Governor Bill Walker, providing him with a keen understanding of state government operations, as well as the complex relationships between state, federal, and local jurisdictions. During that time, Scott helped execute Governor Walker’s legislative strategy including the passage of landmark legislation transforming the way Alaska finances state government into an endowment or “POMV” model to protect the Alaska Permanent Fund in perpetuity.
More recently Scott authored, litigated, and advised the successful ballot measure campaign to improve Alaska’s statewide election system. The new system—which features a Top 4 open primary election along with Ranked Choice Voting in the general—has become a national model for election reform.
Early in his career, from 2003 to 2005, Scott served as law clerk to the Hon. Chief Judge of the Alaska Court of Appeals, Robert G. Coats.
Managing Partner, Statecraft
Kory Langhofer is the Managing Attorney at Statecraft PLLC, a law firm focusing on government and political law. His practice is concentrated in campaign finance, constitutional litigation, and political matters. He has previously worked as a federal prosecutor, as litigation counsel to the presidential campaigns for Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, and as general counsel for the 2016-2017 presidential transition team.
Kory received his A.B. in political science, summa cum laude, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as an Editor of The Yale Law Journal.
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Richard H. Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. His acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (now in its fourth edition), helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. The Law of Democracy systematically explores legal and policy issues concerning the structure of democratic elections and institutions, such as the role of money in politics, the design of election districts, the regulation of political parties, the design of voting systems, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and similar issues. He has written extensively on the rise of political polarization in the United States, the Voting Rights Act, the dysfunction of America’s political processes, the role of the Supreme Court in overseeing American democracy, the powers of the American President and Congress, and he has criticized excessively “romantic” understandings of democracy. In addition to his scholarship on these issues, he has written on national-security law, the design of the regulatory state, and American constitutional history and theory.
Respect for his expertise in these areas is reflected in frequent citations of his work in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the translation of his work into many languages, and his frequent public lectures and appearances around the world, including his nomination with the NBC News Team for an Emmy Award for coverage of the 2000 Presidential election litigation.
His work has been translated and published in Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In addition to his scholarship, Professor Pildes plays an active role litigating in these areas. He has won two cases before the United States Supreme Court, including a 2015 victory in Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, a case involving race and redistricting. He served as counsel to a group of former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission in litigation defending the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; as counsel in election litigation to the Puerto Rico Electoral Commission; as counsel to the government of Puerto Rico; as a federal court-appointed independent expert on voting rights litigation; and as counsel in successful Supreme Court litigation that challenged the way the United States Tax Court operated. He was also a senior legal advisor to the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of President Obama.
Pildes received his A.B. in physical chemistry summa cum laude from Princeton, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he served as Supreme Court Note Editor on the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing law in Boston, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan Law School, before joining the NYU School of Law in 2001.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
President, Center for American Rights
Daniel Suhr serves as president of the Center for American Rights, where he spends every day on the front lines of the fight to preserve our rights and liberties. The Center's mission is to advance free speech, free enterprise, and parental freedom in education through strategic, precedent-setting litigation.
Daniel formerly worked as policy director for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, as chief of staff for Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, and as a law clerk for Judge Diane Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He holds a B.A. and J.D. from Marquette University, and master’s degrees from Georgetown and the University of Missouri.
Former Acting Assistant Attorney General, United States Department of Justice; Partner, Winston & Strawn LLP
Jonathan “Jon” Brightbill is a trial and appellate lawyer in Winston’s Washington, D.C. office, and a partner in the firm’s Litigation and White Collar, Regulatory Defense, and Investigations Practices. He represents public and private companies, corporate officers, and other individuals across white collar, regulatory defense, and government and internal investigation matters and rulemaking challenges, as well as complex commercial disputes, citizen suits, and class actions. His commercial litigation experience encompasses business disputes, false advertising, consumer protection and fraud, FCA, and extensive class action defense work; antitrust and unfair competition matters; and intellectual property litigation, such as trademarks, patents, and trade secrets.
Jon served as the Nation’s lead environmental civil and criminal enforcement official and litigator, as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Environment & Natural Resources Division (“ENRD”) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Jon led ENRD’s 425 lawyers, overseeing 6,500 active matters and managing an annual budget of more than $150 million. Jon brings highly experienced executive leadership from among the most senior level of DOJ on white collar and regulatory enforcement, as well as on federal policymaking and rulemaking development and challenges. He speaks with authority on government decision-making processes, and the arguments and perspectives that move regulators and enforcers, best advising and positioning clients to deal with challenges.
Jon argued many of the government’s most significant cases during his time with the DOJ. This included the Navigable Waters Protection Rule and Clean Water Rule Repeal (10th Cir., district courts), the Affordable Clean Energy Rule and Clean Power Plan Repeal (D.C. Cir), defense of EPA actions on pesticide tolerances under FIFRA and the FDCA (9th Cir. en banc), among numerous others. Jon represented the United States in trial courts in both enforcement and defensive cases, including federal enforcement action against Jeffrey Lowe and the Tiger King Park, of Netflix fame, securing a first-of-its-kind injunction for violations of the Endangered Species Act and Animal Welfare Act. Jon directed the litigation and briefing of scores of additional federal cases nationwide, covering all of the major environmental and natural resources statutes, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, FIFRA (pesticides), FDCA (food safety), TSCA (toxics), CERCLA (land remediation), RCRA (waste), National Environmental Policy Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and numerous other land- and resource-management statutes.
Jon has unmatched experience litigating legal and technical issues relating to climate change. He argued in the courts of appeals, including the D.C. Circuit, regarding the most significant climate change regulations by EPA, as well as the preemptive scope of the Clean Air Act. Jon also litigated climate change-related credit and trading schemes and international agreements in district court. During Jon’s time in leadership at ENRD, it successfully defeated one of the most wide-ranging lawsuits regarding climate change to date—obtaining a stay pending interlocutory appeal and dismissal just weeks before a scheduled three-month trial on federal government liability for climate change.
An accomplished trial lawyer, prior to working at DOJ, Jon was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of another global law firm. He not only represents clients in court, but creatively counsels corporations on balancing business needs and realities with a broad range of litigation risks and compliance obligations. Jon is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He served on the American Bar Association’s E-Discovery Working Group for Bankruptcy Practice, and was a frequent lecturer for District of Columbia Bar Association Continuing Legal Education Programs.
Jon served as an appellate clerk for the Honorable D. Brooks Smith, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, after graduating magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center. He worked in state government as an Executive Policy Specialist for air, waste, land remediation, and radiation matters at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Managing Director, Berkeley Research Group (BRG)
Dr. Dasgupta served as Assistant Secretary for Trade and Economic Security, responsible for a comprehensive national security portfolio. His duties included oversight of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Team Telecom, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), Information and Communications Technology and Services (ICTS), Arctic security initiatives, the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact, and related trade matters. Sohan Dasgupta also served as political head of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), supporting U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives. Previously, he had served as Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Dr. Dasgupta holds a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif; a PhD in international trade and arbitration from the University of Cambridge; MSc from the University of Oxford; and BA in Economics–Operations Research and History from Columbia University. He commenced his legal career with clerkships on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
Dr. Dasgupta has addressed the Hungarian, Romanian, and Guatemalan parliaments, and has spoken at the invitation of Members of the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament, the European Union Parliament, the Congress of the Philippines, and the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador.
Robert F. Stanton Professor of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law
Robert V. Percival is the Robert F. Stanton Professor of Law and the Director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Maryland School of Law. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Macalester College, a J.D. from Stanford Law School and an M.A. in economics from Stanford University. At Stanford Percival was named the Nathan Abbott Scholar for graduating first in his law school class. Following graduation, he served as a law clerk for Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White. He joined the Maryland faculty in 1987 after serving as a senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. Percival has served as a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, the China University of Political Science and Law (Beijing), and Comenius University (Bratislava). He is the principal author of a leading environmental law casebook, now in its 9th edition, and the author of several articles about the Supreme Court and presidential authority over executive agencies. Percival wrote one of the first articles on the propriety of consent decrees to effectuate and enforce federal law “The Bounds of Consent: Consent Decrees, Settlements and Federal Environmental Policymaking,” 1987 Univ. Chic. Leg. F. 327 (1987). He also is the author of the first comprehensive analyses of what the papers of the late Justices Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun reveal about the Supreme Court’s handling of environmental cases (“Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Blackmun Papers,” 35 ELR 10637 (2005), and “Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Marshall Papers,” 13 ELR 10606 (Oct. 1993)).
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig
Greenberg Traurig Phoenix Litigation chair Andy Halaby advises clients on professional responsibility and related matters, including discipline defense, disqualification, and lawyer liability matters, as well as issues and opportunities arising from Arizona’s Alternative Business Structure (ABS) law. He has served on the Arizona Supreme Court's Task Forces on Lawyer Ethics, Professionalism, and the Unauthorized Practice of Law, and Judicial Performance Review, and chaired the State Bar of Arizona's Conflict Case Committee. Andy also practices extensively in intellectual property litigation. A former professional engineer registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Andy has served as lead counsel in dozens of patent infringement and other IP matters. His published work has been cited in, among other things, treatises on intellectual property law, remedies, evidence, professional responsibility and the First Amendment, as well as in numerous scholarly articles. He has taught multiple semesters of Professional Responsibility, Patent Litigation, and other courses at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Indiana University; Co-Author, The Law of Lawyering
After graduating with honors from Harvard College in 1966, and from Rutgers Law School with highest honors in 1969, W. William Hodes began practice in a small civil rights and personal injury firm in New Orleans, where he had lived as a child. During the next eight years, he worked in Newark, New Jersey, first for the Kenneth Gibson administration, and then as senior staff attorney for the Education Law Center, a public interest law firm funded by the Ford Foundation.
In 1979, Hodes returned to the legal academy, first as a Bigelow Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, and then as a Professor of Law at the Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis. For the next twenty years, Professor Hodes taught in the areas of Civil Procedure, Constitutonal Law, Federal Courts, Administrative Law, and Professional Responsibility. He gained a national reputation as a scholar, consultant, and expert witness in the areas of Legal Ethics and Professional Responsbility, as they were then known.
Beginning in 1985 however, those subjects began to be known as "The Law of Lawyering," after a book of that name was published, co-authored by Professor Hodes and Professor Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., who had served as the Reporter to the Kutak Commission that developed the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The treatise, which is now in its fourth edition and updated twice a year by Hodes and new co-author Peter R. Jarvis of Portland, Oregon, has become a mainstay resource for both the practicing bar and the academic community, and is often cited in court and ethics committee opinions.
While in the academy, Professor Hodes took two unusual sabbatical leaves. In the Spring of 1989, Hodes, who had spent his junior high school years in Beijing and is still fluent in Chinese, was a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at the China University of Politics and Law, teaching a course in American Civil Procedure and conducting research into Chinese People's Mediation. (The course was suspended in April, when the events leading to the June 4th Tiananmen Massacre began to unfold, and Professor Hodes began to accompany his students on protest marches.)
During the October 1996 Term of the United States Supreme Court, Professor Hodes served as law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had been his Civil Procedure and Conflicts of Law professor some thirty years earlier, during her Rutgers days. According to knowledgeable sources, Hodes was the oldest person to have served as a law clerk since the early 19th Century.
In 1999, W. William Hodes retired from law teaching (at age 56) in order to establish the William Hodes Professional Corporation, which was later renamed The William Hodes Law Firm; he became Professor Emeritus of Law at Indiana University as the new century began. Through this solo practice, Hodes can now devote full time to providing representation, consultation, expert testimony, legal opinions, and other counsel and assistance to lawyers in the areas of The Law of Lawyering, and Constitutional, Appellate, Supreme Court, and other complex litigation.
Former Acting Assistant Attorney General, United States Department of Justice; Partner, Winston & Strawn LLP
Jonathan “Jon” Brightbill is a trial and appellate lawyer in Winston’s Washington, D.C. office, and a partner in the firm’s Litigation and White Collar, Regulatory Defense, and Investigations Practices. He represents public and private companies, corporate officers, and other individuals across white collar, regulatory defense, and government and internal investigation matters and rulemaking challenges, as well as complex commercial disputes, citizen suits, and class actions. His commercial litigation experience encompasses business disputes, false advertising, consumer protection and fraud, FCA, and extensive class action defense work; antitrust and unfair competition matters; and intellectual property litigation, such as trademarks, patents, and trade secrets.
Jon served as the Nation’s lead environmental civil and criminal enforcement official and litigator, as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Environment & Natural Resources Division (“ENRD”) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Jon led ENRD’s 425 lawyers, overseeing 6,500 active matters and managing an annual budget of more than $150 million. Jon brings highly experienced executive leadership from among the most senior level of DOJ on white collar and regulatory enforcement, as well as on federal policymaking and rulemaking development and challenges. He speaks with authority on government decision-making processes, and the arguments and perspectives that move regulators and enforcers, best advising and positioning clients to deal with challenges.
Jon argued many of the government’s most significant cases during his time with the DOJ. This included the Navigable Waters Protection Rule and Clean Water Rule Repeal (10th Cir., district courts), the Affordable Clean Energy Rule and Clean Power Plan Repeal (D.C. Cir), defense of EPA actions on pesticide tolerances under FIFRA and the FDCA (9th Cir. en banc), among numerous others. Jon represented the United States in trial courts in both enforcement and defensive cases, including federal enforcement action against Jeffrey Lowe and the Tiger King Park, of Netflix fame, securing a first-of-its-kind injunction for violations of the Endangered Species Act and Animal Welfare Act. Jon directed the litigation and briefing of scores of additional federal cases nationwide, covering all of the major environmental and natural resources statutes, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, FIFRA (pesticides), FDCA (food safety), TSCA (toxics), CERCLA (land remediation), RCRA (waste), National Environmental Policy Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and numerous other land- and resource-management statutes.
Jon has unmatched experience litigating legal and technical issues relating to climate change. He argued in the courts of appeals, including the D.C. Circuit, regarding the most significant climate change regulations by EPA, as well as the preemptive scope of the Clean Air Act. Jon also litigated climate change-related credit and trading schemes and international agreements in district court. During Jon’s time in leadership at ENRD, it successfully defeated one of the most wide-ranging lawsuits regarding climate change to date—obtaining a stay pending interlocutory appeal and dismissal just weeks before a scheduled three-month trial on federal government liability for climate change.
An accomplished trial lawyer, prior to working at DOJ, Jon was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of another global law firm. He not only represents clients in court, but creatively counsels corporations on balancing business needs and realities with a broad range of litigation risks and compliance obligations. Jon is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He served on the American Bar Association’s E-Discovery Working Group for Bankruptcy Practice, and was a frequent lecturer for District of Columbia Bar Association Continuing Legal Education Programs.
Jon served as an appellate clerk for the Honorable D. Brooks Smith, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, after graduating magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center. He worked in state government as an Executive Policy Specialist for air, waste, land remediation, and radiation matters at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Robert F. Stanton Professor of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law
Robert V. Percival is the Robert F. Stanton Professor of Law and the Director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Maryland School of Law. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Macalester College, a J.D. from Stanford Law School and an M.A. in economics from Stanford University. At Stanford Percival was named the Nathan Abbott Scholar for graduating first in his law school class. Following graduation, he served as a law clerk for Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White. He joined the Maryland faculty in 1987 after serving as a senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. Percival has served as a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, the China University of Political Science and Law (Beijing), and Comenius University (Bratislava). He is the principal author of a leading environmental law casebook, now in its 9th edition, and the author of several articles about the Supreme Court and presidential authority over executive agencies. Percival wrote one of the first articles on the propriety of consent decrees to effectuate and enforce federal law “The Bounds of Consent: Consent Decrees, Settlements and Federal Environmental Policymaking,” 1987 Univ. Chic. Leg. F. 327 (1987). He also is the author of the first comprehensive analyses of what the papers of the late Justices Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun reveal about the Supreme Court’s handling of environmental cases (“Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Blackmun Papers,” 35 ELR 10637 (2005), and “Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Marshall Papers,” 13 ELR 10606 (Oct. 1993)).
Managing Director, Berkeley Research Group (BRG)
Dr. Dasgupta served as Assistant Secretary for Trade and Economic Security, responsible for a comprehensive national security portfolio. His duties included oversight of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Team Telecom, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), Information and Communications Technology and Services (ICTS), Arctic security initiatives, the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact, and related trade matters. Sohan Dasgupta also served as political head of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), supporting U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives. Previously, he had served as Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Dr. Dasgupta holds a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif; a PhD in international trade and arbitration from the University of Cambridge; MSc from the University of Oxford; and BA in Economics–Operations Research and History from Columbia University. He commenced his legal career with clerkships on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
Dr. Dasgupta has addressed the Hungarian, Romanian, and Guatemalan parliaments, and has spoken at the invitation of Members of the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament, the European Union Parliament, the Congress of the Philippines, and the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador.
Former Acting Assistant Attorney General, United States Department of Justice; Partner, Winston & Strawn LLP
Jonathan “Jon” Brightbill is a trial and appellate lawyer in Winston’s Washington, D.C. office, and a partner in the firm’s Litigation and White Collar, Regulatory Defense, and Investigations Practices. He represents public and private companies, corporate officers, and other individuals across white collar, regulatory defense, and government and internal investigation matters and rulemaking challenges, as well as complex commercial disputes, citizen suits, and class actions. His commercial litigation experience encompasses business disputes, false advertising, consumer protection and fraud, FCA, and extensive class action defense work; antitrust and unfair competition matters; and intellectual property litigation, such as trademarks, patents, and trade secrets.
Jon served as the Nation’s lead environmental civil and criminal enforcement official and litigator, as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Environment & Natural Resources Division (“ENRD”) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Jon led ENRD’s 425 lawyers, overseeing 6,500 active matters and managing an annual budget of more than $150 million. Jon brings highly experienced executive leadership from among the most senior level of DOJ on white collar and regulatory enforcement, as well as on federal policymaking and rulemaking development and challenges. He speaks with authority on government decision-making processes, and the arguments and perspectives that move regulators and enforcers, best advising and positioning clients to deal with challenges.
Jon argued many of the government’s most significant cases during his time with the DOJ. This included the Navigable Waters Protection Rule and Clean Water Rule Repeal (10th Cir., district courts), the Affordable Clean Energy Rule and Clean Power Plan Repeal (D.C. Cir), defense of EPA actions on pesticide tolerances under FIFRA and the FDCA (9th Cir. en banc), among numerous others. Jon represented the United States in trial courts in both enforcement and defensive cases, including federal enforcement action against Jeffrey Lowe and the Tiger King Park, of Netflix fame, securing a first-of-its-kind injunction for violations of the Endangered Species Act and Animal Welfare Act. Jon directed the litigation and briefing of scores of additional federal cases nationwide, covering all of the major environmental and natural resources statutes, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, FIFRA (pesticides), FDCA (food safety), TSCA (toxics), CERCLA (land remediation), RCRA (waste), National Environmental Policy Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and numerous other land- and resource-management statutes.
Jon has unmatched experience litigating legal and technical issues relating to climate change. He argued in the courts of appeals, including the D.C. Circuit, regarding the most significant climate change regulations by EPA, as well as the preemptive scope of the Clean Air Act. Jon also litigated climate change-related credit and trading schemes and international agreements in district court. During Jon’s time in leadership at ENRD, it successfully defeated one of the most wide-ranging lawsuits regarding climate change to date—obtaining a stay pending interlocutory appeal and dismissal just weeks before a scheduled three-month trial on federal government liability for climate change.
An accomplished trial lawyer, prior to working at DOJ, Jon was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of another global law firm. He not only represents clients in court, but creatively counsels corporations on balancing business needs and realities with a broad range of litigation risks and compliance obligations. Jon is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He served on the American Bar Association’s E-Discovery Working Group for Bankruptcy Practice, and was a frequent lecturer for District of Columbia Bar Association Continuing Legal Education Programs.
Jon served as an appellate clerk for the Honorable D. Brooks Smith, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, after graduating magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center. He worked in state government as an Executive Policy Specialist for air, waste, land remediation, and radiation matters at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Managing Director, Berkeley Research Group (BRG)
Dr. Dasgupta served as Assistant Secretary for Trade and Economic Security, responsible for a comprehensive national security portfolio. His duties included oversight of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Team Telecom, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), Information and Communications Technology and Services (ICTS), Arctic security initiatives, the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact, and related trade matters. Sohan Dasgupta also served as political head of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), supporting U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives. Previously, he had served as Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Dr. Dasgupta holds a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif; a PhD in international trade and arbitration from the University of Cambridge; MSc from the University of Oxford; and BA in Economics–Operations Research and History from Columbia University. He commenced his legal career with clerkships on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
Dr. Dasgupta has addressed the Hungarian, Romanian, and Guatemalan parliaments, and has spoken at the invitation of Members of the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament, the European Union Parliament, the Congress of the Philippines, and the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador.
Robert F. Stanton Professor of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law
Robert V. Percival is the Robert F. Stanton Professor of Law and the Director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Maryland School of Law. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Macalester College, a J.D. from Stanford Law School and an M.A. in economics from Stanford University. At Stanford Percival was named the Nathan Abbott Scholar for graduating first in his law school class. Following graduation, he served as a law clerk for Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White. He joined the Maryland faculty in 1987 after serving as a senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. Percival has served as a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, the China University of Political Science and Law (Beijing), and Comenius University (Bratislava). He is the principal author of a leading environmental law casebook, now in its 9th edition, and the author of several articles about the Supreme Court and presidential authority over executive agencies. Percival wrote one of the first articles on the propriety of consent decrees to effectuate and enforce federal law “The Bounds of Consent: Consent Decrees, Settlements and Federal Environmental Policymaking,” 1987 Univ. Chic. Leg. F. 327 (1987). He also is the author of the first comprehensive analyses of what the papers of the late Justices Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun reveal about the Supreme Court’s handling of environmental cases (“Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Blackmun Papers,” 35 ELR 10637 (2005), and “Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Marshall Papers,” 13 ELR 10606 (Oct. 1993)).
Panel 2: Recent Developments in Election Law
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Litigation Update: Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency
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Litigation Update: Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency
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