Associate, Cooper & Kirk, PLLC
Haley Proctor is an associate at Cooper & Kirk. She rejoined Cooper & Kirk in 2015 after clerking for Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court during the October 2014 term. She previously clerked for Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Ms. Proctor graduated from Yale Law School in 2012 and from Yale College, magna cum laude. In law school, she was a moot court semifinalist and co-authored several law review articles. At Yale College, she served as a co-founder and president of the New Haven Urban Debate League and a board member for the Yale Debate Association.
Managing Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
David Thompson is the Managing Partner of Cooper & Kirk and joined the firm at its founding. Mr. Thompson has extensive trial and appellate experience in a wide range of matters and has secured victories worth billions of dollars. He has successfully challenged numerous laws on Second Amendment grounds. He has also litigated cases in over 30 federal district courts, argued in each of the 13 federal circuit courts of appeal, and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as many state courts. Mr. Thompson was awarded an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1991, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1994, Mr. Thompson received a J.D. degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
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.
Stand Your Ground Laws and Retroactivity
Haley N. Proctor, David H. Thompson
Florida Love v. State Last month, the Florida Supreme Court heard argument...
Castle Laws & the Militarization of the Police Department