Attorney and Legal Commentator
John Shu is an attorney and legal commentator. His focus areas include constitutional law, securities & corporate law, antitrust law, administrative law, politics, and international affairs. Mr. Shu has lectured and published on a wide variety of issues.
Mr. Shu served President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush. He also served Judge Stanley Sporkin, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was Director of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, and Judge Paul Roney, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, who was Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
Mr. Shu is a member of the National Committee on U.S. - China Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Foreign Policy Association.
Chief Economist, The Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies
George S. Ford is the chief economist for the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) research organization that studies broad public-policy issues related to governance, social and economic conditions, with a particular emphasis on the law and economics of the digital age.
President, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies
Lawrence J. Spiwak is President of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that studies broad public-policy issues related to governance, social and economic conditions, with a particular emphasis on the law and economics of the digital age. Mr. Spiwak is a prolific scholar whose work is frequently cited by policymakers, major news media and academic journals around the world, and is in the top 1.3%of authors downloaded on the Social Science Research Network. Mr. Spiwak currently serves as the co-chair of the Federal Communications Bar Association’s (FCBA) committee responsible for overseeing the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL and is a member of the program committee of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (“TPRC”). Mr. Spiwak is also the recipient of the FCBA’s Distinguished Service Award. Prior to joining the Phoenix Center, Mr. Spiwak was a Senior Attorney with the Competition Division in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel from 1994-1998. While in college, Mr. Spiwak was accepted into the Presidential Stay-In School program where he was responsible for delivering classified and confidential material among senior White House and Reagan Administration officials and received a full FBI security clearance. Mr. Spiwak received his B.A. with Special Honors from the George Washington University and his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Mr. Spiwak is a member in good standing of the bars of New York, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Chair, Global Antitrust Law Practice Group, Morrison Foerster
Alex Okuliar is Co-Chair of Morrison Foerster’s Global Antitrust Law Practice Group. He is the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Antitrust Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Justice and a former advisor at the Federal Trade Commission.
Alex’s practice spans merger review, civil litigation, and criminal investigations. Over his twenty-five-year career, Alex has worked on nearly one thousand deals. He has deep experience guiding clients through the complex global merger clearance process and has litigated agency merger challenges through trial. He has also helped clients succeed in a wide range of federal and state cases, including class actions and private party disputes alleging price fixing, monopolization, group boycotts, market allocation, and tying. His understanding of the agency processes from the inside allows him to offer expert, timely, and practical advice to clients navigating merger and conduct investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, state Attorneys General, and foreign agencies. Alex’s work has been recognized by leading industry publications such as Chambers, The Legal 500 U.S., and Global Competition Review.
Outside of client work, Alex is a prolific thought leader and was recognized as a 2024 Top Author for Antitrust & Trade Regulation by JD Supra’s Readers’ Choice Awards. He currently serves as the co-chair of the ABA Antitrust Law Section’s Joint Conduct Committee and is the former chair of the Section’s Intellectual Property Committee and co-chair of the 2023 Antitrust Fall Forum on Artificial Intelligence. He is also a member of the Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Executive Committee of The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Before law school, Alex co-founded and sold an online technology company. Alex received his B.S. in economics and B.A. with distinction in history from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School.
Director of Policy Studies & Senior Fellow, The Free State Foundation
Seth L. Cooper is Director of Policy Studies & Senior Fellow at The Free State Foundation. His work on federal communications and technology policy at the Free State Foundation began in 2009.
With Randolph May, Mr. Cooper is the co-author of Modernizing Copyright Law for the Digital Age: Constitutional Foundations for Reform (2020) and Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property: A Natural Rights Perspective (2015), both published by Carolina Academic Press. Along with Mr. May, Mr. Cooper also co-authored A Reader on Net Neutrality and Restoring Internet Freedom (2018) and #CommActUpdate: A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age (2017), both published by Free State Foundation Press. He previously contributed to two chapters in Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age (2012), published by Carolina Academic Press. Mr. Cooper's work has also appeared in such publications as CommLaw Conspectus, the San Jose Mercury News, Forbes.com, the Des Moines Register, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Examiner, and the Washington Times.
Mr. Cooper previously served as Director to the Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Mr. Cooper served as judicial clerk to the Honorable James Johnson at the Washington State Supreme Court. His co-writings about the Washington Supreme Court have appeared in the Gonzaga Law Review and in Federalist Society publications. He has worked in law and policy staff positions at the Washington State Senate and at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture. Mr. Cooper is a 2009 Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. He also has worked in private practice in the State of Washington, handling civil legal matters involving personal injuries, small business, contracts, and wills, trusts, and estates.
Mr. Cooper earned his B.A. degree in Political Science from Pacific Lutheran University and received his J.D. from Seattle University School of Law.
President, The Free State Foundation
Randolph J. May is Founder and President of The Free State Foundation. The Free State Foundation is an independent, non-profit free market-oriented think tank founded in 2006.
From October 1999-May 2006, May was a Senior Fellow and Director of Communications Policy Studies at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. Prior to joining PFF, he practiced communications, administrative, and regulatory law as a partner at major national law firms. From 1978 to 1981, May served as Assistant General Counsel and Associate General Counsel at the Federal Communication Commission.
May has held numerous leadership positions in bar associations. He is a past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Mr. May also has served as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and currently is a Senior Fellow at ACUS.
Mr. May has published more than two hundred articles and essays on communications, administrative and constitutional law topics. He is author of A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform, and co-author of #CommActUpdate: A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age and The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property. Mr. May is editor of two books, Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age: The Next Five Years and New Directions in Communications Policy. In addition, he is the co-editor of two other books, Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated? and Communications Deregulation and FCC Reform. In the past, Mr. May has written regular columns on legal and regulatory affairs for Legal Times and the National Law Journal, leading national legal periodicals.
He received his A.B. from Duke University and his J.D. from Duke Law School, where he serves as a member of the Board of Visitors.
Special Adviser, Media and Democracy Reform Initiative, Common Cause
Michael Copps is special adviser for Common Cause's Media and Democracy Reform Initiative.
From 2001-11, he served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission, where his tenure was marked by a consistent embrace of the public interest. As a strong voice in opposition to consolidation in the media, he dissented in the FCC vote on the Comcast-NBC Universal merger. He has been a consistent proponent of localism in programming and diversity in media ownership. Though retired from the Commission, he has maintained a commitment to an inclusive, informative media landscape. In addition to his work at Common Causes, Mr. Copps sits on the boards of Free Press and Public Knowledge.
Before joining the FCC, Mr. Copps served as assistant secretary of commerce for trade development at the Department of Commerce and chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings from the early 1970s to 1983. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Growth and Opportunity
William Rinehart is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University.
He specializes in telecommunication, Internet, and data policy, with a focus on emerging technologies and innovation. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Wired, Morning Consult, The Hill, Forbes, Reason, Marginal Revolution, Overlawyered, and on BBC Radio and NPR, just to name a few. Rinehart speaks regularly on topics related to tech policy and has been cited in regulatory orders from the FCC as well as Supreme Court petitions.
Rinehart came to the Center from the American Action Forum, where he served as Director of Technology and Innovation Policy. He was also previously a Research Fellow at TechFreedom and the Director of Operations at the International Center for Law & Economics. Additionally, he worked for the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement as the Research Assistant in Technology and Civic Engagement. Rinehart is currently a Frédéric Bastiat Fellow at the Mercatus Center and previously a Fellow at the Internet Law & Policy Foundry. Additionally, he served on the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Deployment Committee and Consumer Advocacy Committee.
Senior Fellow and Director, Center for the Economics of the Internet, Hudson Institute
Harold Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow and director of the Center for the Economics of the Internet at Hudson Institute.
Mr. Furchtgott-Roth founded Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises in 2003. He frequently comments on issues related to the communications sector of the economy. From 2001 to 2003, he was a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he published A Tough Act to Follow, chronicling the difficulties implementing the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
From 1997 through 2001, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. In that capacity, he served on the Joint Board on Universal Service. He is one of the few economists to have served as a federal regulatory commissioner, and the only one to have served on the Federal Communications Commission.
Before his appointment to the FCC, he was chief economist for the House Committee on Commerce and a principal staff member on the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Earlier in his career, he was a senior economist with Economists Incorporated and a research analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses.
Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is a member of the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Policy Advisory Board. He is the coauthor of three books: Cable TV: Regulation or Competition, with R.W. Crandall; Economics of A Disaster: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, with B.M. Owen et al; and International Trade in Computer Software, with S.E. Siwek.
Professor of Law, Sturm College of Law, University of Denver
For nearly two decades, J. Robert Brown has taught corporate and securities law, with a particular emphasis on corporate governance.
He has authored numerous publications in the area and several of his articles have been cited by the US Supreme Court. Brown has also spent considerable time abroad, particularly in the former Soviet Union, advising governments in these areas. From 2000 - 2004, Brown served the University of Denver Sturm College of Law as an associate dean for academic affairs. He is an arbitrator for the NASD and, among other outside activities, serves as the chairman of the board of directors of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
William D. Warren Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Stephen Bainbridge is the William D. Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, where he currently teaches Business Associations, Advanced Corporation Law, and Mergers and Acquisitions. In past years, he has also taught Corporate Finance, Securities Regulation, Unincorporated Business Associations and Catholic Social Thought and the Law. Professor Bainbridge previously taught at the University of Illinois Law School (1988-1996). He has also taught at Harvard Law School as the Joseph Flom Visiting Professor of Law and Business (2000-2001), and as a visiting professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne (2005 and 2007) and at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo (1999).
In 2008, Bainbridge received the UCLA School of Law's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1990, the graduating class of the University of Illinois College of Law voted him "Professor of the Year."
Professor Bainbridge is a prolific scholar, whose work covers a variety of subjects, but with a strong emphasis on the law and economics of public corporations. He has written over 100 law review articles which have appeared in such leading journals as the Harvard Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. Bainbridge has also written 19 books, including seven in multiple editions. His most recent books include: Outsourcing the Board: How Board Service Providers Can Improve Corporate Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2018) (with M. Todd Henderson); Business Associations: Cases and Materials on Agency, Partnerships, and Corporations (Foundation Press, 10th ed., 2018) (with Klein and Ramseyer); Mergers and Acquisitions: A Transactional Perspective (Foundation Press, 2017) (with Iman Anabtawi).
According to Gregory Sisk and Brian Leiter’s rankings of law professors by scholarly impact, Professor Bainbridge was the third most-frequently cited scholar in corporate and securities law for the period 2013-2017. According to Hein Online, Bainbridge is the 29th most frequently cited scholar in their database of legal publications over the last 10 years and the 23rd most cited for the period January 2018 through August 2019. In SSRN.com’s ranking of the top 3000 legal authors by all-time downloads, Bainbridge is ranked 10th. By that metric, he is the highest ranked member of the UCLA law school faculty. In SSRN.com’s ranking of the top 3000 legal authors by all-time citations to their work, Bainbridge is ranked 55th. By that metric, he is the second highest ranked member of the UCLA law school faculty.
Professor Bainbridge has been a Salvatori Fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a member of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Corporate Laws, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Markets and Morality, and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Practice Group.
In May 2014, Professor Bainbridge was the Cameron Fellow at the University of Auckland Faculty of Law. He was the Francis G. Pileggi Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Widener University School of Law in September 2005, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Maryland School of Law in November 2005.
In 2008, 2011, and 2012, Professor Bainbridge was named by the National Association of Corporate Directors' Directorship magazine to its list of the 100 most influential people in the field of corporate governance.
His blog, ProfessorBainbridge.com, was named by the ABA Journal as one of the Top 100 Law Blogs of 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Partner, Mayer Brown LLP
Andrew Pincus is a partner in Mayer Brown LLP resident in Washington, D.C. His practice focuses on Supreme Court and appellate litigation.
Andy has argued 29 cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, including Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela and Frank v. Gaos in the October 2018 Term; as well as his recent victories in Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. (2017); Kindred Nursing Home Centers Limited Partnership v. Clark (2017); and Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (2016). Law360 ranked Andy’s victory in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (2011), as the most important Supreme Court class action decision of the last 15 years.
Andy appears regularly before federal and state appellate courts and federal district courts. His practice also includes written and oral advocacy before Congress, other legislative bodies, and regulatory agencies regarding a variety of policy and legal issues.
A former Assistant to the Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice (1984-1988), Andy co-founded and serves as co-director of the Yale Law School's Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic (2006-present), which provides pro bono representation in 10-15 Supreme Court cases each year.
While serving as General Counsel of the United States Department of Commerce (1997-2000), Andy had principal responsibility for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. He also participated in formulation of policy concerning privacy, domain name management, taxation of electronic commerce, export controls, international trade, and consumer protection.
Andy is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School, where he was a Notes & Comments Editor of the Columbia Law Review. He served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Harold H. Greene, United States District Court for the District of Columbia (1981-1982).
Professor, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of the Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann
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On August 14, 2020, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued...
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