Director of Litigation, Texas Public Policy Foundation
Chance Weldon is a Senior Attorney and the Director of Litigation for the Center for the American Future at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Chance was one of the first attorneys hired by former litigation director Rob Henneke in 2015. Since joining the Foundation, Chance has worked on some of its most important cases. From protecting the rights of property owners along the Red River in North Texas (Aderholt v. BLM) to striking down the City of Austin’s onerous short-term rental regulations in Zaatari v. City of Austin, to defending peoples’ ability to maintain their property without suffering ruinous penalties in F.P. Development, LLC v. Canton, to reinvigorating the Commerce Clause in TPPF’s litigation against the Federal Government’s Eviction Moratorium and Vaccine Mandate, Chance has been at the forefront of protecting constitutional rights in Texas and across the country.
Before joining the Foundation, Chance served as a fellow at the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, California and the Institute for Justice in Austin, Texas. As a fellow, he worked on wide breadth of litigation involving economic liberty, free speech, school choice, and private property rights.
A Houston native, Chance earned his J.D. from the University of Houston, where he was awarded the Dean’s Merit Scholarship for all three years. Prior to law school, he received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Houston. He is licensed to practice law in Texas, California (inactive status), the United States Supreme Court, and the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Circuits.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Professor Nicholas Bagley teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law, regulatory theory, and health law. Prior to joining the Law School faculty, he was an attorney with the appellate staff in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he argued a dozen cases before the U.S. Courts of Appeals and acted as lead counsel in many more. Professor Bagley also served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and to the Hon. David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. Professor Bagley holds a BA in English from Yale University and received his JD, summa cum laude, from New York University School of Law. Before entering law school, he joined Teach For America and taught eighth-grade English at a public school in South Bronx. Professor Bagley's work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Law School's L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is a frequent contributor to The Incidental Economist, a prominent health policy blog.
Associate, Covington & Burling LLP
Eli Nachmany is an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in the Washington, DC, office. He clerked for Judge Steven J. Menashi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Eli graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Prior to law school, Eli served as the speechwriter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and as a domestic policy aide in the White House Office of American Innovation. He graduated summa cum laude from New York University with a B.S. in Sports Management. Eli’s scholarship on administrative law and executive power has appeared in the BYU Law Review, George Mason Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, and Yale Law Journal Forum.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of a casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2024). He is also the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). His next book, The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction, is also forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
Shareholder & Co-Chair of the Workplace Policy Institute, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Alexander T. MacDonald advises employers on all aspects of the employment and labor landscape, focusing on emerging legislation and regulation. He has extensive experience advising businesses on worker classification, arbitration, the administrative and regulatory process, and the future of work. He frequently writes, publishes, and speaks on these subjects. His work has been cited by scholars and appellate courts. He is a recognized voice for the management perspective.
Alexander is a co-chair of the Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) team. With WPI, he advises employers on legislative, administrative, and regulatory developments at the state and federal level. He advocates for employers in the regulatory and administrative process. He also helps employers protect their businesses by understanding and anticipating cutting-edge legal developments.
Alexander also has extensive experience in traditional labor law. He represents management in all aspects of labor-management relations, including unfair labor practice charges, grievance arbitrations, representation elections, contract negotiations, and related litigation, including litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals.
Before joining Littler, Alexander served as the director, future of work, for a major technology company. He also worked in a national labor and employment law firm and a major public-sector general counsel’s office. He was a law clerk to the senior judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In law school, he graduated first in his class
Associate Justice, Alabama Supreme Court
James L. “Jay” Mitchell was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2018.
Prior to serving on the Supreme Court, Justice Mitchell was an accomplished litigation attorney with Maynard, Cooper & Gale, P.C. During his time in private practice, he tried a number of complex cases to verdict, successfully handled appeals, and obtained favorable settlements for clients. He was rated as one of the top litigators in the United States and Alabama, and received the highest possible rating for professional ethics. He also served on Maynard, Cooper & Gale’s executive committee, helping to lead strategic and growth initiatives for the firm.
Justice Mitchell was born in Mobile and grew up in South Alabama and in Homewood. He is a graduate of Homewood High School and received his Bachelor of Arts with honors from Birmingham-Southern College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, served as president of the student body, and played forward on the school’s 1995 national championship basketball team. He holds a Master of Arts from University College in Dublin, Ireland, and received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Justice Mitchell has long been active in organizations that benefit the community and enhance the legal profession. In addition to his service with other organizations, he is a member of the Rotary Club of Birmingham and serves on the board of directors at Cornerstone School, an inner city Christian school. He is also a member of the Federalist Society.
Justice Mitchell and his wife, Elizabeth, have been married for 20 years and have four children. They reside in Homewood and are longtime members of Church of the Highlands.
Judge, Florida Third District Court of Appeal
Judge Alexander S. Bokor began his service on the Third District Court of Appeal on September 1, 2020 after his appointment by Governor Ron DeSantis. Previously, Judge Bokor served as a trial judge for four years, most recently as a circuit judge in the civil division of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit from 2018, and before that as a county judge for Miami-Dade County since 2016. Judge Bokor was appointed to both trial court positions by Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott, and subsequently retained without opposition for each seat.
As a circuit judge, in addition to managing a full civil trial docket, Judge Bokor served as part of the Chief Judge’s task force charged with pandemic planning, responsible for enabling and implementing remote video appearances and remote evidentiary procedures for all of circuit and county court. Judge Bokor also served as a visiting Associate Judge on the Fourth District Court of Appeal in March 2020 and has served on multiple circuit appellate panels. As a county judge, Judge Bokor served in North Dade, South Dade, and downtown Miami, primarily in civil divisions. He also served in a criminal misdemeanor/traffic branch division.
Prior to taking the bench, Judge Bokor served in both the private and public sectors. From 2008 to 2016, he served as an Assistant Miami-Dade County Attorney focusing on transportation issues, public private partnerships, transit-oriented developments, complex commercial litigation, and property tax issues. From 2002 to 2008, he was a commercial litigator in private practice at prominent state and national firms in both New York and Florida. Judge Bokor also clerked for now-Chief Judge Steven D. Merryday of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Judge Bokor is a proud graduate of Southern Methodist University, where he obtained a B.A. in history, Foreign Languages (Spanish and German), and Latin American Studies, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he earned his J.D. and served as an editor on the Journal of Constitutional Law.
General Counsel, WSSC Water
Amanda Stakem Conn is the General Counsel to WSSC Water, the 8th largest water and sewer utility in the country serving over 1.8 million customers. Amanda has held a variety of legal, policy, legislative, and management positions over the past 30 years in Maryland in state and local government. She has appeared in front of the Maryland General Assembly for close to 3 decades drafting numerous complex bills that have been enacted into law.
Ms. Conn serves as a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School where she teaches local government law. She has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at both the University of Maryland School of Law and the University of Baltimore School of Law where she co-taught a course on legislation for many years.
Ms. Conn is admitted to the Maryland Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
She is the current Chair of the State and Local Government Law Section of the Maryland State Bar Association. She is the co-author of The Court of Appeals at the Cocktail Party: The Use and Misuse of Legislative History, 54 Md.L.Rev. 432 (1995) and Battling the Voices of Unreason: HUD Plays Foul in its Fight to Uphold the FHA, UB Law Forum (1995)
Partner at K&L Gates, Former OFCCP Director, and President-Elect of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia
Craig E. Leen is a partner in the Washington, DC office of K&L Gates, where he is a member of the Labor, Employment, and Workplace Safety practice group. Mr. Leen is also the President-Elect of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
Mr. Leen was formerly the Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor, where he reported directly to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Labor.
Mr. Leen serves as a Professorial Lecturer in Law and Professor of Government Lawyering at The George Washington University Law School, as Vice Chair of the District of Columbia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, as Co-Chair of the DC Family Support Council, and as Chair of the Civil and Human Rights Committee of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
Prior to his federal service at OFCCP, Mr. Leen was the City Attorney of the City of Coral Gables, and before that was Chief of the Appeals Section and then Chief of the Federal Litigation Section at the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office. Earlier in his career, Mr. Leen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton, United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts.
In recognition of his public service, Mr. Leen received the Secretary's Exceptional Achievement Award - Professional while at the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Paul S. Buchman Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Area of Legal Public Service while in local government.
Mr. Leen is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, and New York, and is also board certified by The Florida Bar in city, county, and local government law.
Mr. Leen received his Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School, graduating as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and having served as a teaching fellow in both Contracts and Torts. Mr. Leen received his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Georgetown University, where he majored in both Government and Economics.
Executive Director, City of Naples Commission on Ethics and Governmental Integrity
Michael Murawski is the Executive Director of the Commission on Ethics and Governmental Integrity in the City of Naples Florida where he has served since 2021.
Prior to taking that role, he worked as an Advocate at the Miami-Date County Commission on Ethics and Public trust from 2000-2021. Mr. Murawski has also served as a Criminal Defense Trial Attorney, Assistant State Attorney at the Roward State Attorney's Office, and an Assistant District Attorney at Kings County Attorney's Office in New York.
He received a JD from St. Johns University School of Law, and a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Florida International University.
Legal Fellow and Manager, Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program, The Heritage Foundation
Zack is a Legal Fellow and Manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
He previously served for several years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Florida. Prior to that, he spent two years as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, which he joined after clerking for the Hon. Emmett R. Cox on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Smith received his undergraduate, master’s, and law degrees from the University of Florida. During law school, Smith served as the Editor in Chief of the Florida Law Review and served on the executive boards of several student organizations, including the UF Chapter of the Federalist Society.
The Demise of Chevron
Oklahoma City Student Chapter
Oklahoma City, OKChevron, Major Questions, & Loper Bright
Kentucky Student Chapter
Lexington, KYLoper Bright and the Next Steps for Chevron Deference at the Supreme Court
The Labor Law Enigma: Article III, Judicial Power, and the National Labor Relations Board
Alexander T. MacDonald
Axon Enterprises v. FTC[1] wasn’t supposed to be about labor law. In fact, it wasn’t...
Topics
Is the Administrative State Inevitable? Loper, Chevron, and the “Abnegation” of Law
Last month, the Supreme Court granted cert in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Though the case...
Textualism in Alabama
Jay Mitchell
Textualism is alive and well in Alabama. This interpretive doctrine teaches that legal texts have...
City Hall and Chevron: Administrative Deference at the Local Government Level
Alexander S. Bokor, Amanda Conn, Craig E. Leen, Michael Murawski
Most of the public debate about administrative deference has been focused on federal agencies and...
Topics
Is Glacier Northwest the Tip of the Iceberg?
Nowadays, labor-law cases are a rare sight at the Supreme Court. The Court usually takes...
Topics
Chevron Is Dead, Long Live Chevron
The Supreme Court has agreed to revisit Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), the...
Ohio Supreme Court Holds That the Courts, Not State Agencies, “Say What the Law Is.”
Zack Smith
In a recent opinion by Justice Patrick DeWine, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed that...