Founder, Libertas-West Project
Karen Lugo is a constitutional law consultant and national security analyst. She was Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment at Texas Public Policy Foundation from 2013 to 2015. When living in California, she was Co-Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence Center. From 2005 – 2012, she was a clinical visiting and adjunct professor at Chapman University School of Law where she co-taught the advanced Constitutional Law Clinic. Karen has co-authored and written circuit-level and Supreme Court amicus briefs on such issues as FISA Surveillance, Healthcare Reform, Arizona’s Border Security, Gay Marriage, The Ten Commandments, Eminent Domain, Christian Clubs on University Campuses, and Material Support for Terrorists.
Karen is the founder of the Libertas-West Project, a center for study Islamic integration and radicalization issues. In this capacity, she consulted with the Center for Security Policy to write a book on local over-watch of mosque construction and community engagement called: Mosques in America: A Guide to Accountable Permit Hearings and Continuing Citizen Oversight.
Karen writes and speaks for European and American groups on the importance of basing assimilation efforts on principles of Western exceptionalism. She presented a policy brief to the French Conseil d’Etat analyzing the legal implications of banning the burqa. Ms. Lugo has written one of the most comprehensive overviews of sharia law in American courts, American Family Law and Sharia-Compliant Marriages, for the Federalist Society law journal, Engage. She has written several white papers on the American Law for American Courts legislation and sharia tribunals in America.
Ms. Lugo was an appointee to the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also taught a Human Rights law course on the contrast between French and English Enlightenment theories in Strasbourg, France.
Until moving from California, Ms. Lugo was a member of the David Horowitz Freedom Center Board of Directors. She was also a regular guest on the Orange County PBS local issues debate program, Inside OC, and she is a contributor to Pajamas Media, National Review Online, City Journal, American Spectator, American Greatness, Townhall.com, American Thinker, Daily Caller, and Family Security Matters. She has been interviewed by dozens of radio hosts and has spoken for civic groups on constitutional and cultural concerns.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Jim Harper is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on privacy issues, and select legal and constitutional law issues.
A lawyer by training, Mr. Harper has served as counsel for the Subcommittee on Commercial, and Administrative Law of the US House Committee on the Judiciary and as counsel for the Senate Committee on Government Affairs. More recently, he worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, where he wrote on the intersection of business, technology, and public policy, including privacy, surveillance, data security, telecommunications, and cryptocurrencies. He also served as global policy counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation. Mr. Harper was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Early in his post-Hill career, he represented companies such as PayPal and Verisign before Congress.
Mr. Harper is the co-editor of “Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It” (Cato Institute, 2010) and the author of “Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood” (Cato Institute, 2006). He has written several amicus briefs in Fourth Amendment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has published scholarly articles in a variety of law journals. In the popular press, Mr. Harper has been published in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.
Mr. Harper has a law degree from the U.C. Hastings College of the Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, and a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Retired
Tom Gede retired in 2023 as a principal in Morgan Lewis Consulting LLC and of counsel to the firm. He currently consults on a variety of legal and policy matters for both public and private clients. Tom has a national reputation and distinguished background in federal Indian law. Prior to retirement, he represented clients in complex governmental matters in litigation, administrative and regulatory proceedings, including high-profile matters involving state governments. A former senior deputy in the California Attorney General’s office, Tom was amicus coordinator and Supreme Court counsel, and argued cases in the US Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous state and federal appellate courts.
Tom also served as executive director of the Conference of Western Attorneys General (CWAG), coordinating activities on key legal and policy issues, such as federal Indian law, energy, environmental, public lands, financial services, and telecommunications, for the attorneys general of 18 western states and territories. In 2016, Tom was elected as a Member of the American Law Institute (ALI), and served as an Adviser on the Restatement of the Law Third - The Law of American Indians. Tom also taught federal Indian law as an adjunct law professor at the University of the Pacific - McGeorge School of Law. He served as an assistant editor for and the author of the Indian gaming chapter in CWAG’s American Indian Law Deskbook (2d & 3d eds.). He has been engaged in Indian gaming and Indian law matters for more than three decades, having focused on the gaming compacts with Indian tribes, as well as complex civil and criminal jurisdiction, land, natural resources, water and law enforcement issues in Indian country. He has testified before Congress on American Indian and Native Alaskan issues. In 2012 he was appointed by Speaker John Boehner to serve on the United States Indian Law and Order Commission, where he examined criminal justice issues in Indian country and Alaska, resulting in the issuance of an important report to the President and Congress.
Giving Credit for Shaping the Constitution
Karen J. Lugo
A review of: The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds That Shaped America’s Supreme Law,...
Why NSA’s Bulk Data Seizures Are Illegal and Unconstitutional
Randy E. Barnett, Jim Harper
Why NSA’s Bulk Data Seizures Are Illegal and Unconstitutional Randy E. Barnett* & Jim Harper**...
Supreme Court Reaffirms State Sovereignty
Thomas F. Gede
The most significant decision involving federalism that was handed down during the October 1995 Term--indeed,...