John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal Studies, Villanova University School of Law
Patrick McKinley Brennan joined the Villanova faculty in 2004 as the inaugural holder of the John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal Studies and now also serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Professor Brennan works in the tradition of reflection on natural law and natural rights to examine a wide range of questions in jurisprudence and public law, including sovereignty, equality authority, the rule of law, constitutionalism, the family, and punishment and forgiveness, as well as topics in administrative law, constitutional law, federal jurisdiction, religious liberty and the liberty of the church, and criminal law. He regularly teaches constitutional law, administrative law, federal courts, criminal law, and a range of courses in jurisprudence.
Professor Brennan has published some fifty articles and book chapters. His most recent book, The Sovereignty of the Good: An Essay on Law, Authority, and the Church, will be published by Oxford University Press. He has also published By Nature Equal: The Anatomy of a Western Insight (Princeton University Press 1999) (with John Coons), Civilizing Authority: Society, State, and Church (Lexington 2007), and the Vocation of the Child (W.B. Eeerdmans 2008). He currently co-authoring Christian Perspectives on Law: Cases and Materials (with William Brewbaker III).
Before coming to Villanova, Professor Brennan was for eight years a faculty member in the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where for several years he served as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Research and later as Vice Dean. Previously, Brennan was associated with major law firms in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Brennan clerked for Hon. John T. Noonan, Jr., on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.
A native of California, Brennan earned his J.D. from Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall), U.C. Berkeley, where he won many awards and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Prior to law school, Brennan earned an M.A. and pursued doctoral course work in philosophy at the University of Toronto, taking many of his courses there in the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. He was graduated from Yale College with a B.A. in philosophy with honors and distinction in the major. At Yale, Brennan also studied Greek and Latin and won the Jacob Cooper Prize for the best essay on ancient Greek philosophy.
Professor Brennan has been a visiting professor in the Boston College Law School and a senior research fellow at the Robbins Collection of Canon and Civil Law at U.C. Berkeley. Brennan has also been a scholar in residence at the Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America, where he delivered the Brendan F. Brown Lecture in 2006. Brennan has delivered the Yves Simon Lecture at the University of Chicago and the Donald M. Giannella Lecture at Villanova University.
At Villanova, Brennan organizes the annual John F. Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture. Keynote speakers have included the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Justice Antonin Scalia, Martha Nussbaum, Joseph Vining, John Ferejohn, and William Eskridge. Other speakers have included Jeremy Waldron, Geoff Stone, Jesse Choper, Lee Bollinger, Roderick Hills, Jane Schacter, Kristin Hickman, Jefferson Powell, Amy Uelmen, Richard Garnett, Kent Greenawalt, and many others.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP
John Bellinger heads the firm's Global Law and Public Policy practice. He joined the firm in 2009, after holding several senior Presidential appointments in the US government, including as the Senate-confirmed Legal Adviser to the Department of State and Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House in the George W. Bush Administration.
Mr. Bellinger represents individuals, corporations, and sovereign governments in litigation in US courts and before international institutions. He has extensive experience in US foreign relations litigation involving the Alien Tort Statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, the Anti-Terrorism Act, and the diplomatic and official immunities of foreign governments and government officials. He advises clients on other public international law matters, including treaties and international agreements as well as international humanitarian law and human rights law. He also counsels US and foreign clients on national security legal and policy issues, including US and multilateral financial sanctions and asset controls, the extraterritorial application of US criminal and civil laws, and transactions reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
Chambers Global ranks Mr. Bellinger among the best international lawyers in the world, reporting that he has "second-to-none experience in public international law, international litigation and foreign sovereign immunity" and that his "experience at the highest levels of the Executive branch...gives him a distinct and important vantage point on legal issues." Chambers adds: "For any cross border work he's just extraordinary, he knows the area inside-out."
Mr. Bellinger was the State Department Legal Adviser–the most senior international lawyer in the US Government–from 2005 to 2009, serving under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He directed more than 170 lawyers on domestic and international law matters affecting US foreign relations. Before joining the State Department, Mr. Bellinger managed Secretary Rice's Senate confirmation process and co-directed her State Department transition team. In 2009, Mr. Bellinger received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award.
Mr. Bellinger has argued cases before the International Court of Justice (Mexico v. United States–(Medellin)) and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague. He has appeared on numerous briefs in US federal courts, including the Supreme Court, in litigation involving international law issues.
As Legal Adviser to the NSC from 2001 to 2005, Mr. Bellinger advised President Bush, Cabinet officials, National Security Advisor Rice, and NSC staff on a wide range of national security and international law issues, including counterterrorism issues after the 9-11 attacks. He was one of the principal drafters of the legislation that created the Director of National Intelligence.
Prior to his service in the Bush Administration, Mr. Bellinger served as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division at the US Department of Justice (1997-2001); Of Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1996); General Counsel of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the US Intelligence Community (1995-1996); and Special Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster (1988-1991). Mr. Bellinger is an Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has testified before Congress on numerous occasions, is quoted regularly in the media on international and national security law matters, and has lectured at numerous US and foreign universities and law schools. He is the author of many law review articles and op-eds on international law, including op-eds in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Bellinger is a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog.
Mr. Bellinger is a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Law. He served from 2005-2019 as one of four US Members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and a member of the US "National Group", which nominates judges to the International Court of Justice. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Society of International Law. He is a member of the Council of the American Law Institute; the boards of directors of the American Ditchley Foundation, the Salzburg Global Seminar, and the Stimson Center; and the advisory committee of Foreign Affairs magazine.
Mr. Bellinger is a graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and he holds an MA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and a JD from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard International Law Journal.
Associate Dean for Research Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law Director, Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Ingrid Wuerth is a leading scholar of foreign affairs, public international law and transnational litigation. She joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2007, was appointed director of the International Legal Studies Program in 2009, and was appointed director of the Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program in 2018. She was named to the newly endowed Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law in 2015. Professor Wuerth has served on the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law and on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute and was named as a Reporter for the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. She has received numerous honors and fellowships, including the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Fulbright Senior Scholar award, the German Chancellor's Fellowship, election to the German Society of International Law, election to the Order of the Coif and many teaching awards. She clerked for Judge Jan E. DuBois in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and for Judge Jane Roth on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The class of 2018 elected Professor Wuerth to give the commencement address. She is a contributing editor at Lawfare.
Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy; Director, Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, Penn Law
Claire Finkelstein’s current research addresses national security law and policy, with a focus on ethical and rule of law issues that arise in that arena. In 2012, Professor Finkelstein founded Penn Law’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), a non-partisan interdisciplinary institute that seeks to promote the rule of law in modern day conflict, warfare, and national security. In 2019, she was named Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). An expert in the law of armed conflict, military ethics, and national security law, she is a co-editor (with Jens David Ohlin) of The Oxford Series in Ethics, National Security, and the Rule of Law, and a volume editor of its four titles thus far: Targeted Killings: Law & Morality in an Asymmetrical World (Oxford University Press, 2012); Cyber War: Law and Ethics for Virtual Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 2015); Weighing Lives in War (Oxford University Press, 2017); and Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority (Oxford University Press, 2018). Professor Finkelstein has briefed Pentagon officials, U.S. Senate staff, and JAG Corps members on various issues in national security law and practice. She is a frequent radio, broadcast, and print commentator and has published op-eds in The New York Times and The Hill. Her prior scholarly work focuses on criminal law theory, moral and political philosophy, jurisprudence, and rational choice theory. She is also the editor of Hobbes on Law (Ashgate Publishing, 2005) and is currently completing a book called Contractarian Legal Theory.
James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor Saikrishna Prakash’s scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and Presidential Powers at the Law School.
Prakash’s most recent book, “The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers,” was published by Harvard Belknap Press in 2020. He also authored “Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive” (Yale University Press, 2015). The former book focuses on the modern presidency while the latter considers the presidency of the Founders.
Prakash has authored over 75 law review articles. Among them are “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” in the Harvard Law Review, “The Indefensible Duty to Defend” in the Columbia Law Review, and “50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend” and “The Executive Power Over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal.
Prakash has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. At the request of Democrats and Republicans, he has testified before Congress on matters of presidential removal, the Mueller Report and how Congress might better check the presidency. He is currently a Miller Center Senior Fellow. In 2015, he received the Roger Traynor award for faculty scholarship. In the same year, he received an honorable mention from the American Society of Legal Writers for his book “Imperial from the Beginning.” He has given named lectures at William & Mary Law School, Princeton University and Toledo Law School, and keynote addresses at several conferences.
Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He subsequently clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War & Peace at Stanford University.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Rao was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in March 2019. She graduated from Yale College in 1995 and the University of Chicago Law School in 1999. Following graduation, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and, in the 2001 October Term, as law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Between her clerkships, Judge Rao served as counsel for nominations and constitutional law to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In 2002, she joined the international arbitration group of Clifford Chance LLP in London, England. From 2005-2006, she served as Special Assistant and Associate White House Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2006 to 2017, Judge Rao was a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where she taught constitutional law, legislation and statutory interpretation, and the history and foundations of the administrative state. In 2014, she founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, a non-profit Center that promotes academic scholarship and public policy debates about administrative law. In July 2017, she was appointed to serve as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management Budget. She served in this position until her appointment to the D.C. Circuit.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
A Moral Constitution? A Debate on “Common Good” Constitutionalism
Philadelphia Lawyers Chapter
Philadelphia, PATenth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference —EBRX
The Administrative State, Law, and Culture
Washington, DCPanel III: Unilateral Presidential War Powers
2021 National Student Symposium
2020 National Lawyers Convention
Emergency Powers and the Rule of Law