Senior Advisor, Covington & Burling LLP
Congressman Howard Berman advises clients on a wide range of foreign affairs and domestic policy matters, including defense and national security issues, investment, intellectual property, entertainment, technology and immigration. He also serves on the board of trustees of the Asia Foundation, the board of the National Democratic Institute, the Immigration Task Force of the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the Board of Directors of the Pacific Council on International Policy.
First elected to Congress in 1982, Congressman Berman became known as one of Capitol Hill’s preeminent deal-makers. National Journal described him as “one of the most creative members of the House and one of the most clear-sighted operators in American politics.”
As the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Berman was one of Congress’ leading experts on international relations. On the Committee, he repeatedly helped build bipartisan consensus within the House, and between Congress and the Executive Branch. A long-time senior member on the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Berman chaired the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, where he successfully led efforts resulting in major changes to intellectual property laws affecting the entertainment and high-tech industries.
Congressman Berman, a senior advisor not practicing law until admitted in the District of Columbia, will provide policy and legislative advice to clients and members of the firm.
Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics, University of Virginia
James W. Ceaser is Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1976, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has written several books on American politics and political thought, including Presidential Selection, Liberal Democracy and Political Science, Reconstructing America, Nature and History in American Political Development, and Designing a Polity. Professor Ceaser has served as the Academic Chairman of the Jack Miller Center since its inception in 2004. He is a regular contributor to the popular press and comments frequently on American politics for La Voix d’Amérique, the French-African outlet for the Voice of America.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School
Professor of Law Michael S. Greve joined the faculty of the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University in fall 2012 after having served as John G. Searle Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specialized in constitutional law, courts, and business regulation and served as chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI, Greve was founder and co-director of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm specializing in constitutional litigation.
Greve has served previously as an adjunct professor at a number of universities, including Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities, and has been a visiting professor at Boston College since 2004. He was awarded a PhD and an MA in government by Cornell University. Greve also earned a Diploma from the University of Hamburg in Germany.
A prolific writer, Greve is the author of nine books and a multitude of articles appearing in scholarly publications, as well as numerous editorials, short articles, and book reviews. He is a frequent speaker for professional and scholarly organizations and has made many appearances on radio and television.
In addition Greve has provided congressional and state legislative testimony, has lobbied and consulted in federal agency proceedings, and has provided litigation services and management in over 30 cases, including matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Frances E. Lee is jointly appointed in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs where she is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs.
Lee has broad interests in American politics, with a special focus on congressional politics, national policymaking, party politics, and representation. She is author of Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (2016) and Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate (2009). She is also coauthor of Sizing Up The Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999) and a textbook, Congress and Its Members (Sage / CQ Press). Her research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and other outlets.
Lee is editor of the Cambridge Elements Series in American Politics and a series editor for the Chicago Studies in American Politics. She was co-editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly from 2014 to 2019.
Lee earned her B.A. from the University of Southern Mississippi and her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Richard H. Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. His acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (now in its fourth edition), helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. The Law of Democracy systematically explores legal and policy issues concerning the structure of democratic elections and institutions, such as the role of money in politics, the design of election districts, the regulation of political parties, the design of voting systems, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and similar issues. He has written extensively on the rise of political polarization in the United States, the Voting Rights Act, the dysfunction of America’s political processes, the role of the Supreme Court in overseeing American democracy, the powers of the American President and Congress, and he has criticized excessively “romantic” understandings of democracy. In addition to his scholarship on these issues, he has written on national-security law, the design of the regulatory state, and American constitutional history and theory.
Respect for his expertise in these areas is reflected in frequent citations of his work in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the translation of his work into many languages, and his frequent public lectures and appearances around the world, including his nomination with the NBC News Team for an Emmy Award for coverage of the 2000 Presidential election litigation.
His work has been translated and published in Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In addition to his scholarship, Professor Pildes plays an active role litigating in these areas. He has won two cases before the United States Supreme Court, including a 2015 victory in Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, a case involving race and redistricting. He served as counsel to a group of former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission in litigation defending the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; as counsel in election litigation to the Puerto Rico Electoral Commission; as counsel to the government of Puerto Rico; as a federal court-appointed independent expert on voting rights litigation; and as counsel in successful Supreme Court litigation that challenged the way the United States Tax Court operated. He was also a senior legal advisor to the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of President Obama.
Pildes received his A.B. in physical chemistry summa cum laude from Princeton, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he served as Supreme Court Note Editor on the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing law in Boston, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan Law School, before joining the NYU School of Law in 2001.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Lecturer in Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Matthew Lee Wiener served until recently as the twice-presidentially appointed Acting Chair and Vice Chair of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), as well as a member of its Council and its Executive Director. (In 2016, President Obama nominated him to be ACUS’s Chairman.)
He is now a special counsel to ACUS, co-chair of its Council on Federal Administrative Adjudication, and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where he teaches Administrative Law.
Before affiliating with ACUS, Mr. Wiener was general counsel to U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (Senate Committee on the Judiciary), counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, a partner at Dechert LLP, and special counsel to Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca.
He has taught courses on administrative law, administrative practice, regulation remedies, statutory interpretation, and separation of powers at the law schools of the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, and George Mason University.
Mr. Wiener is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and co-chair of the Adjudication Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.
Mr. Wiener holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was Articles Editor of the Stanford Law Review, and an A.B. from William and Mary.
Retired, Winston & Strawn LLP
Jerry Loeser is of counsel in the Chicago office of Winston & Strawn, and his practice focuses on banking regulation. He has extensive experience in counseling financial services clients on, among other things, bank acquisitions, privacy, financial modernization, the USA PATRIOT Act, Basel II and III, lending limits, capital, trust, affiliate transactions, and Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC, and CFPB regulations.
Prior to working at large corporate law firms, Jerry was chief regulatory and compliance counsel for Comerica Bank, where he also served as senior vice president and deputy general counsel and as general counsel of its retail bank division. Before that, he served as chief regulatory in-house counsel at Wells Fargo & Co. Jerry began his legal career advising the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C.
Deputy Secretary of Transportation, US Department of Transportation
Steven G. Bradbury was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation on March 13, 2025, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on March 11, 2025. In this role, he oversees the Department’s operating administrations and spearheads initiatives to ensure a safe, efficient, and modern transportation system that strengthens economic productivity and global competitiveness. Deputy Secretary Bradbury also assists Secretary Duffy in managing the Department’s activities, including its workforce of over 58,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $109 billion.
Bradbury previously served as the 23rd General Counsel of the Department of Transportation from 2017 to 2021, as the Acting Deputy Secretary from 2019, and as Acting Secretary of Transportation in 2021. As General Counsel, he was the chief legal officer, advising on all legal matters and ensuring the integrity and compliance of the Department’s policies and programs.
Before rejoining DOT, Bradbury was a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation from December 2022 to March 2025. He has extensive experience in the public and private sector, having served as Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dechert LLP. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge James L. Buckley.
Bradbury holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. in English from Stanford University.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer joined the faculty as an associate professor of law in 2005 and became a full professor in 2011. He served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2011 to 2015. He earned his A.B., with distinction and honors, from Stanford University in 1989 and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994. While at Yale, he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics and served as business editor of the Yale Law and Policy Review and as an editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. Following graduation, he clerked for the Honorable Lowell A. Reed, Jr., United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He then joined Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, D.C., first as an associate and later as a member, where he concentrated on tax issues, particularly for nonprofit organizations. He teaches courses at Notre Dame Law School in not-for-profit organizations, business enterprise taxation, election law, and professional responsibility.
Professor Mayer’s areas of research interest and expertise include advocacy by nonprofit organizations, the growing intersection of election law and tax law with respect to lobbying and other political activity, and the role of nonprofits both domestically and internationally.
Partner, Baker Botts LLP
Drawing from two decades of experience in senior government, in-house corporate, and private law firm roles, Jeff Wood helps clients with federal enforcement, compliance, litigation, permitting, and policy challenges primarily in the energy and environmental fields.
Prior to joining Baker Botts, Mr. Wood served for almost two years as the Acting Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). In that capacity, Mr. Wood led ENRD and its more than 600 attorneys and staff representing EPA, Departments of the Interior, Energy, and Defense, and other agencies in civil and criminal enforcement and defensive environmental, energy, and natural resources litigation.
As the top official in ENRD, Mr. Wood managed a complex organization with an annual budget exceeding $200 million and a docket of more than 6,000 cases and matters. E&E News noted that “Wood maintains a strong relationship with ENRD's career staff” (Greenwire, Oct. 31, 2018). He previously served on the staff of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
At the Justice Department, Mr. Wood oversaw the Division's civil and criminal enforcement programs and was responsible for developing legal strategies and approving briefs in key cases including filings before the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals in coordination with the Office of Solicitor General. In this role, Mr. Wood held the highest level security clearance and worked closely with top leadership at DOJ, EPA, the Interior Department, USDA, the Energy Department, Transportation Department, FERC, NRC and across the Executive Branch, including the White House.
With many years of both private law firm and in-house legal experience, Mr. Wood has handled complex environmental enforcement, regulatory, policy, and litigation matters for electric utilities, energy companies, maritime companies, mining companies, real estate developers, financial institutions, industrial companies and manufacturers, business coalitions, associations, small businesses, and individual property owners. Drawing from his experiences in-house, Mr. Wood brings a common-sense, cost-effective, client-focused approach to his work every day.
With a strong national reputation, Mr. Wood is a frequent speaker on environmental law and policy matters, with recent speeches and presentations at the Environmental Law Institute, Harvard Law School, Vanderbilt Law School, American University Law School, American Bar Association Environmental Law Conferences, the Texas Environmental SuperConference, Air Force Judge Advocate General School's Advanced Environmental Law Course, Baker Institute's Center for Energy Studies (Rice University), and many other venues. He frequently appears in national news to share insights on significant environmental law and policy issues, including recent quotes in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Law360, and E&E News, among others.
Showcase Panel III: ROUNDTABLE: Can Changes in Incentives Significantly Address Congressional Dysfunction?
Howard L. Berman, James W. Ceaser, Frank H. Easterbrook, Michael S. Greve, Frances E. Lee, Richard H. Pildes, Dean Reuter, Matthew Lee Wiener
Over the years, and especially recently, it appears as though members of Congress primarily need...
Countdown to the National Lawyers Convention: The Obama Administration's EPA and Fracking
The theme of this year's Federalist Society Lawyers' Division convention is "The Role of Congress." That...
Developments at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: January 29, 2015 – March 10, 2015
Julius L. Loeser
Developments at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: January 29, 2015 – March 10, 2015 Julius...
Steven G. Bradbury Testimony Before the House Committee on the Judiciary Oversight Hearing into the Administration’s Use of FISA Authorities
Steven Gill Bradbury
Before the House Committee on the Judiciary Oversight Hearing into the Administration’s Use of FISA...
Hon. Thaddeus McCotter
Birmingham, MichiganUniversity Endowments Spending and Tax Policy
Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer
Senators Charles Grassley and Max Baucus began the current debate over college and university endowments...
Commerce Clause Challenges to the Listing of Intrastate, Noncommercial Species Under the Endangered Species Act
Robert P. Fowler, Jeffrey H. Wood, Thomas L. Casey
In the early 1970s, Congress considered a series of bills aimed at instituting a federal...
Bar Watch Bulletin February 13, 2006
The ABA's Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted...
The Delicate Balance: Federalism and Financial Services
John S. Barry
The financial services industry has changed significantly over the past 60 years, but federal and...