Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
G. Edward White joined the Virginia law faculty in 1972 after a clerkship with Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court of the United States and a year as visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation. He was appointed John B. Minor Professor of Law and History in 1987, and held that chair until 2003, when he became David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law. In 1992, he was appointed to a University Professorship, which he held until 2003. From 1990 until 1992 and from 2001-03, he was the Sullivan & Cromwell Research Professor; from 1994-97 the E. James Kelly Research Professor; and from 1999-2001 the Class of 1963 Research Professor. He has held visiting appointments at New York Law School, William & Mary School of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Arizona College of Law, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Harvard Law School. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and twice a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and a member of the American Law Institute.He received the Roger and Madeleine Traynor Faculty Achievement Award in 2008.
White's 14 published books have won numerous honors and awards. These include final listing for the Pulitzer Prize in history, the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, the James Willard Hurst Prize from the Law & Society Association, the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, the Scribes Award and the Association of American Law Schools' Triennial Coif Award. White's books have garnered 15 such honors and awards since 1976.
White was editor of the Studies in Legal History series for the North Carolina Press from 1980-85, and advisor on law manuscripts for Oxford University Press from 1986-96. He was on the editorial board of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 1980-2002. He has served on the Commission for Undergraduate Education in Law and the Humanities, and has taught summer humanities seminars for lawyers and judges under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
White has delivered several endowed lectures, including the inaugural John Marshall Lecture, sponsored by the Boston Bar Association; the inaugural Jerome Hall Lecture at Hastings College of Law; the Swinford Lecture, sponsored by the University of Kentucky School of Law and the Kentucky Bar Association; the Keck Lecture at Amherst College, the Rosenthal Lectures at Northwestern University School of Law; the Neesima Lectures at Doshisha University, Japan; the Fulton Lecture at the University of Chicago School of Law and the Knowlton Distinguished Lecture at the University of South Carolina School of Law. His most recent lecture was the 2010 Hendricks Law and History Lecture at Washington & Lee Law School.
White's 1996 book, Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903-1953, reflects his life-long participation and interest in athletics. He lettered in four sports in college, formerly coached the Charlottesville High School girls soccer team, and has won a number of state- and citywide tournaments in doubles squash.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
James Harvie Wilkinson III is an Article III federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He joined the Court in 1984 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Born in New York City, New York, Wilkinson graduated from Yale University with his Bachelor's degree in 1967. Wilkinson served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1969 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1972.
On the recommendation of Virginia U.S. Senator John Warner, Wilkinson was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan on January 30, 1984 to a seat vacated by John Butzner, Jr.,. Wilkinson was confirmed by the Senate on August 9, 1984 on a Senate vote and received commission on August 13, 1984. Wilkinson served as the Chief Judge of the Court from 1996 to 2003.
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.
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Virginia School of Law
Lillian BeVier taught constitutional law (with special emphasis on First Amendment issues), intellectual property (trademark, copyright), real property and torts from 1973-2010 at the Law School, and now teaches a January Term course on judicial philosophy.
At Stanford Law School, BeVier was revising editor for the Stanford Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Before coming to Virginia, she was associate professor of law at the University of Santa Clara Law School; practiced law with Spaeth Blase Valentine & Klein in Palo Alto, Calif.; served as research associate to Professor William F. Baxter at Stanford University Law School, working on the FAA-ABA study of the legal aspects of airport noise and the sonic boom; and was assistant to the general secretary and assistant staff legal counsel for Stanford University.
BeVier received the University of Virginia Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award in 2006. The Raven Society elected her to membership in 1993 and honored her with the faculty award in 2010. She delivered the Henry Miller Memorial Lecture at Georgia State Law School in 2005, the Coen Memorial Lecture at the University of Colorado Law School in 2000, and the David C. Baum Lecture on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the University of Illinois Law School in 1996. In 1999, at the invitation of the Supreme Court Historical Society, she spoke to the Society on Free Expression in the Warren and Burger Courts. Suffolk University awarded her an honorary S.J.D. degree in 1998. In the fall of 2003, she was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Having been nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2003, she served as vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation until 2009. She serves on the national Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society. Within the Charlottesville community, BeVier has served as chair of the Board of Trustees of St. Anne’s-Belfield School and of the Martha Jefferson Hospital. She is currently chair of the board of the Martha Jefferson Health Services Corporation and of Piedmont CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Livingston was appointed United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit on May 17, 2007 and entered on duty June 1, 2007. Prior to her appointment she was the Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she also served as Vice Dean from 2005 to 2006. Judge Livingston joined the Columbia faculty in 1994. She continues to serve as a member of that faculty as the Paul J. Kellner Professor.
Judge Livingston received her B.A., magna cum laude, in 1980 from Princeton University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her J.D., magna cum laude, in 1984 from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Edward Lumbard of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Judge Livingston was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1986 to 1991 and she served as a Deputy Chief of Appeals in the Criminal Division from 1990 to 1991. She was an associate with the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison from 1985 to 1986 and again from 1991 to 1992, when she elected to pursue an academic career. Judge Livingston was a member of the University of Michigan's Law School faculty from 1992 until 1994.
Judge Livingston is a co-author of the casebook, Comprehensive Criminal Procedure, and has published numerous academic articles on legal topics. She has taught courses in evidence, criminal law and procedure, and national security and terrorism. From 1994 to 2003, Judge Livingston was a Commissioner on New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board.
President & CEO, National Constitution Center
Jeffrey Rosen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the U.S. Constitution. Located steps from Independence Hall in Historic Philadelphia, the Center engages millions of citizens as an interactive museum, national town hall, and provider of nonpartisan resources for civic education. Rosen became President and CEO in 2013 and has developed the Center’s acclaimed Interactive Constitution, which brings together the top conservative and liberal legal scholars in America to discuss areas of agreement and disagreement about every clause of the Constitution. The online resource has received more than 15 million hits since launching in 2015.
Rosen is also professor at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He is a highly regarded journalist whose essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, on National Public Radio, in the New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor, and The New Yorker, where he was a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and a reviewer for the Los Angeles Timescalled him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”
Rosen is the author of six books including, most recently, a biography of William Howard Taft, published as part of the American Presidents Series. His other books include Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet; The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America; The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America; The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age; and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. He is co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change.
Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School.
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.
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Virginia School of Law
Lillian BeVier taught constitutional law (with special emphasis on First Amendment issues), intellectual property (trademark, copyright), real property and torts from 1973-2010 at the Law School, and now teaches a January Term course on judicial philosophy.
At Stanford Law School, BeVier was revising editor for the Stanford Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Before coming to Virginia, she was associate professor of law at the University of Santa Clara Law School; practiced law with Spaeth Blase Valentine & Klein in Palo Alto, Calif.; served as research associate to Professor William F. Baxter at Stanford University Law School, working on the FAA-ABA study of the legal aspects of airport noise and the sonic boom; and was assistant to the general secretary and assistant staff legal counsel for Stanford University.
BeVier received the University of Virginia Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award in 2006. The Raven Society elected her to membership in 1993 and honored her with the faculty award in 2010. She delivered the Henry Miller Memorial Lecture at Georgia State Law School in 2005, the Coen Memorial Lecture at the University of Colorado Law School in 2000, and the David C. Baum Lecture on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the University of Illinois Law School in 1996. In 1999, at the invitation of the Supreme Court Historical Society, she spoke to the Society on Free Expression in the Warren and Burger Courts. Suffolk University awarded her an honorary S.J.D. degree in 1998. In the fall of 2003, she was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Having been nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2003, she served as vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation until 2009. She serves on the national Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society. Within the Charlottesville community, BeVier has served as chair of the Board of Trustees of St. Anne’s-Belfield School and of the Martha Jefferson Hospital. She is currently chair of the board of the Martha Jefferson Health Services Corporation and of Piedmont CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Livingston was appointed United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit on May 17, 2007 and entered on duty June 1, 2007. Prior to her appointment she was the Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she also served as Vice Dean from 2005 to 2006. Judge Livingston joined the Columbia faculty in 1994. She continues to serve as a member of that faculty as the Paul J. Kellner Professor.
Judge Livingston received her B.A., magna cum laude, in 1980 from Princeton University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her J.D., magna cum laude, in 1984 from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Edward Lumbard of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Judge Livingston was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1986 to 1991 and she served as a Deputy Chief of Appeals in the Criminal Division from 1990 to 1991. She was an associate with the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison from 1985 to 1986 and again from 1991 to 1992, when she elected to pursue an academic career. Judge Livingston was a member of the University of Michigan's Law School faculty from 1992 until 1994.
Judge Livingston is a co-author of the casebook, Comprehensive Criminal Procedure, and has published numerous academic articles on legal topics. She has taught courses in evidence, criminal law and procedure, and national security and terrorism. From 1994 to 2003, Judge Livingston was a Commissioner on New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board.
President & CEO, National Constitution Center
Jeffrey Rosen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the U.S. Constitution. Located steps from Independence Hall in Historic Philadelphia, the Center engages millions of citizens as an interactive museum, national town hall, and provider of nonpartisan resources for civic education. Rosen became President and CEO in 2013 and has developed the Center’s acclaimed Interactive Constitution, which brings together the top conservative and liberal legal scholars in America to discuss areas of agreement and disagreement about every clause of the Constitution. The online resource has received more than 15 million hits since launching in 2015.
Rosen is also professor at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He is a highly regarded journalist whose essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, on National Public Radio, in the New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor, and The New Yorker, where he was a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and a reviewer for the Los Angeles Timescalled him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”
Rosen is the author of six books including, most recently, a biography of William Howard Taft, published as part of the American Presidents Series. His other books include Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet; The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America; The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America; The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age; and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. He is co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change.
Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Dennis Jacobs is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He became Chief Judge on October 1, 2006. At the time of his appointment in 1992, he was a partner in the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Judge Jacobs received his B.A. degree from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1964; his M.A. degree from New York University in 1965; and his J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law in 1973.
Judge Jacobs was a lecturer in the English Department of Queens College of the City University of New York from 1967 until 1969. He was in private practice from 1973 with the New York law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, serving as a partner there from 1980 until his judicial appointment.
In 1997-2004, Judge Jacobs was a member of the Committee on Judicial Resources of the Judicial Conference of the United States; starting in 1999 he was chair of that committee.
Judge Jacobs is a native of New York City.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge O’Scannlain was appointed United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit by President Reagan on September 26, 1986. He received a J.D. degree in 1963 from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in 1957 from St. John’s University. He also earned the LL.M. (Judicial Process) degree at University of Virginia Law School in 1992. He was awarded the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by the University of Notre Dame in 2002, the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by Lewis & Clark College in 2003 and the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by the University of Portland in 2011.
As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Judge O’Scannlain has participated in over 6,000 federal cases and has written hundreds of published opinions on a broad range of subjects including constitutional law, international law, securities law, administrative law, and criminal law. He hears appeals in San Francisco (court headquarters), as well as in Los Angeles (Pasadena), Portland, Seattle, Anchorage and Honolulu. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Judge O'Scannlain to the Federal Judicial Center's Advisory Committee on Appellate Judge Education. In 2009, Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge O’Scannlain to the International Judicial Relations Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference and subsequently appointed him Chairman in 2010.
President George W. Bush appointed Judge O’Scannlain to the Board of Trustees of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation in 2004. Pope Benedict XVI conferred the Order of Saint Gregory the Great on Judge and Mrs. O’Scannlain in 2007.
Judge O’Scannlain’s professional interests also include judicial administration and reform, and continuing legal education. Judge O’Scannlain is former Chair of the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association and has previously chaired the ABA’s Appellate Judges Conference, its Committee on Appellate Practice, and its 9th Appellate Practice Institute. He has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on several occasions, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, and the Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals on the subject of court reorganization. In addition to serving as a faculty member at numerous federal appellate practice seminars for judges and attorneys, including New York University Law School’s Institute for Judicial Administration, Judge O’Scannlain is an Adjunct Professor at Lewis & Clark Law School where he teaches a seminar on the Supreme Court. He has served as a Moot Court Judge at distinguished law schools across the United States including Harvard, Yale Stanford, Boalt Hall (Berkeley Law), Virginia, Cornell, Notre Dame, Fordham, Alabama, University of Southern California, King Hall (U.C. Davis) and Loyola Marymount University and in China at Xiamen and Renmin Universities.
Between graduation from Harvard and investiture as a federal judge, Judge O’Scannlain was primarily engaged in private law practice. Between 1969 and 1974, he was consecutively the Deputy Attorney General of Oregon, the Public Utility Commissioner of Oregon, and Director of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. He retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in 1978 as a Major after 23 years Reserve and National Guard service, including four years as an enlisted man.
A first generation Irish-American son of immigrant parents from Sligo and Derry, Judge O’Scannlain is married to the former Maura Nolan and has eight children: Sean, Jane, Brendan, Kevin, Megan, Christopher, Anne, and Kate, and nineteen grandchildren. His chambers are in the Pioneer Courthouse in Portland, Oregon.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
G. Edward White joined the Virginia law faculty in 1972 after a clerkship with Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court of the United States and a year as visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation. He was appointed John B. Minor Professor of Law and History in 1987, and held that chair until 2003, when he became David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law. In 1992, he was appointed to a University Professorship, which he held until 2003. From 1990 until 1992 and from 2001-03, he was the Sullivan & Cromwell Research Professor; from 1994-97 the E. James Kelly Research Professor; and from 1999-2001 the Class of 1963 Research Professor. He has held visiting appointments at New York Law School, William & Mary School of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Arizona College of Law, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Harvard Law School. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and twice a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and a member of the American Law Institute.He received the Roger and Madeleine Traynor Faculty Achievement Award in 2008.
White's 14 published books have won numerous honors and awards. These include final listing for the Pulitzer Prize in history, the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, the James Willard Hurst Prize from the Law & Society Association, the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, the Scribes Award and the Association of American Law Schools' Triennial Coif Award. White's books have garnered 15 such honors and awards since 1976.
White was editor of the Studies in Legal History series for the North Carolina Press from 1980-85, and advisor on law manuscripts for Oxford University Press from 1986-96. He was on the editorial board of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 1980-2002. He has served on the Commission for Undergraduate Education in Law and the Humanities, and has taught summer humanities seminars for lawyers and judges under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
White has delivered several endowed lectures, including the inaugural John Marshall Lecture, sponsored by the Boston Bar Association; the inaugural Jerome Hall Lecture at Hastings College of Law; the Swinford Lecture, sponsored by the University of Kentucky School of Law and the Kentucky Bar Association; the Keck Lecture at Amherst College, the Rosenthal Lectures at Northwestern University School of Law; the Neesima Lectures at Doshisha University, Japan; the Fulton Lecture at the University of Chicago School of Law and the Knowlton Distinguished Lecture at the University of South Carolina School of Law. His most recent lecture was the 2010 Hendricks Law and History Lecture at Washington & Lee Law School.
White's 1996 book, Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903-1953, reflects his life-long participation and interest in athletics. He lettered in four sports in college, formerly coached the Charlottesville High School girls soccer team, and has won a number of state- and citywide tournaments in doubles squash.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
James Harvie Wilkinson III is an Article III federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He joined the Court in 1984 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Born in New York City, New York, Wilkinson graduated from Yale University with his Bachelor's degree in 1967. Wilkinson served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1969 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1972.
On the recommendation of Virginia U.S. Senator John Warner, Wilkinson was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan on January 30, 1984 to a seat vacated by John Butzner, Jr.,. Wilkinson was confirmed by the Senate on August 9, 1984 on a Senate vote and received commission on August 13, 1984. Wilkinson served as the Chief Judge of the Court from 1996 to 2003.
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.
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Virginia School of Law
Lillian BeVier taught constitutional law (with special emphasis on First Amendment issues), intellectual property (trademark, copyright), real property and torts from 1973-2010 at the Law School, and now teaches a January Term course on judicial philosophy.
At Stanford Law School, BeVier was revising editor for the Stanford Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Before coming to Virginia, she was associate professor of law at the University of Santa Clara Law School; practiced law with Spaeth Blase Valentine & Klein in Palo Alto, Calif.; served as research associate to Professor William F. Baxter at Stanford University Law School, working on the FAA-ABA study of the legal aspects of airport noise and the sonic boom; and was assistant to the general secretary and assistant staff legal counsel for Stanford University.
BeVier received the University of Virginia Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award in 2006. The Raven Society elected her to membership in 1993 and honored her with the faculty award in 2010. She delivered the Henry Miller Memorial Lecture at Georgia State Law School in 2005, the Coen Memorial Lecture at the University of Colorado Law School in 2000, and the David C. Baum Lecture on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the University of Illinois Law School in 1996. In 1999, at the invitation of the Supreme Court Historical Society, she spoke to the Society on Free Expression in the Warren and Burger Courts. Suffolk University awarded her an honorary S.J.D. degree in 1998. In the fall of 2003, she was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Having been nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2003, she served as vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation until 2009. She serves on the national Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society. Within the Charlottesville community, BeVier has served as chair of the Board of Trustees of St. Anne’s-Belfield School and of the Martha Jefferson Hospital. She is currently chair of the board of the Martha Jefferson Health Services Corporation and of Piedmont CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Livingston was appointed United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit on May 17, 2007 and entered on duty June 1, 2007. Prior to her appointment she was the Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she also served as Vice Dean from 2005 to 2006. Judge Livingston joined the Columbia faculty in 1994. She continues to serve as a member of that faculty as the Paul J. Kellner Professor.
Judge Livingston received her B.A., magna cum laude, in 1980 from Princeton University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her J.D., magna cum laude, in 1984 from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Edward Lumbard of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Judge Livingston was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1986 to 1991 and she served as a Deputy Chief of Appeals in the Criminal Division from 1990 to 1991. She was an associate with the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison from 1985 to 1986 and again from 1991 to 1992, when she elected to pursue an academic career. Judge Livingston was a member of the University of Michigan's Law School faculty from 1992 until 1994.
Judge Livingston is a co-author of the casebook, Comprehensive Criminal Procedure, and has published numerous academic articles on legal topics. She has taught courses in evidence, criminal law and procedure, and national security and terrorism. From 1994 to 2003, Judge Livingston was a Commissioner on New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board.
President & CEO, National Constitution Center
Jeffrey Rosen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the U.S. Constitution. Located steps from Independence Hall in Historic Philadelphia, the Center engages millions of citizens as an interactive museum, national town hall, and provider of nonpartisan resources for civic education. Rosen became President and CEO in 2013 and has developed the Center’s acclaimed Interactive Constitution, which brings together the top conservative and liberal legal scholars in America to discuss areas of agreement and disagreement about every clause of the Constitution. The online resource has received more than 15 million hits since launching in 2015.
Rosen is also professor at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He is a highly regarded journalist whose essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, on National Public Radio, in the New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor, and The New Yorker, where he was a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and a reviewer for the Los Angeles Timescalled him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”
Rosen is the author of six books including, most recently, a biography of William Howard Taft, published as part of the American Presidents Series. His other books include Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet; The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America; The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America; The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age; and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. He is co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change.
Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School.
Alston & Bird Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law
Professor Young teaches constitutional law, federal courts, and foreign relations law. He is one of the nation's leading authorities on the constitutional law of federalism, having written extensively on the Rehnquist Court's "Federalist Revival" and the difficulties confronting courts as they seek to draw lines between national and state authority. He also is an active commentator on foreign relations law, where he focuses on the interaction between domestic and supranational courts and the application of international law by domestic courts. Professor Young also writes on constitutional interpretation and constitutional theory. He has been known to dabble in maritime law and comparative constitutional law.
A native of Abilene, Texas, Professor Young joined the Duke Law faculty in 2008, after serving as the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, where he had taught since 1999. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1990 and Harvard Law School in 1993. After law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Boudin of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1993-94) and to Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court (1995-96). Professor Young practiced law at Cohan, Simpson, Cowlishaw, & Wulff in Dallas, Texas (1994-95) and at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. (1996-98), where he specialized in appellate litigation. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (2004-05) and Villanova University School of Law (1998-99), as well as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center (1997).
Elected to the American Law Institute in 2006, Professor Young is an active participant in both public and private litigation in his areas of interest. He has been the principal author of amicus briefs on behalf of leading constitutional scholars in several recent Supreme Court cases, including Medellin v. Texas(concerning presidential power and the authority of the International Court of Justice over domestic courts) and Gonzales v. Raich (concerning federal power to regulate medical marijuana).
Panel I: Economic Theory, Civic Virtue and the Meaning of the Constitution
James W. Ely, Renée Lettow Lerner, G. Brinton Lucas, Nelson Lund, G. Edward White, J. Harvie Wilkinson
Justice Holmes' dissent in Lochner v. New York is well-known for the statement, "[A] constitution is not...
Debate: Economic Freedoms and the Constitution
Randy E. Barnett, Lillian R. BeVier, Devin Allan DeBacker, Debra Ann Livingston, Ben Massey, Jeffrey Rosen
Since West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish and the end of the Lochner Era, the Supreme Court has adhered...
Debate: Economic Freedoms and the Constitution
Randy E. Barnett, Lillian R. BeVier, Devin Allan DeBacker, Debra Ann Livingston, Ben Massey, Jeffrey Rosen
Since West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish and the end of the Lochner Era, the Supreme Court has adhered...
Panel I: Economic Theory, Civic Virtue and the Meaning of the Constitution
2011 National Student Symposium
Charlottesville, VADebate: Economic Freedoms and the Constitution
2011 National Student Symposium
Charlottesville, VA2011 National Student Symposium
Capitalism, Markets, and the Constitution
Charlottesville, VAA Renaissance of Federalism?
Charlotte, North CarolinaThe Federalist Paper, February 2011
We are pleased to bring you the winter issue of The Federalist Paper, now online....
Lawyers at War
Dennis Jacobs
Dennis Jacobs is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit....
Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law by Hadley Arkes
Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain
It was her last day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the question...