David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Kenneth Abraham is one of the nation’s leading scholars and teachers in the fields of torts and insurance law. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a life member of the American Law Institute. For 20 years he served on the Council of the ALI — the board of lawyers, judges and academics that governs the Institute. He is also an adviser to the ALI’s Restatement of Torts (Third) and Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance. He has served on a number of other boards and commissions concerned with tort law and insurance reform.
Abraham is a recipient of the All-University of Virginia Outstanding Teacher Award, the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Certificate from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia for "outstanding achievement in teaching, research and public service,” and the American Bar Association's Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award, given for "outstanding contributions to tort and insurance law." He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and Case Western Reserve Law School.
Abraham is the author of more than 60 law review articles and five books. His first book, "Distributing Risk: Insurance, Legal Theory, and Public Policy" (1986), brought modern legal theory to the study of insurance law. His torts treatise, "The Forms and Functions of Tort Law" (5th ed. 2017), has become a basic text for first-year law students across the country. And his casebook, "Insurance Law and Regulation" (6th ed. 2015) has been used as the principal text in courses on insurance law in more than 100 American law schools.
Abraham has been a consulting counsel and an expert witness in a variety of major insurance coverage cases, involving commercial general liability, directors and officers liability, environmental cleanup liability, toxic tort and products liability, and property insurance claims. He has also served as an arbitrator for the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust, resolving over 100 claims by women seeking damages for injuries caused by the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device, both in the United States and Europe.
Walter E. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Property and Urban Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School
Robert C. Ellickson was appointed Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School in 1988. He has published numerous articles in legal and public policy journals on topics such as land use and housing policy, land tenure systems, social norms, homelessness, and the organization of households, community associations, and cities. Professor Ellickson’s books include Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes (1991) (awarded the Order of the Coif Triennial Book Award in 1996), The Household: Informal Order Around the Hearth (2008), Land Use Controls: Cases and Materials (4th edition 2013, with Vicki Been, Roderick M. Hills, Jr. and Christopher Serkin), and Perspectives on Property Law (4th edition 2014, with Carol M. Rose and Henry E. Smith). He has written about ancient systems of land tenure and also periodically teaches a seminar on the history of development of the City of New Haven. Robert Ellickson was a member of the USC Law Faculty in 1970–1981, and the Stanford Law Faculty in 1981–88. He also has been a visiting professor at the Harvard and University of Chicago Law Schools. He was a founding member and later a director of the American Law and Economics Association, and served as its President in 2000–01. In 2016, the Association awarded him the Ronald H. Coase Medal in recognition of his scholarly contributions. Professor Ellickson served as an adviser during the American Law Institute’s preparation of the Restatement, Third, Property—Servitudes, and currently serves in the same capacity for the Restatement (Fourth) of Property. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, in 2008, received the William & Mary Law School’s Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize for Property Scholarship. At Yale Law School he has served as Deputy Dean (1991–92) and, during the reconstruction of the Sterling Law buildings, as chairman of the Building Committee. Prior to entering teaching in 1970, he worked for a Presidential commission on housing policy and then for Levitt & Sons, the homebuilding firm. Professor Ellickson is married to Lynn Hammer and has two children. For many decades he competed in competitive Scrabble tournaments and, during intervals when fortune smiled, was ranked as one of the top 20 players in the United States.
Former Executive Vice President of Academics, Atlas Network
Leonard P. Liggio was the Executive Vice President of Academics at the Atlas Network for the last two decades of his life. He was born July 5, 1933 and died Oct. 14, 2014, at the age of 81.
Leonard’s career advancing liberty spanned seven decades, during which time he served as the President of the Mont Pelerin Society, the Philadelphia Society, and the Institute for Humane Studies, where he later continued to serve as its Distinguished Senior Scholar. He was a professor at George Mason University, a visiting professor at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín, a board member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a Trustee of Liberty Fund.
Leonard’s lifelong work for liberty won him acclaim among diverse audiences. In 2007, he was recognized with the Adam Smith Award, the highest prize bestowed by the Association of Private Enterprise Education. In 2011, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. That same year, the then-nascent organization Students for Liberty published an interview with Leonard that called him “The Original Student for Liberty.”
Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship, Yale Law School
Professor George L. Priest passed away on Dec. 17, 2024. Please read his obituary here.
George L. Priest is the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship at Yale Law School. An internationally recognized expert, Professor Priest has focused his research over the past two decades on antitrust, the operation of private and public insurance, and the role of the legal system in promoting economic growth. He joined Yale Law School in 1981 and is co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy, which facilitates the scholarly work of the Yale law and economics faculty and supports student interest and research in the field. Before coming to Yale, Professor Priest taught law at the University of Chicago, SUNY/Buffalo, and UCLA. His subject areas are antitrust; capitalism; regulated industries; torts; and insurance and public policy. Professor Priest holds a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from the University of Chicago.
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Kenneth Abraham is one of the nation’s leading scholars and teachers in the fields of torts and insurance law. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a life member of the American Law Institute. For 20 years he served on the Council of the ALI — the board of lawyers, judges and academics that governs the Institute. He is also an adviser to the ALI’s Restatement of Torts (Third) and Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance. He has served on a number of other boards and commissions concerned with tort law and insurance reform.
Abraham is a recipient of the All-University of Virginia Outstanding Teacher Award, the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Certificate from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia for "outstanding achievement in teaching, research and public service,” and the American Bar Association's Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award, given for "outstanding contributions to tort and insurance law." He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and Case Western Reserve Law School.
Abraham is the author of more than 60 law review articles and five books. His first book, "Distributing Risk: Insurance, Legal Theory, and Public Policy" (1986), brought modern legal theory to the study of insurance law. His torts treatise, "The Forms and Functions of Tort Law" (5th ed. 2017), has become a basic text for first-year law students across the country. And his casebook, "Insurance Law and Regulation" (6th ed. 2015) has been used as the principal text in courses on insurance law in more than 100 American law schools.
Abraham has been a consulting counsel and an expert witness in a variety of major insurance coverage cases, involving commercial general liability, directors and officers liability, environmental cleanup liability, toxic tort and products liability, and property insurance claims. He has also served as an arbitrator for the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust, resolving over 100 claims by women seeking damages for injuries caused by the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device, both in the United States and Europe.
Walter E. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Property and Urban Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School
Robert C. Ellickson was appointed Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School in 1988. He has published numerous articles in legal and public policy journals on topics such as land use and housing policy, land tenure systems, social norms, homelessness, and the organization of households, community associations, and cities. Professor Ellickson’s books include Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes (1991) (awarded the Order of the Coif Triennial Book Award in 1996), The Household: Informal Order Around the Hearth (2008), Land Use Controls: Cases and Materials (4th edition 2013, with Vicki Been, Roderick M. Hills, Jr. and Christopher Serkin), and Perspectives on Property Law (4th edition 2014, with Carol M. Rose and Henry E. Smith). He has written about ancient systems of land tenure and also periodically teaches a seminar on the history of development of the City of New Haven. Robert Ellickson was a member of the USC Law Faculty in 1970–1981, and the Stanford Law Faculty in 1981–88. He also has been a visiting professor at the Harvard and University of Chicago Law Schools. He was a founding member and later a director of the American Law and Economics Association, and served as its President in 2000–01. In 2016, the Association awarded him the Ronald H. Coase Medal in recognition of his scholarly contributions. Professor Ellickson served as an adviser during the American Law Institute’s preparation of the Restatement, Third, Property—Servitudes, and currently serves in the same capacity for the Restatement (Fourth) of Property. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, in 2008, received the William & Mary Law School’s Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize for Property Scholarship. At Yale Law School he has served as Deputy Dean (1991–92) and, during the reconstruction of the Sterling Law buildings, as chairman of the Building Committee. Prior to entering teaching in 1970, he worked for a Presidential commission on housing policy and then for Levitt & Sons, the homebuilding firm. Professor Ellickson is married to Lynn Hammer and has two children. For many decades he competed in competitive Scrabble tournaments and, during intervals when fortune smiled, was ranked as one of the top 20 players in the United States.
Former Executive Vice President of Academics, Atlas Network
Leonard P. Liggio was the Executive Vice President of Academics at the Atlas Network for the last two decades of his life. He was born July 5, 1933 and died Oct. 14, 2014, at the age of 81.
Leonard’s career advancing liberty spanned seven decades, during which time he served as the President of the Mont Pelerin Society, the Philadelphia Society, and the Institute for Humane Studies, where he later continued to serve as its Distinguished Senior Scholar. He was a professor at George Mason University, a visiting professor at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín, a board member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a Trustee of Liberty Fund.
Leonard’s lifelong work for liberty won him acclaim among diverse audiences. In 2007, he was recognized with the Adam Smith Award, the highest prize bestowed by the Association of Private Enterprise Education. In 2011, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. That same year, the then-nascent organization Students for Liberty published an interview with Leonard that called him “The Original Student for Liberty.”
Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship, Yale Law School
Professor George L. Priest passed away on Dec. 17, 2024. Please read his obituary here.
George L. Priest is the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship at Yale Law School. An internationally recognized expert, Professor Priest has focused his research over the past two decades on antitrust, the operation of private and public insurance, and the role of the legal system in promoting economic growth. He joined Yale Law School in 1981 and is co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy, which facilitates the scholarly work of the Yale law and economics faculty and supports student interest and research in the field. Before coming to Yale, Professor Priest taught law at the University of Chicago, SUNY/Buffalo, and UCLA. His subject areas are antitrust; capitalism; regulated industries; torts; and insurance and public policy. Professor Priest holds a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986. After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law. Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.
Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of: Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.
In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy.
In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.
He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.
Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Kate Stith, Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law at Yale Law School, teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. Prior to joining the faculty at Yale, Professor Stith was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where she prosecuted white-collar and organized-crime cases. Professor Stith is serving or has served as an Adviser for the American Law Institute project Model Penal Code Sentencing; on the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Research Council; on the Professional Ethics Committee in the State of Connecticut; as a Commissioner of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women in Connecticut; as President of the Connecticut Bar Foundation; on the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees; as faculty sponsor and director of the Women's Campaign School at Yale; as Deputy Dean of Yale Law School; and, by appointment of the Chief Justice of the United States, on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Her book on the federal sentencing guidelines, Fear of Judging (with J.A. Cabranes), was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the ABA in 1999. A graduate of Dartmouth College, the Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Law School, she clerked for Judge Carl McGowan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and for Supreme Court Justice Byron R.White.
Emeritus Professor of Political Economy, Claremont McKenna College
Wm. Craig Stubblebine, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the Claremont McKenna College (formerly Claremont Men’s College), is a native of Texas. He holds a B.S. degree from the University of Delaware, and a Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of Virginia. He is married to the former Carol Ann Wiebe and has two children, Julia and Erik.
Stubblebine taught Economics on the faculty of the University of Virginia from 1961 to 1963, and on the faculty of the University of Delaware from 1963 to 1966. During 1965-66, he was a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From 1966 to 2003, Stubblebine was a member of the faculties of Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School. He now is an emeritus professor. He was on leave from Claremont during 1967-68, when he served as a Fulbright Lecturer in Welfare Economics at the University of Turin, Italy; and during 1971-72, when he served as Associate Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University, and Visiting Scholar in Public Choice and Professor of Economics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Stubblebine was appointed Professor of Economics in 1976 and received the Von Tobel Chair of Political Economy in 1979. He was appointed founding Director of the Center for the Study of Law Structures in 1977, serving in that capacity until he became Chairman of the Department of Economics during 1984-87.
Stubblebine has served as President of the Western Tax Association, as President of the Faculty Senate of the Claremont Colleges, and has held various offices at Laws-atWork, including Vice-Chairman. He also has served as a Director and Senior Associate of Public Associates Incorporated, as a Senior Associate of JurEcon, and as a founding Director of the National Tax Limitation Committee. He was a founding director of the YES Fund and a director of Seapointe Savings and Loan. He chaired the national committee which drafted the proposed Federal tax/spending limitation amendment adopted by the U. S. Senate in 1982 and has served as a consultant to various state limitation drafting committees.
Author of articles on property rights and public finance, Stubblebine is a member of several professional societies and has participated in governmental and business consulting activities. With R. T. Smith, he is co-author of Maintaining the Legacy of Proposition 13 (1991). He is an editor of and contributor to Reaganomics: a Mid-Term Report (1983). He has lectured widely, has participated in many economic conferences, and served on a variety of task forces. He has been listed in various “Who’s Who ....” including “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in Economics”.
President Emeritus, Harvard University
Lawrence H. Summers is President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past two decades he has served in a series of senior policy positions, including Vice President of development economics and chief economist of the World Bank, Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, Director of the National Economic Council for the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2011, and Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, from 1999 to 2001.
He received a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987 Mr. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and in 1993, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.
He is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University. He and his wife Elisa New, a professor of English at Harvard, reside in Brookline with their six children.
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986. After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law. Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.
Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of: Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.
In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy.
In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.
He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.
Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Kate Stith, Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law at Yale Law School, teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. Prior to joining the faculty at Yale, Professor Stith was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where she prosecuted white-collar and organized-crime cases. Professor Stith is serving or has served as an Adviser for the American Law Institute project Model Penal Code Sentencing; on the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Research Council; on the Professional Ethics Committee in the State of Connecticut; as a Commissioner of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women in Connecticut; as President of the Connecticut Bar Foundation; on the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees; as faculty sponsor and director of the Women's Campaign School at Yale; as Deputy Dean of Yale Law School; and, by appointment of the Chief Justice of the United States, on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Her book on the federal sentencing guidelines, Fear of Judging (with J.A. Cabranes), was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the ABA in 1999. A graduate of Dartmouth College, the Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Law School, she clerked for Judge Carl McGowan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and for Supreme Court Justice Byron R.White.
Emeritus Professor of Political Economy, Claremont McKenna College
Wm. Craig Stubblebine, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the Claremont McKenna College (formerly Claremont Men’s College), is a native of Texas. He holds a B.S. degree from the University of Delaware, and a Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of Virginia. He is married to the former Carol Ann Wiebe and has two children, Julia and Erik.
Stubblebine taught Economics on the faculty of the University of Virginia from 1961 to 1963, and on the faculty of the University of Delaware from 1963 to 1966. During 1965-66, he was a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From 1966 to 2003, Stubblebine was a member of the faculties of Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School. He now is an emeritus professor. He was on leave from Claremont during 1967-68, when he served as a Fulbright Lecturer in Welfare Economics at the University of Turin, Italy; and during 1971-72, when he served as Associate Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University, and Visiting Scholar in Public Choice and Professor of Economics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Stubblebine was appointed Professor of Economics in 1976 and received the Von Tobel Chair of Political Economy in 1979. He was appointed founding Director of the Center for the Study of Law Structures in 1977, serving in that capacity until he became Chairman of the Department of Economics during 1984-87.
Stubblebine has served as President of the Western Tax Association, as President of the Faculty Senate of the Claremont Colleges, and has held various offices at Laws-atWork, including Vice-Chairman. He also has served as a Director and Senior Associate of Public Associates Incorporated, as a Senior Associate of JurEcon, and as a founding Director of the National Tax Limitation Committee. He was a founding director of the YES Fund and a director of Seapointe Savings and Loan. He chaired the national committee which drafted the proposed Federal tax/spending limitation amendment adopted by the U. S. Senate in 1982 and has served as a consultant to various state limitation drafting committees.
Author of articles on property rights and public finance, Stubblebine is a member of several professional societies and has participated in governmental and business consulting activities. With R. T. Smith, he is co-author of Maintaining the Legacy of Proposition 13 (1991). He is an editor of and contributor to Reaganomics: a Mid-Term Report (1983). He has lectured widely, has participated in many economic conferences, and served on a variety of task forces. He has been listed in various “Who’s Who ....” including “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in Economics”.
President Emeritus, Harvard University
Lawrence H. Summers is President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past two decades he has served in a series of senior policy positions, including Vice President of development economics and chief economist of the World Bank, Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, Director of the National Economic Council for the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2011, and Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, from 1999 to 2001.
He received a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987 Mr. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and in 1993, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.
He is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University. He and his wife Elisa New, a professor of English at Harvard, reside in Brookline with their six children.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Partner, Vinson & Elkins LLP
Eric Groten is an accomplished Clean Air Act practitioner with nearly 35 years of experience navigating state and federal air quality laws. His work covers the full array of legal work generated by air quality laws, including defending enforcement actions, applying for the permits they require, transacting emissions rights, counseling clients on compliance and lobbying to change rules and the laws themselves. He has represented upstream, midstream and petrochemical facilities, power generators, and extractive industries in enforcement actions brought by EPA, by state agencies and by citizen groups.
Chambers USA described Eric as “a highly experienced air emissions lawyer, distinguished in the market by the sizable volume of contested air permitting work he undertakes,” and “creative in thinking through how to find an interpretation that’s going to get you the result you need” (2019). Indeed, Eric relishes the opportunity to help a client that’s willing to actively defend itself when it believes it has operated within the law. And to find a way through permitting disputes that stand in the way of capital projects that modernize our industrial base.
Senior Fellow for Law, Economics, and Technology, The Heritage Foundation; Professor, Florida International University
Mario Loyola is a Senior Fellow for Law, Economics, and Technology at The Heritage Foundation.
Loyola served in the Trump Administration as Associate Director for Regulatory Reform at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In that role, he was one of the principal drafters of the One Federal Decision policy, which helped to streamline the permitting and environmental review of large infrastructure projects. While at CEQ, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the USMCA free trade negotiations with Mexico and Canada, as well as the United Nations conference on biodiversity on the high seas. Loyola initially joined the White House in February 2017 as a Presidential Speechwriter, employing his expertise in many areas of foreign and domestic policy.
After beginning his career in M&A and corporate finance law, Loyola served in the Bush 43 Administration as a special assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. He left that position to start writing on national defense issues in magazines such as National Review and The Weekly Standard, reporting from the front lines of the war on terrorism in Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq. He finished the Bush Administration as Foreign and Defense Counsel to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, then under the chairmanship of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. He subsequently moved to Texas and joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he specialized in energy, environment, and federalism.
Loyola is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and The Atlantic, among others. He teaches environmental and administrative law at Florida International University, where he is Founding Director of the Environmental Finance and Risk Management program in FIU’s prestigious Institute of Environment. He received a bachelor’s degree in European history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a J.D. from Washington University School of Law.
Professor Emeritus of Law and C. William Trout Senior Fellow in Public Interest Law, Shepard Broad College of Law, Nova Southeastern University
Joel Mintz has been a faculty member at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law since 1982. He teaches courses in Environmental Law, Torts, and Environmental Enforcement, and he has taught courses and seminars in Land Use Planning, State and Local Government Law, and Comparative Environmental Law.
Professor Mintz’s scholarship focuses primarily on environmental law and policy, environmental enforcement, sustainable development, regulation of hazardous wastes, and state and local taxation and finance. Mintz is the author of a well-received monograph, Enforcement at the EPA: High Stakes and Hard Choices (University of Texas Press, 1995) (revised edition, 2012), and a treatise on the federal environmental liabilities of state and local governments; and he has co-authored two casebooks, a “law-in-a-nutshell” work, and a handbook for attorneys on municipal finance. His law review articles have appeared in numerous journals and his articles and book contributions have been widely cited, quoted, and excerpted in texts, scholarly books, and articles. He has also published op-ed articles, perspective pieces, book reviews, and other works.
Prior to joining the College of Law faculty, Professor Mintz was an attorney and chief attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Chicago and Washington, D.C. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform and the President of the Board of Directors of the Everglades Law Center, a not-for-profit environmental public interest law firm.
Mintz received his B.A. from Columbia University, his J.D. from N.Y.U. School of Law, and his LL.M. and J.S.D. from Columbia Law School. He serves as the newsletter editor of the Association of American Law School’s Section on State and Local Government Law, and he is an elected member of both the Commission on Environmental Law of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the International Council of Environmental Law. He is also a member of the bar of the State of New York and of several federal courts.
Professor Mintz’s outside interests include spending time with his family, canoeing, bicycling, reading, and attending concerts, films, and sporting events.
James C. Gaither Professor of Law; Vice Dean, Stanford Law School
Mark Kelman has tried, over the course of his career, to utilize the insights of neoclassical and behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, and political theory to illuminate a wide range of legal and policy controversies. He has paid special attention to antidiscrimination law (and most particularly disability law), criminal law, and taxation. He has written both articles and books that emphasize basic theory (e.g. THE HEURISTICS DEBATE, Oxford University Press 2011 or A GUIDE TO CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES, Harvard University Press 1987, and a project on INJURIES that he is working on now, attempting both to elucidate what it means to be injured and why certain practices or outcomes – poverty, discrimination, sexual harassment, and death – are or are not injurious) as well as works that apply theoretical insights more directly to legal controversies (e.g. JUMPING THE QUEUE, with Gillian Lester, Harvard University Press, 1997 and the recently published, WHAT IS IN A NAME? TAXATION AND REGULATION ACROSS CONSTITUTIONAL DOMAINS, Carolina Academic Press, 2019). He employs a wide variety of methods in his work, from experiments (e.g. “Playing with Trolleys: Intuitions About the Permissibility of Aggregation,” with Tamar Kreps, JELS, 2014) to doctrinal analysis (e.g. “Untangling Horne, Resuscitating Nollan,” 104 Cornell Law Review Online, 2018) to eclectic pieces that blend empirical and conceptual analyses of contested social practices (e.g. “Concepts of Discrimination in ‘General Ability’ Job Testing,” Harvard Law Review, 1991 and “Hard Choices and Deficient Choosers,” Northwestern Journal of Law and Policy, 2018). He has, for many decades, taught first year courses in Property and Criminal Law and will, for the first time this academic year, offer a course attempting to synthesize the recurring themes and arguments that cut across the law school curriculum. He has also now served as Vice Dean at the Law School for the past fifteen years. Before joining the Stanford Law faculty in 1977, he served as Director of Criminal Justice Projects at the Fund for the City of New York.
Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Gary Lawson joined the University of Florida Levin College of Law faculty on July 1, 2024, after twenty-four years at Boston University School of Law and eleven years at Northwestern University School of Law. While at Boston University, he was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in 2022 – the highest faculty honor within the university. He has authored or co-authored nine editions of a textbook on administrative law, a textbook on constitutional law, five university press books, one popular press book, and more than one hundred scholarly articles on topics ranging from aspects of constitutional theory and history to the proof of legal propositions. His works have been cited in more than twenty opinions of United States Supreme Court justices. He is a founding member, and serves on the Board of Directors, of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
Dean Emeritus, George Mason School of Law
Lauded as a cultural laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, former Mason dean Henry G. Manne was the driving force behind the many innovations in legal education implemented at George Mason.
Professor Manne was designated one of the "founders" of the field of law and economics by the American Law and Economics Association. He launched the Law and Economics Center at Emory University and the University of Miami before bringing it to George Mason.
His monograph, An Intellectual History of the School of Law, George Mason University, traces the development of the law and economics movement and highlights the special contributions made by George Mason University School of Law to the movement. Professor Manne's other writings include such seminal works as Insider Trading and the Stock Market; Wall Street in Transition (with E. Solomon); and "Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control", Journal of Political Economy, April 1965. Professor Manne also designed and implemented at George Mason the nation's first system of fully integrated law school specialty track programs.
In August 2012, Dean Manne gave an oral history of his life, including his time at the Law and Economics Center, to the Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society. An audio recording of the interview and transcript are available on the Society's website: audio (mp3); edited transcript (pdf).
He received a B.A. from Vanderbilt University (1950), J.D. from the University of Chicago (1952), J.S.D. from Yale University (1966), LL.D. from Seattle University (1987), and LL.D. from the Universidad Francesco Marroquin in Guatemala (1987).
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
Professor of Economics; Co-Director of Classical liberal Institute, NYU Law School; Director of the Foundations of the Market Economy Program, New York University
Mario Rizzo is the Director of the Program on the Foundations of the Market Economy in the Department of Economics. He is also the Co-Director of the Classical Liberal Institute at the New York University School of Law. He has been a law and economics fellow at Yale Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. He teaches a yearly seminar at the NYU Law School called “Classical Liberalism.” He is the author of many articles in economics and in law journals. He is the coauthor of Austrian Economics Re-Examined: The Economics of Time and Ignorance. Professor Rizzo’s current research is focused on new or soft paternalism, behavioral economics, and the economic theory of rationality. He is completing a book, Puppets and Puppet Masters: Rationality, Behavioral Economics and New Paternalism, for Cambridge University Press.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Founder, President, and General Counsel, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty
Rick Esenberg is the founder and current President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a rapidly expanding law and policy organization headquartered in Milwaukee. Under Rick’s leadership, WILL has grown into one of the more active state-based think tanks and litigation centers in the country. Rick is a frequent litigator in state and federal courts and nationally recognized scholar and commentator on constitutional law, particularly the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and religion. He is one of the leading experts on the Wisconsin Constitution and a frequent advocate before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Rick’s work seeks to advance the rule of law and individual liberty, formed by a robust civil society that forms individual and community character, preserving the wisdom of the past and an openness to the future.
Rick’s commentary has been featured in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Weekly Standard, Real Clear Politics, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Washington Examiner. Formerly on the faculty of Marquette University Law School, his scholarship has appeared in such publications as the Harvard Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Wake Forest Law Review and William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. Back when they were a thing, he operated a blog called Shark and Shepherd where he tried to suggest something about the duality of man – “the Jungian thing.”
Rick holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and a B.A., summa cum laude, in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition to service on the Marquette Faculty, he was formerly a litigation partner at Foley & Lardner and General Counsel of an international manufacturing firm headquartered in Wisconsin. He lives in Mequon Wisconsin with his wife Karen, golden retrievers Cooper and Riley and more books than he can find places for.
Senior Partner, Pines Bach LLP
Lester Pines is a Senior Partner in the firm.
A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, he is a respected civil and criminal litigator and appellate advocate. In his over 40 years of practice, he has appeared in trial and appellate courts throughout Wisconsin, in numerous federal district courts, and before the federal 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. After a recent trial, one of Lester’s clients wrote:
"Seeing you in action was like watching an artist create a classic painting from a blank canvas but instead of paint you used facts, figures and, most importantly, words to achieve a masterpiece in the courtroom."
His wide-ranging civil trial practice encompasses commercial claims, employment disputes, constitutional and civil rights matters, personal injury and intellectual property cases. His criminal defense work has involved many high profile cases, especially involving teachers, police officers and other public employees. He is counsel to Madison Teachers Inc., which represents the employees of the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Recently, Lester was featured in a cover story in Isthmus, a Madison weekly newspaper, " Activist Attorney – Lester Pines draws on faith and family in his practice and beyond."
Recent challenges to the constitutionality of newly enacted laws that Lester brought on behalf of his clients include:
Previously, in cases in which he was appointed by former Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, Lester defended Wisconsin’s law creating domestic partnerships for same sex couples and stopped an attempt by then Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to suppress voting in the 2008 Presidential election.
Among the many cases Lester has argued before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, two in particular have shaped Wisconsin law. In 2010 he represented the Zurich American Insurance Company inMiller v. Hanover Insurance, securing the reversal of a $2,000,000 default judgment against his client and achieving a significant change in Wisconsin law regarding relief from such judgments. In an original action in 1996, he successfully argued the case of Thompson v. Craney, which delineated the constitutionally vested powers of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and protected them from being altered by the Legislature, which the Wisconsin Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2016 in Coyne v. Walker.
Partner, Eimer Stahl LLP
Ryan is a partner at Eimer Stahl LLP and is based in the firm’s Madison office. He focuses his practice on appellate and complex litigation in a wide variety of areas, including antitrust, constitutional law, corporate law, environmental, ERISA, products liability, and white collar. As part of his practice, Ryan devotes significant time to matters of legal strategy and the art of written and oral advocacy.
Ryan previously served as Chief Deputy Solicitor General of Wisconsin, securing numerous wins in the Supreme Court of the United States, in three federal courts of appeal, and in the state supreme court. Ryan built national, bipartisan coalitions of attorneys general and agencies in support of several lawsuits and briefing efforts, including a Wisconsin-led, 12-state coalition whose suit against the Federal Communications Commission prompted that agency to reverse a major new rule. When he left government, Ryan had a perfect win record in all of his cases to have reached final judgment.
Earlier in his career, Ryan worked in Washington D.C. as an associate in the appellate group of one of the world’s largest law firms.
Ryan also served as a law clerk on the U.S. Supreme Court for the Honorable Antonin Scalia and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for the Honorable Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain.
Ryan was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30: Law and Policy” list in 2017. His briefing has won awards from the National Association of Attorneys General and the International Municipal Lawyers Association. He has also won a “best brief” accolade from the State Bar of Wisconsin in the civil category for his written work defending Wisconsin’s right-to-work law.
Panel V: The Public and Private Realms: The Privatization Movement and Other Developments [Archive Collection]
Kenneth S. Abraham, Robert C. Ellickson, Leonard Liggio, George L. Priest
On October 16-17, 1987, the Federalist Society hosted a symposium in celebration of the bicentennial...
Panel V: The Public and Private Realms: The Privatization Movement and Other Developments [Archive Collection]
Kenneth S. Abraham, Robert C. Ellickson, Leonard Liggio, George L. Priest
On October 16-17, 1987, the Federalist Society hosted a symposium in celebration of the bicentennial...
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Panel IV: Federal Spending and the Deficit: Is a Constitutional Remedy Necessary? [Archive Collection]
Douglas H. Ginsburg, Kate Stith, William Craig Stubblebine, Lawrence H. Summers
On October 16-17, 1987, the Federalist Society hosted a symposium in celebration of the bicentennial...
Panel IV: Federal Spending and the Deficit: Is a Constitutional Remedy Necessary? [Archive Collection]
Douglas H. Ginsburg, Kate Stith, William Craig Stubblebine, Lawrence H. Summers
On October 16-17, 1987, the Federalist Society hosted a symposium in celebration of the bicentennial...
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Richard A. Epstein, Eric Groten, Mario Loyola, Joel Mintz
Environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act allow private plaintiffs and environmental advocacy groups...
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2020 Wisconsin Lawyers Chapters Conference
WIPanel I: Methods of Interpreting the Economic Rights Provisions of the Constitution [Archive Collection]
Mark Kelman, Gary Lawson, Henry G. Manne, Roger Pilon, Mario J. Rizzo
On October 16-17, 1987, the Federalist Society hosted a symposium in celebration of the bicentennial...