Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale Law School
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance, American Enterprise Institute; Executive Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. He also directs the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
He writes on regulation and constitutional government for a variety of publications. He practiced law in Washington, D.C., after clerking for the D.C. Circuit's Judge David Sentelle. He also has been chairman of the ABA's Administrative Law Section.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court.
CEO and Director, National Jewish Advocacy Center
Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq. is the CEO and Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, Inc. He has served as the founding Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series on Law and Judaism, a Trustee of the Center for Israel Education, and, by Presidential appointment, as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council.
Goldfeder has taught law across the country and around the world as Senior Lecturer at Emory University School of Law, Spruill Family Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Director of the Restoring Religious Freedom Project, and as a visiting professor at Georgia State University School of Law, Florida Southern College, University of Padua (Italy), Scuola Galileana (Italy), IDC’s Radzyner Law School (Israel) and Bar Ilan Law School (Israel).
Goldfeder holds two rabbinic ordinations (yoreh yoreh; Yeshiva University and Rivavot Ephraim) and two judicial ordinations (yadin yadin; Rav Gedaliah Dov Schwartz, Av Beth Din, Rabbinical Council of America and Chicago Rabbinical Council, and Rav Dovid Schochet, President, Toronto Rabbinical Council).
Goldfeder’s work focuses on law and religion, constitutional law, and international law. He publishes widely in those areas, including both academically and in popular publications like CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Forbes, and other major media outlets. He is also co-author of the five-volume treatise Religious Organizations and the Law (Westlaw). Goldfeder handles cases involving antisemitism issues around the country, and lectures and writes widely on those topics. He has worked with local, state, and federal legislators on measures to support the Jewish community, and has defended students, professors, businesses, and nonprofits targeted for their support of the Jewish State. He has worked on cases at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and has successfully represented clients including American and Israeli nonprofits in federal litigation.
In 2017, he received the Opher Aviran Stand with Israel Award from Hillel, and in 2018, the Jon Barkan Israel Advocacy Award from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in recognition of his work. He received his Doctorate and LLM degrees from Emory University and his Juris Doctor degree from NYU School of Law. He received his Bachelor of Arts at Yeshiva University in Journalism.
Co-Founder and President, Zachor Legal Institute
Marc Greendorfer, the co-founder of Zachor Legal Institute, is an experienced attorney with an extensive background in legal advocacy and scholarship. Marc graduated magna cum laude from Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1996, where he was an editor of the Cardozo Law Review. Marc started his legal career at the prominent New York City law firm of Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon and has practiced law at AmLaw 100 law firms in New York City and San Francisco.
Marc is active in constitutional law advocacy, writing and publishing a number of law review articles and participating in Supreme Court and lower federal court cases as amicus curiae. Marc is admitted to practice in the states of California, Montana and New York and is admitted to the Supreme Court bar as well as most Courts of Appeal in the United States.
Marc’s advocacy work has been cited and incorporated in the work of many other scholars, rights organizations, courts and state attorneys general. In recent years, Marc has also provided testimony and other expert advice to the United States Congress, state legislative bodies and prominent advocacy organizations on the topics of terror funding and the applicability of federal and state laws to antizionist activity.
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law
Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus is an internationally recognized expert in civil and human rights, as well as a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism on and off university campuses. He is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the leading civil rights legal organization fighting against anti-Semitism. The New York Times has called him “The Man Who Helped Redefine Campus Anti-Semitism.” He been described, in that paper, as “the single most effective and respected force” to combat anti-Semitism.
During his public service career, Marcus served as Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights; Staff Director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and General Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
In academia, he serves as Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University. He formerly held the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the City University of New York’s Bernard M. Baruch College, served as Visiting Research Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University, and was a Board of Visitors member George Mason University and Distinguished Senior Fellow at that university’s law school. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism and previously served as Associate Editor of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism.
Marcus is also author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford University Press) and Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press). He has published widely in academic journals as well as in more popular venues such as The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, USA Today, and Politico. He is a graduate of Williams College and the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
Earlier in his career, he was a litigation partner in two major law firms, where he conducted complex commercial and constitutional litigation. He also serves as Chairman emeritus of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Civil Rights Practice Group.
Special Counsel, Campus Advocacy, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)
One of FIRE’s longest-serving employees, Robert Shibley began at FIRE straight out of Duke Law School in 2003, with the intention of doing nonprofit work for a couple of years before finding a permanent job. This lasted 19 years, including six as FIRE’s executive director. During his time at FIRE, Robert launched FIRE’s first major litigation initiative, traveled to dozens of campuses to speak about the First Amendment and Title IX issues on campus, and oversaw FIRE’s expansion into off-campus issues before a stint representing students and faculty members in private practice at the firm of Allen Harris PLLC.
Having realized things on campus were even worse than he had believed, Robert returned to FIRE as Special Counsel for Campus Advocacy in order to finish the job he started: restoring free speech and due process to America’s college campuses. Robert is the author of Twisting Title IX, from Encounter Books. His writing has appeared everywhere from The Wall Street Journal to The Washington Post, USA Today, and TIME, and he has appeared on national and international broadcasts including the BBC and NPR, The O’Reilly Factor, CNN Tonight, Tucker Carlson Tonight, and (perhaps most famously) Dr. Phil.
Chief Legal Officer, American Jewish Committee
Marc Stern is an expert in legal advocacy on issues of concern to the Jewish community, including the new field of "lawfare"—pursuing war through the use of international legal procedures. He came to AJC after 33 years at the American Jewish Congress, where he was General Counsel since 1999 and acting Co-Executive Director since 2008. Stern has authored numerous legal briefs, published many scholarly articles, and has argued four cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He earned a B.A. at Yeshiva University and a J.D. at the Columbia University School of Law.
Executive Vice President and General Counsel, National Football League
Ted Ullyot serves as Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the National Football League and is the founder of Highway 50 Ventures, LLC, an investment and advisory firm. A lawyer by background, Ullyot was General Counsel of Facebook from 2008 to 2013. He served in the administration of President George W. Bush, including in the White House as an Associate Counsel and as Deputy Staff Secretary, and in the Justice Department as Chief of Staff to Attorney General Gonzales.
Ullyot began his career as a law clerk, first for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He was a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
At other points in his career, Ullyot served as General Counsel of ESL Investments, Inc.; as General Counsel of AOL Time Warner Europe; as a board member at AutoZone Inc.; and as a partner in the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
He is a member of the board of visitors of the Federalist Society; a member of the University of Chicago Law School Council; and a board member of the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society.
Ullyot graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, after doing his undergraduate work at Harvard. He and his family live in Northern California.
Founder & Editor, The Free Press
Bari Weiss is the founder and editor of The Free Press and host of the podcast Honestly. From 2017 to 2020 Weiss was an opinion writer and editor at The New York Times. Before that, she was an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal and a senior editor at Tablet Magazine.
Weiss is the winner of the LA Press Club's 2021 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. She is also the winner of the Reason Foundation’s 2018 Bastiat Prize, which honors writing that “best demonstrates the importance of freedom with originality, wit, and eloquence.” In 2019, Vanity Fair called Weiss the Times's "star opinion writer."
Weiss is a proud Pittsburgh native. Her first book, "How to Fight Anti-Semitism," was the winner of a 2019 National Jewish Book Award. She lives with her wife and daughter in Los Angeles.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Joseph Tartakovsky, Author of The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America's Supreme Law.
Joseph Tartakovsky is author of The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America’s Supreme Law (2018) and the former Deputy Solicitor General of Nevada. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.
Talks with Authors: Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840–1920
Akhil Reed Amar, Adam White
In Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840–1920, Prof. Akhil Reed Amar traces the arc of...
New Tools in Civil Rights Cases
Mark Goldfeder, Marc Greendorfer, Kenneth L. Marcus, Robert Shibley, Marc Stern
In recent months, a number of new legal theories and tools have been proposed –...
Topics
22nd Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture by Bari Weiss
On November 10, 2023, Bari Weiss, Founder and Editor of The Free Press, delivered the...
22nd Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture
Theodore W. Ullyot, Bari Weiss
(Ticketed event) On September 11, 2001, at the age of 45 and at the height...
The Lives of the Constitution
Ilya Shapiro, Joseph Tartakovsky
The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America’s Supreme Law is a...