Senior Fellow, Independent Institute
Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute. He has taught legal and political philosophy at George Mason University, Howard University, and Tuskegee Institute, and he received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and Ph.D. in social philosophy from Florida State University.
The winner of three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court (Printz v. United States, United States v. Thompson/Center Arms Company, and Castillo v. United States), he has testified before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Subcommittee on Crime of the House Judiciary Committee, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and House Committee on the District of Columbia.
A contributor to numerous scholarly volumes, he is the author of the books, Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance; Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State”; The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms; That Every Man Be Armed: Evolution of a Constitutional Right; A Right to Bear Arms; Firearms Law Deskbook: Federal and State Criminal Practice; Securing Civil Rights: Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms; State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees; and Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II. Dr. Halbrook’s scholarly articles have appeared in such journals as the Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, Drug Law Report, George Mason University Law Review, Journal of Air Law and Commerce, Journal of Law and Policy, Law & Contemporary Problems, National Law Journal, Northern Kentucky Law Review, St. John’s Journal of Legal Commentary; Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal, Tennessee Law Review, University of Dayton Law Review, Valparaiso University Law Review, Vermont Law Review, and William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal.
Dr. Halbrook's popular articles have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, National Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Kansas City Star, Washington Examiner, Shreveport Times, Sacramento Bee, Providence Journal, Tampa Tribune, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, History News Network, San Antonio Express-News, The Daily Caller, Detroit News, Honolulu Star Advertiser, Birmingham News, Environmental Forum, USA Today, and Washington Times. He has also appeared on numerous national TV/radio programs on CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Court TV, NewsMax TV, CBN, Voice of America, and C-SPAN.
Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Professor Derek Muller is a nationally-recognized scholar in the field of election law. His research focuses on the role of states in the administration of federal elections, the constitutional contours of voting rights and election administration, the limits of judicial power in the domain of elections, and the Electoral College.
He has published more than two dozen academic works, and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has testified before Congress, and he is a contributor at the Election Law Blog. He is a co-author on a Federal Courts casebook published by Carolina Academic Press. He is also the co-reporter on a new Restatement of the Law, Election Litigation, an effort led by the American Law Institute.
Professor Muller teaches Election Law, Civil Procedure, and Evidence.
President, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies
Lawrence J. Spiwak is President of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that studies broad public-policy issues related to governance, social and economic conditions, with a particular emphasis on the law and economics of the digital age. Mr. Spiwak is a prolific scholar whose work is frequently cited by policymakers, major news media and academic journals around the world, and is in the top 1.3%of authors downloaded on the Social Science Research Network. Mr. Spiwak currently serves as the co-chair of the Federal Communications Bar Association’s (FCBA) committee responsible for overseeing the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL and is a member of the program committee of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (“TPRC”). Mr. Spiwak is also the recipient of the FCBA’s Distinguished Service Award. Prior to joining the Phoenix Center, Mr. Spiwak was a Senior Attorney with the Competition Division in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel from 1994-1998. While in college, Mr. Spiwak was accepted into the Presidential Stay-In School program where he was responsible for delivering classified and confidential material among senior White House and Reagan Administration officials and received a full FBI security clearance. Mr. Spiwak received his B.A. with Special Honors from the George Washington University and his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Mr. Spiwak is a member in good standing of the bars of New York, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Robin Fretwell Wilson is the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
A scholar in family law, bioethics and law and religion, Professor Wilson has worked extensively on behalf of state and federal law reform efforts in each realm.
Across two decades, she has worked to secure laws protecting the autonomy of patients to decide when they will be used to teach intimate exams to medical students, laws now in place in 22 states—sixteen of which have been enacted since 2019.
Professor Wilson is known for bridging differences in the culture war. In 2015, she spent a month in residence with the Utah legislature, helping Utah state lawmakers to pass anti-discrimination legislation that balances religious liberty and LGBT rights. In 2019, Professor Wilson assisted the governor of Utah to craft regulations banning gay conversion therapy. In 2019, she also aided U.S. Representative Chris Stewart with portions of the “Fairness for All” he introduced in Congress. A member of the American Law Institute and a Fulbright Specialist, Professor Wilson has served as a consultant to the United Arab Emirates’ Judicial Department as they sought to create a parallel court system for the adjudication by expatriates of family law matters using the laws of their home country or of their faith traditions.
Professor Wilson is the author of 20 books, including her 2018 book, Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground, with Yale University Professor William Eskridge, Jr., which is now in paperback at Cambridge University Press. Her other books include: The Contested Place of Religion in Family Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018, ed.), Reconceiving the Family: Critical Reflections on the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (Cambridge University Press, 2006, ed.); The Handbook of Children, Culture & Violence (Sage Publications, 2006, with Nancy Dowd and Dorothy Singer, eds.); Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, with Douglas Laycock and Anthony Picarello, eds.); Health Law and Bioethics: Cases in Context (Aspen, 2008, with Joan Krause, Sandra Johnson, and Richard Saver, eds.); Domestic Relations: Cases and Materials, 8th edition (Foundation Press, 2017, with Walter Wadlington and Raymond C. O’Brien); and Understanding Family Law, 4th edition (LexisNexis, 2013, with John DeWitt Gregory and Peter N. Swisher). Her articles have appeared in the Boston College Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Illinois Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, San Diego Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, and Washington and Lee Law Review, as well as in numerous peer-reviewed journals.
In 2010 and again in 2016, Professor Wilson was ranked among the Top Ten Family Law Scholars in the United States for scholarly impact. She ranks among the Top 10% of Authors in all time downloads on the Social Science Research Network. Professor Wilson’s scholarship has been cited by the Fifth, Seventh and Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Minnesota Court of Appeals, lower federal courts, and the Supreme Courts of Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, and Washington.
Professor Wilson’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News and World Report, ABA Journal, Chronicle of Higher Education, Chicago Tribune, CNN Headline News, Good Morning America, ABC News, CBS News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Essence Magazine, The American Prospect, People Magazine, The American Conservative, The Australian, and Al Jazeera, among others. She has presented her research across the world, including the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, China, Israel, Qatar, the Netherlands, Italy, England, Wales, Poland, Spain, Serbia, Japan, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, and France.
Professor Wilson has seven times been honored for her work on innovative laws that respect all persons. In 2007, she received the Citizen’s Legislative Award for her work on changing Virginia’s informed consent law. In 2018, Professor Wilson received the Thomas L. Kane Religious Freedom Award from the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, which is presented annually to an individual who exemplifies the spirit of religious liberty for all and who has contributed in significant ways to the defense of religious freedom in the public square.
In 2018, Professor Wilson was honored as one of the 150 for 150: Celebrating the Accomplishments of Women at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for its sesquicentennial celebration. In 2020, Professor Wilson received the 2020 Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for Advocacy for LGBTQ Affairs, a university-wide honor given by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor James W. Coleman is a scholar of energy law. He specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focused on energy policy.
Professor Coleman has testified before Congress on steps to speed up energy infrastructure permits. He also worked with a team of experts as part of Alberta's Royalty Review to revise the Canadian province's management of its vast oil and gas resources.
Before joining Minnesota, Professor Coleman taught at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, the University of Calgary’s law and business schools, and Harvard Law School. Earlier, he practiced environmental and appellate law at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Professor Coleman received two degrees from Harvard University—a J.D. (cum laude) and B.A. in biology (magna cum laude with highest honors in the field). As a result of his undergraduate thesis on butterfly genetics, which required fieldwork in Central Asia, a species of lycaenid butterfly was named after him—Agrodiaetus ripartii colemani.
Associate Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School
Sharmila L. Murthy is an Associate Professor at Suffolk University Law School, where she teaches and writes on issues of property law, environmental law, international environmental law, poverty, and human rights. A list of her scholarly publications is available.
Professor Murthy is active with the American Association of Law Schools. She currently serves as Chair of the International Human Rights Section, as Chair-Elect of the Environmental Law Section, and on the Executive Board of the Law and South Asia Studies Section. In 2017, she received the Woman of the Year: Faculty Division from the Suffolk Law Women of Color Law Student Association.
Previously, Professor Murthy was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she served as the lead investigator for water for the Project on Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development through the Sustainability Science Program. She also co-founded the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Program as a Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. In addition, Professor Murthy has taught as part of the Water Diplomacy Workshop since 2013. In 2014, Professor Murthy was selected as a finalist for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.
Professor Murthy began her legal career as a public interest poverty lawyer. She was awarded a Skadden Fellowship to work with the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, where she created the Refugee and Immigrant Partnership Program for Legal Empowerment and litigated predatory lending and foreclosure rescue scam cases. For these efforts, she received the New Advocate of the Year award from the Tennessee Alliance of Legal Services. Professor Murthy also litigated complex and class action cases as an associate with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, where she represented members of the public in mortgage fraud and natural resource cases.
Professor Murthy received her JD from Harvard Law School, her MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and her BS in Natural Resources from Cornell University. She clerked for the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was also a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in India, where she studied the rural microfinance program of the Self-Employed Women’s Association.
Professor Murthy also volunteers with several civic and legal organizations. She currently serves on the Massachusetts State Board of the Conservation Law Foundation, on the Scientific Committee of WaterLex, and on the Steering Committee of the Boston Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society (ACS). Previously, she was the President of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and the founding President of the Nashville ACS Chapter.
Executive Director, Alliance For Consumers
O.H. leads Alliance For Consumers, which fights to ensure that consumer protection efforts, class action lawsuits, and attorney general enforcement actions are consistent with the rule of law and benefit everyday consumers, not just class action lawyers and career bureaucrats.
His work with AFC builds off his time with the Arizona Attorney General's Office under Attorney General Mark Brnovich, where he not only defended constitutional questions and served as the State's lead counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court, but also had the privilege of leading Arizona's consumer protection lawsuit against Google over the tracking of consumers' location, and the successful case against Volkswagen over well-publicized diesel-related consumer deception.
O.H. is a 2010 graduate of Harvard Law School. Before joining Attorney General Brnovich in 2016, O.H. practiced at WilmerHale and Ropes & Gray in Boston and clerked for the Hon. J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia.
Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor James W. Coleman is a scholar of energy law. He specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focused on energy policy.
Professor Coleman has testified before Congress on steps to speed up energy infrastructure permits. He also worked with a team of experts as part of Alberta's Royalty Review to revise the Canadian province's management of its vast oil and gas resources.
Before joining Minnesota, Professor Coleman taught at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, the University of Calgary’s law and business schools, and Harvard Law School. Earlier, he practiced environmental and appellate law at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Professor Coleman received two degrees from Harvard University—a J.D. (cum laude) and B.A. in biology (magna cum laude with highest honors in the field). As a result of his undergraduate thesis on butterfly genetics, which required fieldwork in Central Asia, a species of lycaenid butterfly was named after him—Agrodiaetus ripartii colemani.
Associate Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School
Sharmila L. Murthy is an Associate Professor at Suffolk University Law School, where she teaches and writes on issues of property law, environmental law, international environmental law, poverty, and human rights. A list of her scholarly publications is available.
Professor Murthy is active with the American Association of Law Schools. She currently serves as Chair of the International Human Rights Section, as Chair-Elect of the Environmental Law Section, and on the Executive Board of the Law and South Asia Studies Section. In 2017, she received the Woman of the Year: Faculty Division from the Suffolk Law Women of Color Law Student Association.
Previously, Professor Murthy was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she served as the lead investigator for water for the Project on Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development through the Sustainability Science Program. She also co-founded the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Program as a Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. In addition, Professor Murthy has taught as part of the Water Diplomacy Workshop since 2013. In 2014, Professor Murthy was selected as a finalist for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.
Professor Murthy began her legal career as a public interest poverty lawyer. She was awarded a Skadden Fellowship to work with the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, where she created the Refugee and Immigrant Partnership Program for Legal Empowerment and litigated predatory lending and foreclosure rescue scam cases. For these efforts, she received the New Advocate of the Year award from the Tennessee Alliance of Legal Services. Professor Murthy also litigated complex and class action cases as an associate with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, where she represented members of the public in mortgage fraud and natural resource cases.
Professor Murthy received her JD from Harvard Law School, her MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and her BS in Natural Resources from Cornell University. She clerked for the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was also a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in India, where she studied the rural microfinance program of the Self-Employed Women’s Association.
Professor Murthy also volunteers with several civic and legal organizations. She currently serves on the Massachusetts State Board of the Conservation Law Foundation, on the Scientific Committee of WaterLex, and on the Steering Committee of the Boston Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society (ACS). Previously, she was the President of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and the founding President of the Nashville ACS Chapter.
Former Attorney General, State of Arizona
Mark Brnovich served as Arizona's 26th Attorney General from 2015 to 2023. He was first inaugurated in 2015, and again in 2019 after winning re-election. Mark has spent most of his professional life serving as a prosecutor at the local, state, and federal levels. Mark met his wife Susan while they both worked as prosecutors for the Maricopa County Attorney's office. Mark worked in the Gang/Repeat Offender Unit and prosecuted many difficult and high profile cases from 1992 to 1998. He then went on to work as an Assistant Attorney General with the Arizona Attorney General's Office from 1998 to 2003, where he developed an expertise in gambling law. Brnovich later went on to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Arizona where he prosecuted public integrity crimes, as well as crimes occurring in Indian Country.
Brnovich has also been a Judge Pro Tem of Maricopa County Superior Court, a Command Staff Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army National Guard, the Director for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, and the Director of the Arizona Department of Gaming, a law enforcement agency that investigates illegal gambling activity, as well as working with tribal regulators to ensure the integrity of tribal gaming.
Brnovich is known for restoring public confidence in the office of "Arizona's Top Cop" and for assembling some of the nation's most talented public servants for his administration. Mark argued at the United States Supreme Court in defense of the "one-person, one-vote" principle, was featured on 60 Minutes in defense of capital punishment, and has initiated national public education efforts to combat human sex trafficking.
Brnovich has been recognized by the National Federation of Independent Business as a "Champion of Small Business." and was elected by his bi-partisan colleagues to serve as the Chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General.
Mark's wife Susan was recently appointed by the United States Senate to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Arizona. He has two teenage daughters and lives in Phoenix.
Executive Director, Alliance For Consumers
O.H. leads Alliance For Consumers, which fights to ensure that consumer protection efforts, class action lawsuits, and attorney general enforcement actions are consistent with the rule of law and benefit everyday consumers, not just class action lawyers and career bureaucrats.
His work with AFC builds off his time with the Arizona Attorney General's Office under Attorney General Mark Brnovich, where he not only defended constitutional questions and served as the State's lead counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court, but also had the privilege of leading Arizona's consumer protection lawsuit against Google over the tracking of consumers' location, and the successful case against Volkswagen over well-publicized diesel-related consumer deception.
O.H. is a 2010 graduate of Harvard Law School. Before joining Attorney General Brnovich in 2016, O.H. practiced at WilmerHale and Ropes & Gray in Boston and clerked for the Hon. J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia.
To Bear Arms for Self-Defense: A “Right of the People” or a Privilege of the Few? Part 2
Stephen P. Halbrook
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
Topics
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Derek T. Muller
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Lawrence J. Spiwak
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Robin Fretwell Wilson
Prof. Robin Fretwell Wilson speaks for this video in her personal capacity. Her views do...
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James W. Coleman, Sharmila L. Murthy
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Oramel H. Skinner
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