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.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
General Counsel and Vice-President of Litigation, Washington Legal Foundation
Cory Andrews is General Counsel and Vice-President of Litigation for the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF). As counsel of record for WLF and other clients, he has authored more than 100 briefs, at petition and merits stages, in the U.S. Supreme Court. He also frequently litigates in state and federal appellate courts. Before joining WLF, Cory practiced trial and appellate law for White & Case LLP, where he litigated in state and federal courts on behalf of clients in the telecommunications, hospitality, and banking industries. He received his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Florida, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Florida Law Review and elected to the Order of the Coif. Upon graduation, Cory served as a law clerk to the Honorable Steven D. Merryday of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Director of Law & Policy, Environmental Integrity Project
Following Princeton and the University of Chicago Law School, David began practicing law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Eventually tiring of litigation where the result was a wire transfer from Entity A to Entity B, in the early 1990’s David began his environmental law career at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Since then, he has litigated dozens of cases under all of the major environmental statutes including, as Sierra Club’s Chief Climate Counsel, initiating and managing Massachusetts v. EPA. Most recently, he has been busy challenging FERC’s permitting of natural gas pipelines and LNG export terminals. Apart from litigation, David has helped lead efforts on both greenhouse gas regulation and global warming legislation (and may be the only person ever invited to testify by both Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe).
He has drafted a range of federal climate legislation, advised states as to their greenhouse gas regulatory authority (and for many years has represented environmental groups defending state GHG regulations from dormant Commerce Clause challenges). David has designed and taught courses on “Environmental Litigation” at Georgetown University Law Center and “Environmental Law and Science” at the William and Mary Law School/Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
John K. Bush is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
His chambers are in Louisville, Kentucky. Prior to joining the court, Judge Bush was a partner in the
Louisville office of the firm Bingham Greenebaum Doll (now Dentons Bingham Greenebaum),
where he also was co-chair of the firm’s litigation department. He began his legal practice in the
Washington, D.C. office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.
Judge Bush served as a law clerk for Judge J. Smith Henley of the United States Court of
Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He was graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University,
and cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is an adjunct lecturer at The George Washington
University Law School and the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.
United States Attorney, Eastern District of California
Mr. Grant was appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi to serve as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California beginning on August 11, 2025. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), he was further appointed by the district court effective December 9, 2025.
Mr. Grant is a veteran of the Department of Justice, having served twice in Washington, D.C.: from 1991 to 1993 as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel, and from 2017 to 2021 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). During his tenure at ENRD, he supervised more than a hundred Department litigators advancing the interests of the United States and its agencies in both enforcement and defensive matters, both civil and criminal.
In addition to his service in the Department, Mr. Grant has decades of experience in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. That experience includes arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous other federal and state courts.
Mr. Grant served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (retired) and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during the Supreme Court’s October 1994 Term. Earlier he served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Mr. Grant grew up in Modesto, California and raised his family in Sacramento County. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics (1986) and a law degree (1990).
Emeritus Dean and Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School
Professor Huffman joined the law school faculty in 1973, was appointed Acting Dean in 1993 and Dean in 1994, and returned to full time teaching in 2006. Born in Fort Benton, Montana, Jim graduated from Montana State University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the University of Chicago Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, the University of Oregon, the University of Athens in Greece and Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala. He was also a fellow at the Humane Studies Institute and a Distinguished Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation. Jim serves on the boards of the National Crime Victims Law Institute, the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Classroom Law Project, and the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. He is a member and former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Environment and Property Rights Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is a member of the Montana Bar Association and is admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. He is the author of more than 100 articles and chapters on a wide array of legal topics.
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is a visiting member of the Senior Common Room, New College, Oxford University and a Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford University. Mark is also a Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law. He hosts the Four Boxes Diner YouTube Channel (youtube.com/TheFourBoxesDiner), which addresses Second Amendment scholarship, cases, history and related issues, and whose videos have received almost 90 million views. Mark's scholarship has been cited by federal courts and by parties before the United States Supreme Court in Viramontes v. Cook County, New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen and in United States v. Rahimi. He is a graduate of the NYU School of Law. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author who appears frequently in the national media including on the Fox News Channel.
Associate, Wiley Rein LLP
Joel S. Nolette is an associate at Wiley Rein LLP, where he advocates on behalf of corporate and individual clients in a broad spectrum of complex litigation matters. In 2017, Joel graduated cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as the Editor in Chief of Volume 15 of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. From 2019 to 2021, Joel clerked for the Honorable Raymond W. Gruender of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; and from 2021 to 2022, he clerked for the Honorable Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Before attending law school, Joel graduated summa cum laude from Gordon College in Wenham, MA, with his Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies and worked as a letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service.
Professorial Lecturer in Law, George Washington University Law School
Theodore C. (Ted) Hirt was an attorney in the Department of Justice's Civil Division from August 1979 to March 2016. He was in its Federal Programs Branch from 1979 to 2008 (trial attorney, senior trial counsel, assistant director), and then in its Office of Immigration Litigation from 2008 to 2016 (trial attorney and senior litigation counsel). Among his responsibilities (September 2001 to March 2016) was being an advisor to the Assistant Attorneys General for the Civil Division, who serve ex officio on the Civil Rules Advisory Committee. Mr. Hirt’s areas of specialization include First Amendment issues, internet and telecommunications law, and electronic discovery. From 1976 to 1979, he was an associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Kampelman. From 1975 to 1976 he was an attorney in the Prehearing Division of the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Austin E. Owen Research Scholar & Professor of Law, The University of Richmond School of Law
Dean Kristen Jakobsen Osenga teaches and writes in the areas of patent law, antitrust, and legislation and regulation. Some of her recent scholarship focuses on standard development organizations, patent eligible subject matter, patent licensing firms, litigation and remedies for patent infringement, and patent law reform. She has written numerous law review articles on these and other topics, as well as book chapters and op eds on various aspects of patent law. Additionally, she has spoken on these issues at many academic conferences and bar events. Dean Osenga is Chief Policy Counselor for the Inventors Defense Alliance, as well as an active member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
Dean Osenga received a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, and a J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she graduated magna cum laude. After law school, she practiced at the law firm of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, & Dunner LLP, (now Finnegan) where she did patent prosecution and litigation. She then clerked for the Judge Richard Linn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. After clerking, she entered academia, teaching first at Chicago-Kent College of Law and then at the University of Richmond, where she has been since 2006. She has also been a Visiting Professor at Emory University School of Law and at William & Mary School of Law.
General Counsel and Vice-President of Litigation, Washington Legal Foundation
Cory Andrews is General Counsel and Vice-President of Litigation for the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF). As counsel of record for WLF and other clients, he has authored more than 100 briefs, at petition and merits stages, in the U.S. Supreme Court. He also frequently litigates in state and federal appellate courts. Before joining WLF, Cory practiced trial and appellate law for White & Case LLP, where he litigated in state and federal courts on behalf of clients in the telecommunications, hospitality, and banking industries. He received his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Florida, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Florida Law Review and elected to the Order of the Coif. Upon graduation, Cory served as a law clerk to the Honorable Steven D. Merryday of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument: Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Byrd
Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group and Regulatory Transparency Project Teleforum
TeleforumLessons in Reading Law: Rimini Street v. Oracle’s Duel Over “Full Costs”
Joel S. Nolette
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
Can and Should the Federal Judiciary Rein In Our Expansive Administrative State?
Ted Hirt
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
What Happened to the Public’s Interest in Patent Law?
Kristen Osenga
Note from the Editor: This article discusses the role of the concept of the public...
Topics
The Constitutional Court of Ukraine Visits the Federalist Society
On November 13 and 14, the Federalist Society hosted 16 judges of Constitutional and Supreme...
Topics
Originally Speaking: Climate Change and Common Law Public Nuisance
Originally Speaking is a written debate series that approaches a contemporary topic from diverse perspectives. The...
Topics
Supreme Court Grants Cert Petition Challenging Required Judicial Deference
In December, 2013, PDR sent a fax to Carlton & Harris Chiropractic offering a free...
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument: Apple, Inc. v. Pepper
Cory L. Andrews
On Monday, November 26, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Apple, Inc. v. Pepper. At issue is...
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument: Apple, Inc. v. Pepper
Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Practice Group
TeleforumClimate Change Nuisance Suits
2018 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC