Associate, Covington & Burling LLP
Eli Nachmany is an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in the Washington, DC, office. He clerked for Judge Steven J. Menashi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Eli graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Prior to law school, Eli served as the speechwriter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and as a domestic policy aide in the White House Office of American Innovation. He graduated summa cum laude from New York University with a B.S. in Sports Management. Eli’s scholarship on administrative law and executive power has appeared in the BYU Law Review, George Mason Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, and Yale Law Journal Forum.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Throughout his 40-year career in private law practice in Washington, D.C., Richard Samp has specialized in appellate litigation with a focus on constitutional law. He served as Chief Counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation for more than 30 years. He has participated directly in more than 200 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Samp is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School and clerked for a federal judge in Detroit.
Associate, Covington & Burling LLP
Eli Nachmany is an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in the Washington, DC, office. He clerked for Judge Steven J. Menashi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Eli graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Prior to law school, Eli served as the speechwriter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and as a domestic policy aide in the White House Office of American Innovation. He graduated summa cum laude from New York University with a B.S. in Sports Management. Eli’s scholarship on administrative law and executive power has appeared in the BYU Law Review, George Mason Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, and Yale Law Journal Forum.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Throughout his 40-year career in private law practice in Washington, D.C., Richard Samp has specialized in appellate litigation with a focus on constitutional law. He served as Chief Counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation for more than 30 years. He has participated directly in more than 200 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Samp is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School and clerked for a federal judge in Detroit.
Sterling Professor of Law, 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.
James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of St. Thomas School of Law
William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
William (Bill) Marshall joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2001 and serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests include the first amendment, presidential power, election law, federal jurisdiction, federal judicial selection, civil procedure, and media law. Marshall is the author of numerous book chapters, articles, and essays on free speech, separation of powers, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Supreme Court Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among others.
Marshall received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Marshall was Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration and also served as the Solicitor General for the State of Ohio. He has taught at the Northwestern, Boston University, Vanderbilt, Ohio State, DePaul, Case Western Reserve, William and Mary, and the University Connecticut law schools. Prior to beginning his teaching career, Marshall was a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Lawrence VanDyke serves as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to that appointment in January 2020, he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice. Before that, he served consecutively as the Solicitor General of two western states – Nevada and Montana. At the beginning of his legal career, he worked as an attorney in the Appellate and Constitutional Issues practice group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.
Judge VanDyke received his law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He has engineering and theology undergraduate degrees and a masters degree in engineering management. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge VanDyke and his wife Cheryl live in Reno, Nevada, and they have three children.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Lori Windham is vice president and senior counsel at Becket, where she has represented clients on cutting-edge religious freedom issues since 2005. She has represented parties before the Supreme Court, arguing Becket’s unanimous victory on behalf of foster families in Fulton v. Philadelphia, as well as working with the Becket team on its Supreme Court victories in Hosanna-Tabor, Hobby Lobby, and Little Sisters of the Poor. She won a victory for the world’s largest religious media network in EWTN v. Azar, staving off millions of dollars in government fines under unlawful the HHS mandate. She has won more than a dozen victories in federal appellate courts, including successful defense of cities and school districts sued for accommodating religion, victories for houses of worship facing discrimination in the land use process, and overturning a multimillion-dollar judgment against a major evangelical ministry. She recently won a first-in-the-nation injunction for an adoption agency threatened with shutdown for its religious beliefs.
Recognized in Washington as an expert on religious freedom issues, Lori has testified in Congressional oversight hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Outside Washington, Lori is sought-after speaker on First Amendment law, including appearances at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Central European University, and many others.
In addition to these venues, Lori also defends her clients in the media, including television appearances on CBS This Morning, Hardball, CNN Tonight, On the Record, America’s Newsroom, Opinion Journal, and many others. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and dozens of other papers. She is also a regular guest on radio, with appearances on shows ranging from Sean Hannity to NPR.
Lori has successfully represented a wide array of clients, including a Santeria priest prohibited from making animal sacrifices, synagogues prohibited from building on their own land, and religious student organizations penalized for their religious speech. One of her most challenging cases involved travel to a remote farming community to ensure that members of the local Amish community were not jailed for using their traditional building methods.
Lori is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Abilene Christian University. She has served on the Board of Visitors of Abilene Christian University and received the ACU Young Alumnus of the Year award for her work at Becket. She sits on the board of Dominion Christian School and the visiting committee of the Fund for American Studies’ Summer Law Fellowship.
Sterling Professor of Law, 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.
James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of St. Thomas School of Law
William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
William (Bill) Marshall joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2001 and serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests include the first amendment, presidential power, election law, federal jurisdiction, federal judicial selection, civil procedure, and media law. Marshall is the author of numerous book chapters, articles, and essays on free speech, separation of powers, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Supreme Court Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among others.
Marshall received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Marshall was Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration and also served as the Solicitor General for the State of Ohio. He has taught at the Northwestern, Boston University, Vanderbilt, Ohio State, DePaul, Case Western Reserve, William and Mary, and the University Connecticut law schools. Prior to beginning his teaching career, Marshall was a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Lawrence VanDyke serves as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to that appointment in January 2020, he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice. Before that, he served consecutively as the Solicitor General of two western states – Nevada and Montana. At the beginning of his legal career, he worked as an attorney in the Appellate and Constitutional Issues practice group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.
Judge VanDyke received his law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He has engineering and theology undergraduate degrees and a masters degree in engineering management. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge VanDyke and his wife Cheryl live in Reno, Nevada, and they have three children.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Lori Windham is vice president and senior counsel at Becket, where she has represented clients on cutting-edge religious freedom issues since 2005. She has represented parties before the Supreme Court, arguing Becket’s unanimous victory on behalf of foster families in Fulton v. Philadelphia, as well as working with the Becket team on its Supreme Court victories in Hosanna-Tabor, Hobby Lobby, and Little Sisters of the Poor. She won a victory for the world’s largest religious media network in EWTN v. Azar, staving off millions of dollars in government fines under unlawful the HHS mandate. She has won more than a dozen victories in federal appellate courts, including successful defense of cities and school districts sued for accommodating religion, victories for houses of worship facing discrimination in the land use process, and overturning a multimillion-dollar judgment against a major evangelical ministry. She recently won a first-in-the-nation injunction for an adoption agency threatened with shutdown for its religious beliefs.
Recognized in Washington as an expert on religious freedom issues, Lori has testified in Congressional oversight hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Outside Washington, Lori is sought-after speaker on First Amendment law, including appearances at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Central European University, and many others.
In addition to these venues, Lori also defends her clients in the media, including television appearances on CBS This Morning, Hardball, CNN Tonight, On the Record, America’s Newsroom, Opinion Journal, and many others. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and dozens of other papers. She is also a regular guest on radio, with appearances on shows ranging from Sean Hannity to NPR.
Lori has successfully represented a wide array of clients, including a Santeria priest prohibited from making animal sacrifices, synagogues prohibited from building on their own land, and religious student organizations penalized for their religious speech. One of her most challenging cases involved travel to a remote farming community to ensure that members of the local Amish community were not jailed for using their traditional building methods.
Lori is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Abilene Christian University. She has served on the Board of Visitors of Abilene Christian University and received the ACU Young Alumnus of the Year award for her work at Becket. She sits on the board of Dominion Christian School and the visiting committee of the Fund for American Studies’ Summer Law Fellowship.
Clinical Professor and Senior Scholar and Senior Fellow for Copyright Research and Policy of C-IP2, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Sandra Aistars is Senior Fellow for Copyright Research and Policy and a Senior Scholar at the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy (C-IP2). She also leads the law school’s Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Program. Professor Aistars has over twenty years of advocacy experience on behalf of copyright and other intellectual property owners. She has served on trade missions and been an industry advisor to the Department of Commerce on intellectual property implications for international trade negotiations; worked on legislative and regulatory matters worldwide; frequently testified before Congress and federal agencies regarding intellectual property matters; chaired cross-industry coalitions and technology standards efforts; and is regularly tapped by government agencies to lecture in U.S. government-sponsored study tours for visiting legislators, judges, prosecutors, and regulators.
Immediately prior to joining Scalia Law, Professor Aistars was the Chief Executive Officer of the Copyright Alliance – a nonprofit, public interest organization that represents the interests of artists and creators across the creative spectrum. While at Scalia Law, she continues to collaborate with the Copyright Alliance as a member of its Academic Advisory Board. Professor Aistars currently serves on the boards of the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA) and the Howard Intellectual Property Program (HIPP), and she has previously served as trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA (CSUSA). Professor Aistars has also previously served as Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Time Warner Inc. She began her legal career in private practice at Weil, Gotshal and Manges LLP.
U.S. Court of Federal Claims and Jurist-In-Residence Professor of Law, The University of Akron School of Law
Judge Ryan T. Holte was sworn in as a judge on the United States Court of Federal Claims in July 2019. Prior to confirmation he served as the David L. Brennan Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Technology at The University of Akron School of Law (2017-2019) and an assistant professor of law at Southern Illinois University School of Law (2013-2017). Judge Holte has written and presented widely on patent law subjects and empirical legal studies of Federal Circuit and district court patent law cases. His most recent articles were published in the Iowa Law Review (2019), George Mason Law Review (2018), and Washington Law Review (2017).
In practice, Judge Holte served for six years as general counsel and partner of an electrical engineering technology company and is co-inventor of multiple patents related to Systems and Methods for Countering Satellite-Navigated Munitions. Prior to entering academia, Judge Holte practiced as a litigation attorney at the Federal Trade Commission and an associate in the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Jones Day. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk to Judge Stanley F. Birch, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and as a law clerk to Judge Loren A. Smith on the United States Court of Federal Claims.
Judge Holte received his JD from the University of California Davis School of Law and his BS, magna cum laude, in engineering from the California Maritime Academy where he was a First Class graduate of the Corps of Cadets Third Engineering Division and sailed as a U.S. Merchant Marine oiler.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law
Lisa Ramsey is a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where she is a founding member of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Markets. She teaches and writes in the intellectual property and international intellectual property law area and is an expert on trademark law. Professor Ramsey is an active member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and has given presentations on trademark law to attorneys, professors, and students throughout the United States and around the world. Before joining the USD law faculty, she was an intellectual property litigator at Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich and served as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Rebecca Beach Smith in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Professor Ramsey’s scholarship focuses on potential conflicts between trademark laws and free speech rights, and explains how trademark protection of inherently valuable words, symbols, and product features can harm fair competition and freedom of expression.
Examples of Professor Ramsey’s publications include Protectable Trademark Subject Matter in Common Law Countries and the Problem with Flexibility in The Cambridge Handbook of International and Comparative Trademark Law (Irene Calboli & Jane Ginsburg eds., Cambridge University Press 2020); Using Failure to Function Doctrine to Protect Free Speech and Competition in Trademark Law in the Iowa Law Review Online (2020); Non-Traditional Trademarks and Inherently Valuable Expression in The Protection of Non-Traditional Trademarks (Irene Calboli & Martin Senftleben eds., Oxford University Press 2018); Free Speech Challenges to Trademark Law After Matal v. Tam in the Houston Law Review (2018); A Free Speech Right to Trademark Protection? in the Trademark Reporter (2016); and Free Speech and International Obligations to Protect Trademarks in the Yale Journal of International Law (2010). Her article Descriptive Trademarks and the First Amendment in the Tennessee Law Review (2003) was judged by the editor of the Intellectual Property Law Review to be one of the best intellectual property law articles of 2003.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development & Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law
Robert Spoo is Chapman Distinguished Professor at The University of Tulsa College of Law, where he teaches copyright law, property, contracts, law and literature, and other subjects. He received his Ph.D. in English from Princeton University and his J.D. from the Yale Law School. After serving as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor when she was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Spoo was an attorney with law firms in New York, San Francisco, and Tulsa.
Formerly, Spoo was, for more than a decade, editor of the James Joyce Quarterly and a tenured member of the English Department at the University of Tulsa. He has published extensively on modern authors, law and literature, copyrights, and the public domain. His recent articles have appeared in the Stanford Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Law & Literature, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, and Journal of Modern Literature. His book Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain (Oxford University Press, 2013)—an exploration of the problems faced by foreign authors during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when they lacked copyright protection in the United States—was enthusiastically reviewed in The Nation, London Times Literary Supplement, Paris Review Daily, American Historical Review, Critical Inquiry, and other venues. Spoo’s earlier books and editions, published with Oxford and Duke University Presses, focused on James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle).
Spoo is coeditor, with Simon Stern, of a Law & Literature series with Oxford University Press.
In 2016, Spoo was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities—one of four legal scholars in the United States and Canada to receive a Guggenheim that year. His book Modernism and the Law, prepared during his Guggenheim year, was published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Academic.
In 2020-2021, Spoo was on leave with a Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) Fellowship from Princeton University, where his project for the LAPA year was “Lawful Piracy and Trade Courtesy in the American Copyright Vacuum.”
Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel, Motion Picture Association
Karyn A. Temple is Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel for the Motion Picture Association. One of the world’s leading authorities on copyright, Ms. Temple oversees all of the Association’s legal affairs and content protection efforts around the world.
Prior to joining the Motion Picture Association, Ms. Temple served more than eight years in the U.S. Copyright Office, most recently as the Register of Copyrights, where she led the 400-person agency and its eight divisions. Prior to leading the U.S. Copyright Office, Ms. Temple headed its Office of Policy and International Affairs, as well as served in policy and litigation roles at the U.S. Department of Justice; she most recently served in the Obama Administration as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.
Ms. Temple received her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and her B.A. in English from the University of Michigan.
Clinical Professor and Senior Scholar and Senior Fellow for Copyright Research and Policy of C-IP2, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Sandra Aistars is Senior Fellow for Copyright Research and Policy and a Senior Scholar at the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy (C-IP2). She also leads the law school’s Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Program. Professor Aistars has over twenty years of advocacy experience on behalf of copyright and other intellectual property owners. She has served on trade missions and been an industry advisor to the Department of Commerce on intellectual property implications for international trade negotiations; worked on legislative and regulatory matters worldwide; frequently testified before Congress and federal agencies regarding intellectual property matters; chaired cross-industry coalitions and technology standards efforts; and is regularly tapped by government agencies to lecture in U.S. government-sponsored study tours for visiting legislators, judges, prosecutors, and regulators.
Immediately prior to joining Scalia Law, Professor Aistars was the Chief Executive Officer of the Copyright Alliance – a nonprofit, public interest organization that represents the interests of artists and creators across the creative spectrum. While at Scalia Law, she continues to collaborate with the Copyright Alliance as a member of its Academic Advisory Board. Professor Aistars currently serves on the boards of the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA) and the Howard Intellectual Property Program (HIPP), and she has previously served as trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA (CSUSA). Professor Aistars has also previously served as Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Time Warner Inc. She began her legal career in private practice at Weil, Gotshal and Manges LLP.
U.S. Court of Federal Claims and Jurist-In-Residence Professor of Law, The University of Akron School of Law
Judge Ryan T. Holte was sworn in as a judge on the United States Court of Federal Claims in July 2019. Prior to confirmation he served as the David L. Brennan Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Technology at The University of Akron School of Law (2017-2019) and an assistant professor of law at Southern Illinois University School of Law (2013-2017). Judge Holte has written and presented widely on patent law subjects and empirical legal studies of Federal Circuit and district court patent law cases. His most recent articles were published in the Iowa Law Review (2019), George Mason Law Review (2018), and Washington Law Review (2017).
In practice, Judge Holte served for six years as general counsel and partner of an electrical engineering technology company and is co-inventor of multiple patents related to Systems and Methods for Countering Satellite-Navigated Munitions. Prior to entering academia, Judge Holte practiced as a litigation attorney at the Federal Trade Commission and an associate in the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Jones Day. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk to Judge Stanley F. Birch, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and as a law clerk to Judge Loren A. Smith on the United States Court of Federal Claims.
Judge Holte received his JD from the University of California Davis School of Law and his BS, magna cum laude, in engineering from the California Maritime Academy where he was a First Class graduate of the Corps of Cadets Third Engineering Division and sailed as a U.S. Merchant Marine oiler.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law
Lisa Ramsey is a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where she is a founding member of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Markets. She teaches and writes in the intellectual property and international intellectual property law area and is an expert on trademark law. Professor Ramsey is an active member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and has given presentations on trademark law to attorneys, professors, and students throughout the United States and around the world. Before joining the USD law faculty, she was an intellectual property litigator at Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich and served as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Rebecca Beach Smith in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Professor Ramsey’s scholarship focuses on potential conflicts between trademark laws and free speech rights, and explains how trademark protection of inherently valuable words, symbols, and product features can harm fair competition and freedom of expression.
Examples of Professor Ramsey’s publications include Protectable Trademark Subject Matter in Common Law Countries and the Problem with Flexibility in The Cambridge Handbook of International and Comparative Trademark Law (Irene Calboli & Jane Ginsburg eds., Cambridge University Press 2020); Using Failure to Function Doctrine to Protect Free Speech and Competition in Trademark Law in the Iowa Law Review Online (2020); Non-Traditional Trademarks and Inherently Valuable Expression in The Protection of Non-Traditional Trademarks (Irene Calboli & Martin Senftleben eds., Oxford University Press 2018); Free Speech Challenges to Trademark Law After Matal v. Tam in the Houston Law Review (2018); A Free Speech Right to Trademark Protection? in the Trademark Reporter (2016); and Free Speech and International Obligations to Protect Trademarks in the Yale Journal of International Law (2010). Her article Descriptive Trademarks and the First Amendment in the Tennessee Law Review (2003) was judged by the editor of the Intellectual Property Law Review to be one of the best intellectual property law articles of 2003.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development & Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law
Robert Spoo is Chapman Distinguished Professor at The University of Tulsa College of Law, where he teaches copyright law, property, contracts, law and literature, and other subjects. He received his Ph.D. in English from Princeton University and his J.D. from the Yale Law School. After serving as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor when she was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Spoo was an attorney with law firms in New York, San Francisco, and Tulsa.
Formerly, Spoo was, for more than a decade, editor of the James Joyce Quarterly and a tenured member of the English Department at the University of Tulsa. He has published extensively on modern authors, law and literature, copyrights, and the public domain. His recent articles have appeared in the Stanford Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Law & Literature, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, and Journal of Modern Literature. His book Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain (Oxford University Press, 2013)—an exploration of the problems faced by foreign authors during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when they lacked copyright protection in the United States—was enthusiastically reviewed in The Nation, London Times Literary Supplement, Paris Review Daily, American Historical Review, Critical Inquiry, and other venues. Spoo’s earlier books and editions, published with Oxford and Duke University Presses, focused on James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle).
Spoo is coeditor, with Simon Stern, of a Law & Literature series with Oxford University Press.
In 2016, Spoo was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities—one of four legal scholars in the United States and Canada to receive a Guggenheim that year. His book Modernism and the Law, prepared during his Guggenheim year, was published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Academic.
In 2020-2021, Spoo was on leave with a Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) Fellowship from Princeton University, where his project for the LAPA year was “Lawful Piracy and Trade Courtesy in the American Copyright Vacuum.”
Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel, Motion Picture Association
Karyn A. Temple is Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel for the Motion Picture Association. One of the world’s leading authorities on copyright, Ms. Temple oversees all of the Association’s legal affairs and content protection efforts around the world.
Prior to joining the Motion Picture Association, Ms. Temple served more than eight years in the U.S. Copyright Office, most recently as the Register of Copyrights, where she led the 400-person agency and its eight divisions. Prior to leading the U.S. Copyright Office, Ms. Temple headed its Office of Policy and International Affairs, as well as served in policy and litigation roles at the U.S. Department of Justice; she most recently served in the Obama Administration as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.
Ms. Temple received her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and her B.A. in English from the University of Michigan.
UC Foundation Assistant Professor, U.T. Chattanooga
Director, Independent Women's Law Center, Independent Women's
Jennifer C. Braceras, a member of the Federalist Society Board of Visitors, is the director of Independent Women’s Law Center and a former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Ms. Braceras is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, where she served as an editor of the Law Review. After law school, she clerked for two federal judges and practiced labor and employment law with the Boston law firm Ropes & Gray.
A long time political columnist and editor, Ms. Braceras's writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Hill, and National Review Online. She co-hosts At the Bar, a bimonthly virtual happy hour discussion about issues at the intersection of law, politics, and culture.
Sho Sato Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, University of California, Berkeley
Dan Farber is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Co-Director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. Professor Farber serves on the editorial board of Foundation Press. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Life Member of the American Law Institute. He is the editor of Issues in Legal Scholarship.
Professor Farber is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees. He graduated, summa cum laude, from the College of Law, where he was the class valedictorian and served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. After graduation from law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Philip W. Tone of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then for Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Farber practiced law with Sidley & Austin, where he primarily worked on energy issues, before joining the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in 1978. He was a member of the University of Minnesota Law School faculty from1981 to 2002, where he was the McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law. He also has been a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School.
Among Professor Farber’s eighteen books are RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON PUBLIC CHOICE AND PUBLIC LAW (Elgar 2010) (with A. O’Connell); JUDGMENT CALLS: POLITICS AND PRINCIPLE IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (Oxford University Press 2008) (with S. Sherry); RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE: THE “SILENT” NINTH AMENDMENT AND THE RIGHTS AMERICANS DON’T KNOW THEY HAVE (Basic Books 2007); and LINCOLN’S CONSTITUTION (University of Chicago Press 2003).
Paul J. Schierl Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Professor Richard W. Garnett teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, criminal law, the First Amendment, and law and religion. He is a leading authority on questions and debates regarding religious freedom and church-state relations, and is the founding director of Notre Dame Law School’s Program on Church, State, and Society.
Garnett clerked for the late Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Rehnquist, and also for the late Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Richard S. Arnold. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1995 and his B.A., summa cum laude, from Duke University in 1990. He joined the faculty in 1999 after practicing law in Washington, D.C. with Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
Joel B. Piassick Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Richard M. Re’s primary research and teaching interests are in criminal procedure, federal courts and constitutional law. He joined Virginia’s faculty in 2020 after serving on the faculty of the UCLA School of Law.
Re’s 2016 article, “Narrowing Supreme Court Precedent From Below” received the annual prize from the AALS Federal Courts Section for the best paper on federal courts by an untenured professor. In 2017, the law school's graduating class selected Re as Professor of the Year. And during the oral argument in Hughes v. United States (2018), the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court discussed Re’s amicus brief criticizing the Marks rule.
Re earned an A.B. in social studies from Harvard University and an M.Phil. in political thought and intellectual history from the University of Cambridge. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School. After law school, Re clerked for Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States. Re also worked as an Honors Program attorney in the Criminal Appellate Section of the U.S. Department of Justice and practiced law at a firm in Washington, D.C.
Re is also a member of PrawfsBlawg and maintains his own blog, Re’s Judicata.
Stearns Weaver Miller Professor, Florida State University College of Law
Mary Ziegler is the Stearns Weaver Miller Professor at Florida State University College of Law. She specializes in the legal history of reproduction, the family, sexuality, and the Constitution. In the spring of 2022, she is visiting at Harvard Law School.
Her most recent book, Abortion and the Law in America: A Legal History, Roe v. Wade to the Present, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020, and received positive reviews in outlets from the Washington Post to the Christian Science Monitor. Her new book, Dollars for Life: The Antiabortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment, will be published by Yale University Press in the summer of 2022. She also has a forthcoming book with Routledge, Reproduction and the Constitution.
Ziegler's first book, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate, was published by Harvard University Press in 2015 and won the 2014 Harvard University Press Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize for best first manuscript published by the press in any discipline. Her second book, Beyond Abortion: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Privacy, was published by Harvard University Press in 2018.
Her law review articles have appeared in leading journals, and she has served as a commentator for or been quoted in leading mass media outlets, including The Atlantic, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, the New Republic, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The New York Times, NPR, PBS, Politico, Time, and The Washington Post. She has chaired committees for major legal history organizations, including the American Society for Legal History, the American Association of Law Schools Legal History Section and the American Bar Association’s Committee on Historic Commemorations. She is currently a member of the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. She has also received recognition for her work in the classroom, including the 2016 Florida State University Teaching Award and the 2015 Transformation Through Teaching Award.
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