Litigation Director, Center for Individual Rights
Caleb Kruckenberg is CIR’s Litigation Director.
Caleb previously worked as a prosecutor, a public defender, a lobbyist for a national advocacy organization and, most recently, an impact litigator protecting the separation of powers at both the Pacific Legal Foundation and the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He has won major victories against numerous federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is also proud to have sued every U.S. attorney general, eight so far, since he has been litigating against the government on behalf of liberty-minded clients. Caleb has also argued more than 20 times in the U.S. Courts of Appeals, winning cases in 8 of the 12 regional circuit courts.
He graduated cum laude from Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia, where he was the lead articles editor for the Temple Law Review. Caleb also attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied figurative painting.
Member, Swansburg & Smith, PLLC
J. Brooken Smith is a founding member of Swansburg & Smith, PLLC. Licensed to practice in Kentucky, his practice focuses on representing businesses and employers in litigation and employment matters. Mr. Smith previously practiced with a large regional law firm for more than five years, representing businesses in a variety of legal disputes and defending employers in discrimination and other claims. Mr. Smith practices in state and federal courts throughout Kentucky.
Throughout his career, Mr. Smith has gained extensive experience in public service at the state and federal level. Before entering the private practice of law, Mr. Smith served as a law clerk for the Honorable Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He served as the chief of staff for the Kentucky Labor Cabinet and, later, the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet. Mr. Smith also served as the ex officio chair of the Unemployment Insurance Commission, a three-member executive branch agency that hears administrative appeals of unemployment insurance claims.
Mr. Smith graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law and earned a bachelor of arts in government from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
University Professor, Founding Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law, Faculty Director of O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law, Georgetown University, Director, World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights
Lawrence O. Gostin is University Professor, Georgetown University’s highest academic rank conferred by the University President. Prof. Gostin directs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and is the Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law. He served as Associate Dean for Research at Georgetown Law from 2004 to 2008. He is Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University and Professor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University.
Prof. Gostin is the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. The WHO Director-General has appointed Prof. Gostin to high-level positions, including the International Health Regulations (IHR) Roster of Experts and the Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health. He served on the Director-General’s Advisory Committee on Reforming the World Health Organization, as well as numerous WHO expert advisory committees, including on the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework, smallpox, genomic sequencing data, migrant health, and NCD prevention. He served on the WHO/Global Fund Blue Ribbon Expert Panel: The Equitable Access Initiative to develop a global health equity framework. He co-chairs the Lancet Commission on Global Health Law.
Professor Gostin served on two global commissions to report on the lessons learned from the 2015 West Africa Ebola epidemic. He was also senior advisor to the United Nations Secretary General’s post-Ebola Commission. He also served on the drafting team for the G-7 Summit in Tokyo 2016, focusing on global health security and Universal Health Coverage.
Prof. Gostin holds multiple international academic professorial appointments, including at Oxford University, the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), and Melbourne University. Prof. Gostin served on the Governing Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.
Prof. Gostin holds editorial appointments in leading academic journals throughout the world. He is the Legal and Global Health Correspondent for the Journal of the American Medical Association. He is also Founding Editor-in-Chief of Laws (an international open access law journal). He was formally the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
Prof. Gostin holds four honorary degrees. In 1994, the Chancellor of the State University of New York conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree. In 2006, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Vice Chancellor awarded Cardiff University’s (Wales) highest honor, an Honorary Fellow. In 2007, the Royal Institute of Public Health (United Kingdom) appointed Prof. Gostin as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health (FRSPH). In 2012, the Chancellor of the University of Sydney – on the nomination of the Deans of the Law and Medical Schools – conferred a Doctor of Laws (honoris causa), presided by two Justices of Australia’s highest court—Justices Kirby and Haydon.
Prof. Gostin is an elected lifetime Member of the National Academy of Medicine/ National Academy of Sciences. He has served on the National Academy’s Board on Health Sciences Policy, the Board on Population Health, the Human Subjects Review Board, and the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law. He currently serves on the National Academies of Sciences Engineering, and Medicine, Board on Global Health. Gostin chaired the National Academy’s Committee on Global Solutions to Falsified, Substandard, and Counterfeit Medicines. He has chaired National Academy Committees on national preparedness for mass disasters, health informational privacy, public health genomics, and human subject research on prisoners.
Prof. Gostin is also a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Fellow of the Hastings Center. In 2016, President Obama appointed Prof. Gostin to a six-year term on the President’s National Cancer Advisory Board to advise the nation on cancer prevention, research, and policy. He also serves on the National Institutes of Health Director’s Advisory Committee on the ethics of public/private partnerships to end the opioid crisis.
Prof. Gostin has led major law reform initiatives in the U.S., including drafting the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) to combat bioterrorism (following the post-9/11 anthrax attacks) and the “Turning Point” Model State Public Health Act. He also spearheaded the World Health Organization and International Development Law Organization’s major report, Advancing the Right to Health: The Vital Role of Law.
Prof. Gostin’s proposal for a Framework Convention on Global Health – an international treaty ensuring the right to health – is now part of a global campaign, endorsed by the UN Secretary-General and Director of UNAIDS.
In the United Kingdom, Lawrence Gostin was the Legal Director of the National Association for Mental Health, Director of the National Council of Civil Liberties (the UK equivalent of the ACLU), and a Fellow at Oxford University. He helped draft the Mental Health Act (England and Wales) and brought landmark cases before the European Court of Human Rights.
Prof. Gostin’s books include: Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, 3rd ed., 2016); Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (University of California Press, 3rd ed., 2018); Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2018); Law and the Health System (Foundation Press, 2014); Principles of Mental Health Law & Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Gostin’s classic text, Global Health Law (Harvard University Press, 2014) is read throughout the world—translated and published in both simplified and traditional Chinese, and in Spanish. Paul Farmer, Partners in Health, says of his book: Global Health Law is “more than the definitive book on a dynamic field. Gostin harnesses the power of international law and human rights as tools to close unconscionable health inequities — the injustices that burden marginalized populations throughout the world. Gostin presents a forceful vision, one that deserves a wide embrace.”
In a 2012 systematic empirical analysis of legal scholarship, independent researchers ranked Prof. Gostin 1st in the nation in productivity among all law professors, and 11th in in impact and influence. A 2017 and 2018 systematic empirical analysis ranked Prof. Gostin 1st in the nation for citations in health law.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Luke A. Wake is an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. Prior to joining PLF, he was a senior staff attorney at the NFIB Small Business Legal Center.
Wake has particular expertise on environmental and land use issues, and has worked on numerous other constitutional issues and matters of importance to small business owners. He is an ardent defender of private property rights, which he believes are essential to the free enterprise system and the foundation of American liberty. As a strong advocate of individual rights and economic liberties, he has built his career defending small business interests.
Wake has focused on a whole host of issues, from employment law matters to regulatory compliance. In addition to serving as a resource for small business owners, Wake is committed to ensuring that the voice of small business is heard in the nation’s courts. As an appellate practitioner, Wake has focused particularly on informing the courts on matters of administrative law and on issues under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. He is also working to advance small business interests in law review articles, and was recently published in the Berkeley Journal of Law & Ecology. See R.S. Radford & Luke A. Wake, Deciphering and Extrapolating: Searching for Sense in Penn Central, 38 Ecology L.Q. 731, 746-747 (2011).
Before joining the Legal Center’s team, Wake completed a prestigious two-year fellowship as an attorney in the Pacific Legal Foundation’s College of Public Interest Law. Wake is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland Ohio, and is a member of the California Bar. He completed his undergraduate studies at Elon University in North Carolina in 2006 where he focused on political theory and corporate communications.
Executive Director, Southeastern Legal Foundation
Kimberly Hermann serves as Executive Director for Southeastern Legal Foundation.
Kim has worked with Southeastern Legal Foundation since 2009. Her belief in liberty and desire to serve started at a young age – instilled by her parents’ dedication to hard work, family values, and love for America.
After earning her undergraduate degree in Analytical Finance and graduate degree in Accounting from Wake Forest University, Kim worked as a licensed CPA with an international accounting firm. But her strong belief in individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government led her to pursue a career in law. While in law school at Georgia State University College of Law, Kim served as a law clerk at SLF. After graduating, Kim worked at a private law firm in Atlanta where she specialized in financial and business litigation but continued to serve SLF in a pro bono capacity. In 2013, Kim returned to SLF full-time and is proud to dedicate her career to the freedom-based law movement.
Kim advances liberty through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts on issues ranging from government overreach, free speech, property rights, and economic liberty. In addition to representing clients, Kim testifies before state legislatures, drafts model legislation, and regularly publishes legal articles. Through SLF’s legal initiatives, she informs Americans about their constitutional rights, equipping them with the tools they need to stand up to government overreach. Her work and that of Southeastern Legal Foundation is regularly covered by national media and you will frequently hear or see her on radio, podcasts, and television.
Kim is an active member of the Federalist Society where she serves as an expert on the Federalist Society’s Civil Rights Executive Committee. She is also an active member of her community and when she isn’t fighting for liberty, you can find her at her children’s school or on the sports fields cheering them on. She lives in the Atlanta area with her husband and two children.
Litigation Director, Center for Individual Rights
Caleb Kruckenberg is CIR’s Litigation Director.
Caleb previously worked as a prosecutor, a public defender, a lobbyist for a national advocacy organization and, most recently, an impact litigator protecting the separation of powers at both the Pacific Legal Foundation and the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He has won major victories against numerous federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is also proud to have sued every U.S. attorney general, eight so far, since he has been litigating against the government on behalf of liberty-minded clients. Caleb has also argued more than 20 times in the U.S. Courts of Appeals, winning cases in 8 of the 12 regional circuit courts.
He graduated cum laude from Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia, where he was the lead articles editor for the Temple Law Review. Caleb also attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied figurative painting.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
President, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Religious Liberty, Catholic University; Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
Mark joined the Becket team in 2011 and splits his time as Associate Professor at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, and as Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Mark teaches constitutional law, religious liberty, torts, and evidence. He has been voted Teacher of the Year three years in a row by the Law School’s Student Bar Association.
Mark has broad experience litigating First Amendment religious exercise and free speech cases. He has represented the winning parties in a variety of Supreme Court First Amendment cases including Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters, Wheaton College, and Holt. In January 2014, Mark argued before the Supreme Court in McCullen v. Coakley, a First Amendment challenge to a Massachusetts speech restriction outside of abortion clinics. The Justices ruled in favor of his clients 9-0. Mark also led a successful eight-year litigation battle against Governor Blagojevich’s effort to force religious pharmacists to distribute the morning-after and week-after pills.
Mark’s academic writing focuses on the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and has appeared in a variety of prestigious journals, including the Harvard Law Review.
Mark is a widely sought after speaker on constitutional issues, particularly concerning abortion and the First Amendment. Professor Rienzi has been invited to discuss these issues at Harvard Law School, Columbia University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Notre Dame Law School, the National Press Club, and the Capitol. He has been quoted on constitutional law issues on NPR, in the Washington Times, The New York Daily News, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Mark has also been featured on the Kelly File, Fox News Sunday, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Geraldo at Large, CNN Tonight, CNN Live, Andrea Mitchell Reports, and Wall Street Journal Live.
Prior to joining Becket, Mark served as counsel for the litigation department and the intellectual property litigation practice group of WilmerHale LLP. His practice focused on complex civil and appellate litigation with a particular emphasis on intellectual property and First Amendment issues. Prior to joining WilmerHale, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Stephen F. Williams, senior circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Prior to that, Mark was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and B.A. from Princeton University, both with honors.
Director of the Program in Human Rights, Catholic University of America
William L. Saunders is Chair Emeritus of the Religious Liberties Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is also a religious liberty and human rights scholar as well as director of the Center for Human rights at The Catholic University of America. He is Law Fellow with the Institute for Human Ecology, Professor and Director of the Program in Human Rights in the School of Arts & Sciences and Co-director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Columbus School of Law. Before joining The Catholic University of America, Mr. Saunders served as Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel with Americans United for Life for ten years. From 1999 to 2009, he was Senior Fellow in Bioethics and Human Rights Counsel at the Family Research Council.
Mr. Saunders attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead scholarship. He obtained his degree in law from the Harvard Law School.
Mr. Saunders was featured in Harvard’s first Guide to Conservative Public Interest Law in 2003 and again in the 2008 edition. He served on Harvard’s Advisory Committee for its 2008 celebration of public interest law. A member of the Supreme Court bar, he has authored numerous legal briefs in state, federal, foreign, and international courts.
Mr. Saunders’ book, Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases Under Scrutiny, was published in 2019. His articles and book chapters have been published by the university presses of Harvard, Villanova, Brigham Young, Fordham, Georgetown, Houston, Scranton, and the Catholic University of America, as well as by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Freedom House, Greenhaven Press, Rowan & Littlefield, Praeger, St. Augustine’s, and Intervarsity press. He has given lectures and participated in debates at many colleges, universities, and law schools, including Princeton, Harvard, Georgetown, and Notre Dame. He delivered the annual J. Michael Miller Lecture at the University of St. Thomas (on international law) in February 2007, the annual R. Wayne Kraft Memorial Lecture (on bioethics) at DeSales University in February 2004 and the annual James Moore Lecture (on human rights violations in Sudan) at Millikin University in 1999. He has also lectured, and/or has been published, in many foreign countries, including Italy, Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Mexico, Qatar, Malaysia, Romania, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to speaking and writing frequently on bioethics topics, Mr. Saunders has submitted testimony to the President’s Council on Bioethics, as well as to UNESCO’s Committee on Bioethics, and has briefed Congressional staff and state legislatures. He is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.
Mr. Saunders has appeared often in the media, including BBC World News, CNN, Fox News, Vatican Radio, and National Public Radio. His articles on issues have appeared in a variety of journals, such as First Things, Human Events, Human Life Review, The Legal Times, Communio, The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy, Ethics & Medics, and Touchstone.
Mr. Saunders served on the official United States delegation to the UN Special Session on Children in 2001/02. In 2011, he was a speaker at an official briefing at the UN, addressing the topic, why euthanasia is not a human right.
In 2004, he served on the NGO Working Committee in connection with the Doha Intergovernmental Conference for the Family.
Mr. Saunders is Senior Fellow with the Religious Freedom Institute, and Affiliated Scholar with the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Ethics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a member of the boards of the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists, the International Right to Life Federation, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.
In 1999, Mr. Saunders founded Sudan Relief and Rescue, Inc., to aid the persecuted church in Sudan. He has worked for and written on behalf of the persecuted church for many years.
Partner, Eimer Stahl LLP
Ryan is a partner at Eimer Stahl LLP and is based in the firm’s Madison office. He focuses his practice on appellate and complex litigation in a wide variety of areas, including antitrust, constitutional law, corporate law, environmental, ERISA, products liability, and white collar. As part of his practice, Ryan devotes significant time to matters of legal strategy and the art of written and oral advocacy.
Ryan previously served as Chief Deputy Solicitor General of Wisconsin, securing numerous wins in the Supreme Court of the United States, in three federal courts of appeal, and in the state supreme court. Ryan built national, bipartisan coalitions of attorneys general and agencies in support of several lawsuits and briefing efforts, including a Wisconsin-led, 12-state coalition whose suit against the Federal Communications Commission prompted that agency to reverse a major new rule. When he left government, Ryan had a perfect win record in all of his cases to have reached final judgment.
Earlier in his career, Ryan worked in Washington D.C. as an associate in the appellate group of one of the world’s largest law firms.
Ryan also served as a law clerk on the U.S. Supreme Court for the Honorable Antonin Scalia and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for the Honorable Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain.
Ryan was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30: Law and Policy” list in 2017. His briefing has won awards from the National Association of Attorneys General and the International Municipal Lawyers Association. He has also won a “best brief” accolade from the State Bar of Wisconsin in the civil category for his written work defending Wisconsin’s right-to-work law.
University Professor, Founding Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law, Faculty Director of O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law, Georgetown University, Director, World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights
Lawrence O. Gostin is University Professor, Georgetown University’s highest academic rank conferred by the University President. Prof. Gostin directs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and is the Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law. He served as Associate Dean for Research at Georgetown Law from 2004 to 2008. He is Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University and Professor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University.
Prof. Gostin is the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. The WHO Director-General has appointed Prof. Gostin to high-level positions, including the International Health Regulations (IHR) Roster of Experts and the Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health. He served on the Director-General’s Advisory Committee on Reforming the World Health Organization, as well as numerous WHO expert advisory committees, including on the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework, smallpox, genomic sequencing data, migrant health, and NCD prevention. He served on the WHO/Global Fund Blue Ribbon Expert Panel: The Equitable Access Initiative to develop a global health equity framework. He co-chairs the Lancet Commission on Global Health Law.
Professor Gostin served on two global commissions to report on the lessons learned from the 2015 West Africa Ebola epidemic. He was also senior advisor to the United Nations Secretary General’s post-Ebola Commission. He also served on the drafting team for the G-7 Summit in Tokyo 2016, focusing on global health security and Universal Health Coverage.
Prof. Gostin holds multiple international academic professorial appointments, including at Oxford University, the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), and Melbourne University. Prof. Gostin served on the Governing Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.
Prof. Gostin holds editorial appointments in leading academic journals throughout the world. He is the Legal and Global Health Correspondent for the Journal of the American Medical Association. He is also Founding Editor-in-Chief of Laws (an international open access law journal). He was formally the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
Prof. Gostin holds four honorary degrees. In 1994, the Chancellor of the State University of New York conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree. In 2006, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Vice Chancellor awarded Cardiff University’s (Wales) highest honor, an Honorary Fellow. In 2007, the Royal Institute of Public Health (United Kingdom) appointed Prof. Gostin as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health (FRSPH). In 2012, the Chancellor of the University of Sydney – on the nomination of the Deans of the Law and Medical Schools – conferred a Doctor of Laws (honoris causa), presided by two Justices of Australia’s highest court—Justices Kirby and Haydon.
Prof. Gostin is an elected lifetime Member of the National Academy of Medicine/ National Academy of Sciences. He has served on the National Academy’s Board on Health Sciences Policy, the Board on Population Health, the Human Subjects Review Board, and the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law. He currently serves on the National Academies of Sciences Engineering, and Medicine, Board on Global Health. Gostin chaired the National Academy’s Committee on Global Solutions to Falsified, Substandard, and Counterfeit Medicines. He has chaired National Academy Committees on national preparedness for mass disasters, health informational privacy, public health genomics, and human subject research on prisoners.
Prof. Gostin is also a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Fellow of the Hastings Center. In 2016, President Obama appointed Prof. Gostin to a six-year term on the President’s National Cancer Advisory Board to advise the nation on cancer prevention, research, and policy. He also serves on the National Institutes of Health Director’s Advisory Committee on the ethics of public/private partnerships to end the opioid crisis.
Prof. Gostin has led major law reform initiatives in the U.S., including drafting the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) to combat bioterrorism (following the post-9/11 anthrax attacks) and the “Turning Point” Model State Public Health Act. He also spearheaded the World Health Organization and International Development Law Organization’s major report, Advancing the Right to Health: The Vital Role of Law.
Prof. Gostin’s proposal for a Framework Convention on Global Health – an international treaty ensuring the right to health – is now part of a global campaign, endorsed by the UN Secretary-General and Director of UNAIDS.
In the United Kingdom, Lawrence Gostin was the Legal Director of the National Association for Mental Health, Director of the National Council of Civil Liberties (the UK equivalent of the ACLU), and a Fellow at Oxford University. He helped draft the Mental Health Act (England and Wales) and brought landmark cases before the European Court of Human Rights.
Prof. Gostin’s books include: Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, 3rd ed., 2016); Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (University of California Press, 3rd ed., 2018); Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2018); Law and the Health System (Foundation Press, 2014); Principles of Mental Health Law & Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Gostin’s classic text, Global Health Law (Harvard University Press, 2014) is read throughout the world—translated and published in both simplified and traditional Chinese, and in Spanish. Paul Farmer, Partners in Health, says of his book: Global Health Law is “more than the definitive book on a dynamic field. Gostin harnesses the power of international law and human rights as tools to close unconscionable health inequities — the injustices that burden marginalized populations throughout the world. Gostin presents a forceful vision, one that deserves a wide embrace.”
In a 2012 systematic empirical analysis of legal scholarship, independent researchers ranked Prof. Gostin 1st in the nation in productivity among all law professors, and 11th in in impact and influence. A 2017 and 2018 systematic empirical analysis ranked Prof. Gostin 1st in the nation for citations in health law.
Executive Director, Southeastern Legal Foundation
Kimberly Hermann serves as Executive Director for Southeastern Legal Foundation.
Kim has worked with Southeastern Legal Foundation since 2009. Her belief in liberty and desire to serve started at a young age – instilled by her parents’ dedication to hard work, family values, and love for America.
After earning her undergraduate degree in Analytical Finance and graduate degree in Accounting from Wake Forest University, Kim worked as a licensed CPA with an international accounting firm. But her strong belief in individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government led her to pursue a career in law. While in law school at Georgia State University College of Law, Kim served as a law clerk at SLF. After graduating, Kim worked at a private law firm in Atlanta where she specialized in financial and business litigation but continued to serve SLF in a pro bono capacity. In 2013, Kim returned to SLF full-time and is proud to dedicate her career to the freedom-based law movement.
Kim advances liberty through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts on issues ranging from government overreach, free speech, property rights, and economic liberty. In addition to representing clients, Kim testifies before state legislatures, drafts model legislation, and regularly publishes legal articles. Through SLF’s legal initiatives, she informs Americans about their constitutional rights, equipping them with the tools they need to stand up to government overreach. Her work and that of Southeastern Legal Foundation is regularly covered by national media and you will frequently hear or see her on radio, podcasts, and television.
Kim is an active member of the Federalist Society where she serves as an expert on the Federalist Society’s Civil Rights Executive Committee. She is also an active member of her community and when she isn’t fighting for liberty, you can find her at her children’s school or on the sports fields cheering them on. She lives in the Atlanta area with her husband and two children.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Luke A. Wake is an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. Prior to joining PLF, he was a senior staff attorney at the NFIB Small Business Legal Center.
Wake has particular expertise on environmental and land use issues, and has worked on numerous other constitutional issues and matters of importance to small business owners. He is an ardent defender of private property rights, which he believes are essential to the free enterprise system and the foundation of American liberty. As a strong advocate of individual rights and economic liberties, he has built his career defending small business interests.
Wake has focused on a whole host of issues, from employment law matters to regulatory compliance. In addition to serving as a resource for small business owners, Wake is committed to ensuring that the voice of small business is heard in the nation’s courts. As an appellate practitioner, Wake has focused particularly on informing the courts on matters of administrative law and on issues under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. He is also working to advance small business interests in law review articles, and was recently published in the Berkeley Journal of Law & Ecology. See R.S. Radford & Luke A. Wake, Deciphering and Extrapolating: Searching for Sense in Penn Central, 38 Ecology L.Q. 731, 746-747 (2011).
Before joining the Legal Center’s team, Wake completed a prestigious two-year fellowship as an attorney in the Pacific Legal Foundation’s College of Public Interest Law. Wake is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland Ohio, and is a member of the California Bar. He completed his undergraduate studies at Elon University in North Carolina in 2006 where he focused on political theory and corporate communications.
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