Senior Counsel & Director of the Center for Religious Schools, Alliance Defending Freedom
Gregory S. Baylor serves as senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, where he is the director of the Center for Religious Schools and senior counsel with the Center for Public Policy.
Since joining ADF in 2009, Baylor has focused on defending and advancing the religious freedom of faith-based educational institutions through advice, education, legislative and public advocacy, and representation in disputes. He has testified about religious liberty issues three times before congressional committees and numerous times before state legislative committees.
Greg serves on the board of directors of the International Alliance for Christian Education, the board of directors of the Association for Biblical Higher Education, the board of directors of the Association for Christian Schools International, the board of advisors of the Museum of the Bible, and advisory board of the Center for Academic Faithfulness and Flourishing.
Greg earned his Juris Doctor in 1990 from Duke University School of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif, with high honors, and served on the editorial board of the Duke Law Journal. He received his bachelor’s degree in Honors English in 1987 from Dartmouth College. Following graduation from law school, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Jerry E. Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He practiced labor and employment law at two large international law firms for three years before joining the staff of Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom, where he served for 15 years prior to joining ADF. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife (a medical doctor) and two daughters.
Ohio Attorney General
As Attorney General, Mike DeWine’s priority is protecting Ohio’s families.
To better protect our kids, Attorney General DeWine created a special Crimes Against Children Unit to help identify, arrest, and convict sexual predators. He has also increased training for law enforcement and educators to help improve school safety, as well as human trafficking, child abuse, missing children, bullying and the needs of foster youth.
Attorney General DeWine is working to rebuild Ohio’s neighborhoods, investing $75 million from the national mortgage settlement to help demolish abandoned and blighted properties. He has also made commitments to support anti-gun violence programs and community groups that are working to repair our hardest-hit communities.
On his first day in office, Attorney General DeWine joined in the federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. In addition he is working hard to make sure his office provides cutting-edge criminal investigation and law enforcement training services, is rooting out public corruption, and helping to create a legal climate in Ohio that encourages businesses to invest in the state and create jobs.
DeWine has also devoted resources to fighting Ohio’s prescription drug abuse and heroin problems, increased the number of criminal prosecutions in consumer fraud cases, and dramatically decreased the turn-around time for testing of DNA evidence. He has dedicated resources to testing all of Ohio’s old sexual assault kits, which is leading to the convictions of sexual predators.
Attorney General DeWine has a long and distinguished career in public service focusing on protecting Ohio children and families. DeWine served as Greene County Prosecuting Attorney, in the Ohio State Senate, in the United States House of Representatives, as Ohio Lieutenant Governor and in the United States Senate.
Mike DeWine grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio and married his high school sweetheart, Frances Streuwing, while both were students at Miami University. The DeWines, who have resided in Cedarville Township since Mike graduated from law school, are the parents of eight children and 22 grandchildren.
Partner, Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC
Ben Flowers, a partner at Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC, is an accomplished litigator with experience briefing, arguing, and winning high-stakes cases in courts throughout the country.
Before joining the law firm, Ben served as Ohio's 10th Solicitor General. In that role he regularly represented the State of Ohio before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of Ohio. Most prominently, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Ben led a multi-state challenge to OSHA's vaccine mandate, ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court.
Ben is a graduate of The Ohio State University and the University of Chicago Law School. Following law school, Ben clerked for Judge Sandra Ikuta of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of this United States. Ben lives in Upper Arlington, Ohio with his wife Denise and their three very active children.
Warren County Prosecutor, State of Ohio
David P. Fornshell was sworn-in as the 38th Prosecuting Attorney of Warren County on February 17, 2011. David comes to the Prosecutor's Office after most recently serving as a partner in the litigation department at Dinsmore & Shohl LLP in Cincinnati. David started his legal practice with Dinsmore in 1999 and still maintains an Of Counsel affiliation with the firm. From 1999-2007, David also served as Prosecuting Attorney for the City of Blue Ash, Ohio.
David is actively involved in the community and serves as a member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, Ohio Prosecuting Attorney’s Association Executive and Legislative Committees, Warren County Drug Task Force Policy Board, Child Advocacy Center of Warren County Steering Committee, Ralph J. Stolle Countryside YMCA Board of Directors, and various other volunteer boards and committees. David is also the former Chairman of the Warren County Board of Elections, former Chairman of the Warren County Republican Party, former Secretary of the Warren County Board of MR/DD, and former Admissions Committee Chairperson of the Warren County Bar Association.
Since becoming Warren County Prosecutor, David has expanded the Prosecutor’s Office’s community outreach efforts. Most recently, David developed and conducted training for board members, officers, and volunteers of charitable, church, booster, youth sports, and other not-for-profit organizations on how to protect against internal organizational theft. He has also developed and conducted age-appropriate presentations for numerous Warren County high school, junior high school, middle school, and elementary school students on topics such as school threats, sexting, date rape, and juvenile decision-making.
David has prosecuted cases receiving international and national attention, including cases profiled by the BBC documentary series Life and Death Row, Good Morning America, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The UK Daily Mail, and numerous other international and national publications. David also served as a legal consultant for a network television series crime drama.
A seventh-generation Warren County resident, David grew up in the Lebanon/Turtlecreek Township area where he graduated from Lebanon High School. David graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University where he received degrees in Finance and Business Prelaw. David received his Juris Doctor from Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California, finishing in the top 10% of his graduating class. While at Pepperdine, David served on the Pepperdine Law Review, Pepperdine Moot Court Board, and also worked as a legal research and writing teaching assistant. David also won the Best Advocate Award at both the 1998 National Moot Court Competition (Los Angeles) and the 1999 Sutherland Cup National Constitutional Law Competition (Washington, D.C.), and received the American Jurisprudence Award for Civil Procedure I and Civil Procedure II.
David and his wife Amy reside in the Lebanon area with their three children. Over the past decade, David has served as volunteer coach for Lebanon youth football, basketball, baseball, and fast-pitch softball organizations. He and his family are active in Lebanon Presbyterian Church.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Eric Murphy has been a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since March 2019. He previously served as the ninth State Solicitor of Ohio. In that role, Eric briefed and argued appellate cases on behalf of Ohio and its state agencies and officers in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Ohio Supreme Court. Before his appointment as State Solicitor, Eric practiced appellate litigation at Jones Day. After graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from Miami University.
Attorney General, State of Ohio
Dave Yost was re-elected as Ohio’s 51st attorney general on Nov. 8, 2022, receiving more votes than any other attorney general in the state’s history.
During his first term as the state’s chief legal officer, he quickly gained a national reputation as a fearless advocate for the rule of law — or, as he puts it, “the same rules for everybody.”
Yost’s goal is to “do big good” for the people of Ohio by protecting consumers, rooting out corruption, defending the environment, ensuring an open and competitive marketplace, and fulfilling the many other duties of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
Yost began his public-service career as Delaware County auditor, later winning election as that county’s prosecutor. From 2011 through 2018, he served as Ohio’s auditor of state and, in January 2019, began his first term as attorney general.
Yost earned his bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University and law degree from Capital University. He and his wife, Darlene, live in Franklin County; they have three grown children and five grandchildren.
Senior Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia School of Law, George Mason University; Retired Professor, Distinguished Fellow and Co-Founder, Center for National Security Law, University of Virginia School of Law (1987-2020)
Robert F. Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law. He co-founded the Center for National Security Law with Professor John Norton Moore in April 1981 and served as its associate director for 39 years, except for two periods of government service in the 1980s and during 1994-95, when he occupied the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He retired from UVA in January 2020 and currently serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the GMU National Security Institute. He also served briefly in 2020 as President of the Crime Prevention Research Center—one of the most respected pro-Second Amendment groups in the country—while its founder, Dr. John Lott, was on leave of absence.
A former Army captain and veteran of two tours in Vietnam, Turner served as a research associate and public affairs fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace before spending five years in the mid-1970s as national security adviser to U.S. Senator Robert P. Griffin, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (where Turner anticipated by seven years the Supreme Court’s landmark INS v. Chadha decision, striking down legislative vetoes). He also served in the executive branch during the Reagan administration as a member of the Senior Executive Service, first in the Pentagon as special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for policy, then in the White House as counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, and at the State Department as principal deputy and then acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs. In 1986, he became the first president of the congressionally established United States Institute of Peace.
A former three-term chairman of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security (and for many years editor of the ABA National Security Law Report), Turner also chaired the Executive-Congressional Relations Subcommittee of the ABA Section on International Law and Practice and chaired or co-chaired the National Security Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group for several years.
Turner taught undergraduate courses at Virginia on international law, U.S. foreign policy, the Vietnam War and foreign policy and the law in what is now the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. In addition, he co-taught National Security Law and advanced national security law seminars on the Indochina War and on war and peace with Moore at the Law School.
The author or editor of 17 books and monographs (including co-editor of the Center's 1,600-page National Security Law & Policy casebook, National Security Law Documents, and Legal Issues in the Struggle Against Terror) and numerous articles in law reviews and other professional journals, Turner has also contributed articles to most of the major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today. In an op-ed published in The International Herald Tribune in September 1990, he and Moore were the first to call for a war-crimes trial for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and for international controls over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and the following month he wrote the lead story in The Washington Post Sunday Outlook Section, “Killing Saddam: Would It Be a Crime?,” arguing that Hussein would be a lawful target during Operation Desert Storm. (His reasoning contributed to the modern legal justification for drone strikes targeting specific terrorist leaders.) Three years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turner published an op-ed in USA Today entitled: “In Self-defense, U.S. Has Right to Kill bin Laden.”
In July 2007, he co-authored an article in The Washington Post with former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General P.X. Kelley, “War Crimes and the White House,” criticizing the use of unlawful “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the Central Intelligence Agency. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon he authored an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Saigon’s Fall Still Echoes Today,” noting that after the war ended, Hanoi admitted it had made a decision in 1959 to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and start sending troops, weapons and supplies into South Vietnam to overthrow its government — just as the United States had charged. In 2010 Turner received the first “person of the year” award from SACEI, a major Vietnamese-American human rights organization.
A frequent lecturer and debater, Turner has spoken at more than 100 law schools around the nation and in other fora — taking on as many as four opponents at a time. His debate opponents have included former or future deans of Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Berkeley law schools. Following a 1987 debate against Dean Harlan Cleveland (Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) in which Turner defended the legality of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan Administration, the host student debating societies awarded Turner the victory by an 85-to-15 percent margin.
Turner has also written and lectured widely on University of Virginia founder and America’s third president Thomas Jefferson. In 2000-2001 he chaired the Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission. In his 2012 book Master of the Mountain, Jefferson critic Henry Wiencek described Turner as “Jefferson’s chief scholarly defender."
A former distinguished lecturer at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Turner is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Academy of Political Science, the Committee on the Present Danger, The Heterodox Academy, and other professional organizations. He maintained a 4.0 gpa as a graduate student at Stanford in History and Political Science and in the UVA Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and was the first person admitted directly to the UVA academic law doctorate (SJD) program without first being required to earn an LL.M. master’s degree. He was selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Law less than two years after graduating from law school and Who’s Who in the World before he reached the age of 40. Turner has testified before more than a dozen different congressional committees on issues of international or constitutional law and other topics.
Partner, Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP
Victor Schwartz chairs the firm's Public Policy Practice Group, which focuses on integrating litigation, government affairs and public relations. The group seeks to be the vanguard of developing public policy issues that will help improve our civil justice system. Mr. Schwartz also has an active appellate practice and advises product manufacturers on liability prevention, litigation and public relations issues.
Sought by print and broadcast media, Mr. Schwartz is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times. He has appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes and leading news programs. The Legal Times of Washington has named Mr. Schwartz one of Washington’s Top 30 “Visionary” lawyers, and The National Law Journal named Mr. Schwartz one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States in March 2013.
Mr. Schwartz is on the Board of Directors of the Searle Civil Justice Institute at George Mason University School of Law. He is a frequent participant in judicial education programs. Mr. Schwartz serves as General Counsel to the American Tort Reform Association.
Prior to entering the full time practice of law, Mr. Schwartz was a professor and dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. He currently serves on the College’s Board of Visitors. In 2012, the College established the Professor Victor E. Schwartz Chair in Tort Law.
Mr. Schwartz, while at the U.S. Department of Commerce, served as chair of the Federal Inter-Agency Task Force on Product Liability, and the Federal Inter-Agency Council on Insurance. He was the principal author of the Uniform Product Liability Act and the Federal Risk Retention Act. He received the Secretary of Commerce’s Award for Professional Excellence.
Mr. Schwartz is co-author of the most widely used torts casebook in the United States, Prosser, Wade and Schwartz’s Torts (12th ed. 2010). He is author of the leading text Comparative Negligence (5th ed. 2010).
Mr. Schwartz has been an advisor for each of the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatement (Third) of Torts projects; Products Liability, Apportionment of Liability, and Liability for Physical Injury and Emotional Harm. He is a life member of the ALI.
Mr. Schwartz’s law review articles have analyzed almost every major subject of modern tort and civil justice public policy issues. His articles are frequently cited by both state and federal courts.
Ohio Attorney General
As Attorney General, Mike DeWine’s priority is protecting Ohio’s families.
To better protect our kids, Attorney General DeWine created a special Crimes Against Children Unit to help identify, arrest, and convict sexual predators. He has also increased training for law enforcement and educators to help improve school safety, as well as human trafficking, child abuse, missing children, bullying and the needs of foster youth.
Attorney General DeWine is working to rebuild Ohio’s neighborhoods, investing $75 million from the national mortgage settlement to help demolish abandoned and blighted properties. He has also made commitments to support anti-gun violence programs and community groups that are working to repair our hardest-hit communities.
On his first day in office, Attorney General DeWine joined in the federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. In addition he is working hard to make sure his office provides cutting-edge criminal investigation and law enforcement training services, is rooting out public corruption, and helping to create a legal climate in Ohio that encourages businesses to invest in the state and create jobs.
DeWine has also devoted resources to fighting Ohio’s prescription drug abuse and heroin problems, increased the number of criminal prosecutions in consumer fraud cases, and dramatically decreased the turn-around time for testing of DNA evidence. He has dedicated resources to testing all of Ohio’s old sexual assault kits, which is leading to the convictions of sexual predators.
Attorney General DeWine has a long and distinguished career in public service focusing on protecting Ohio children and families. DeWine served as Greene County Prosecuting Attorney, in the Ohio State Senate, in the United States House of Representatives, as Ohio Lieutenant Governor and in the United States Senate.
Mike DeWine grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio and married his high school sweetheart, Frances Streuwing, while both were students at Miami University. The DeWines, who have resided in Cedarville Township since Mike graduated from law school, are the parents of eight children and 22 grandchildren.
Partner, Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC
Ben Flowers, a partner at Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC, is an accomplished litigator with experience briefing, arguing, and winning high-stakes cases in courts throughout the country.
Before joining the law firm, Ben served as Ohio's 10th Solicitor General. In that role he regularly represented the State of Ohio before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of Ohio. Most prominently, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Ben led a multi-state challenge to OSHA's vaccine mandate, ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court.
Ben is a graduate of The Ohio State University and the University of Chicago Law School. Following law school, Ben clerked for Judge Sandra Ikuta of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of this United States. Ben lives in Upper Arlington, Ohio with his wife Denise and their three very active children.
Warren County Prosecutor, State of Ohio
David P. Fornshell was sworn-in as the 38th Prosecuting Attorney of Warren County on February 17, 2011. David comes to the Prosecutor's Office after most recently serving as a partner in the litigation department at Dinsmore & Shohl LLP in Cincinnati. David started his legal practice with Dinsmore in 1999 and still maintains an Of Counsel affiliation with the firm. From 1999-2007, David also served as Prosecuting Attorney for the City of Blue Ash, Ohio.
David is actively involved in the community and serves as a member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, Ohio Prosecuting Attorney’s Association Executive and Legislative Committees, Warren County Drug Task Force Policy Board, Child Advocacy Center of Warren County Steering Committee, Ralph J. Stolle Countryside YMCA Board of Directors, and various other volunteer boards and committees. David is also the former Chairman of the Warren County Board of Elections, former Chairman of the Warren County Republican Party, former Secretary of the Warren County Board of MR/DD, and former Admissions Committee Chairperson of the Warren County Bar Association.
Since becoming Warren County Prosecutor, David has expanded the Prosecutor’s Office’s community outreach efforts. Most recently, David developed and conducted training for board members, officers, and volunteers of charitable, church, booster, youth sports, and other not-for-profit organizations on how to protect against internal organizational theft. He has also developed and conducted age-appropriate presentations for numerous Warren County high school, junior high school, middle school, and elementary school students on topics such as school threats, sexting, date rape, and juvenile decision-making.
David has prosecuted cases receiving international and national attention, including cases profiled by the BBC documentary series Life and Death Row, Good Morning America, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The UK Daily Mail, and numerous other international and national publications. David also served as a legal consultant for a network television series crime drama.
A seventh-generation Warren County resident, David grew up in the Lebanon/Turtlecreek Township area where he graduated from Lebanon High School. David graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University where he received degrees in Finance and Business Prelaw. David received his Juris Doctor from Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California, finishing in the top 10% of his graduating class. While at Pepperdine, David served on the Pepperdine Law Review, Pepperdine Moot Court Board, and also worked as a legal research and writing teaching assistant. David also won the Best Advocate Award at both the 1998 National Moot Court Competition (Los Angeles) and the 1999 Sutherland Cup National Constitutional Law Competition (Washington, D.C.), and received the American Jurisprudence Award for Civil Procedure I and Civil Procedure II.
David and his wife Amy reside in the Lebanon area with their three children. Over the past decade, David has served as volunteer coach for Lebanon youth football, basketball, baseball, and fast-pitch softball organizations. He and his family are active in Lebanon Presbyterian Church.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Eric Murphy has been a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since March 2019. He previously served as the ninth State Solicitor of Ohio. In that role, Eric briefed and argued appellate cases on behalf of Ohio and its state agencies and officers in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Ohio Supreme Court. Before his appointment as State Solicitor, Eric practiced appellate litigation at Jones Day. After graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from Miami University.
Attorney General, State of Ohio
Dave Yost was re-elected as Ohio’s 51st attorney general on Nov. 8, 2022, receiving more votes than any other attorney general in the state’s history.
During his first term as the state’s chief legal officer, he quickly gained a national reputation as a fearless advocate for the rule of law — or, as he puts it, “the same rules for everybody.”
Yost’s goal is to “do big good” for the people of Ohio by protecting consumers, rooting out corruption, defending the environment, ensuring an open and competitive marketplace, and fulfilling the many other duties of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
Yost began his public-service career as Delaware County auditor, later winning election as that county’s prosecutor. From 2011 through 2018, he served as Ohio’s auditor of state and, in January 2019, began his first term as attorney general.
Yost earned his bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University and law degree from Capital University. He and his wife, Darlene, live in Franklin County; they have three grown children and five grandchildren.
Ohio Attorney General
As Attorney General, Mike DeWine’s priority is protecting Ohio’s families.
To better protect our kids, Attorney General DeWine created a special Crimes Against Children Unit to help identify, arrest, and convict sexual predators. He has also increased training for law enforcement and educators to help improve school safety, as well as human trafficking, child abuse, missing children, bullying and the needs of foster youth.
Attorney General DeWine is working to rebuild Ohio’s neighborhoods, investing $75 million from the national mortgage settlement to help demolish abandoned and blighted properties. He has also made commitments to support anti-gun violence programs and community groups that are working to repair our hardest-hit communities.
On his first day in office, Attorney General DeWine joined in the federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. In addition he is working hard to make sure his office provides cutting-edge criminal investigation and law enforcement training services, is rooting out public corruption, and helping to create a legal climate in Ohio that encourages businesses to invest in the state and create jobs.
DeWine has also devoted resources to fighting Ohio’s prescription drug abuse and heroin problems, increased the number of criminal prosecutions in consumer fraud cases, and dramatically decreased the turn-around time for testing of DNA evidence. He has dedicated resources to testing all of Ohio’s old sexual assault kits, which is leading to the convictions of sexual predators.
Attorney General DeWine has a long and distinguished career in public service focusing on protecting Ohio children and families. DeWine served as Greene County Prosecuting Attorney, in the Ohio State Senate, in the United States House of Representatives, as Ohio Lieutenant Governor and in the United States Senate.
Mike DeWine grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio and married his high school sweetheart, Frances Streuwing, while both were students at Miami University. The DeWines, who have resided in Cedarville Township since Mike graduated from law school, are the parents of eight children and 22 grandchildren.
Partner, Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC
Ben Flowers, a partner at Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC, is an accomplished litigator with experience briefing, arguing, and winning high-stakes cases in courts throughout the country.
Before joining the law firm, Ben served as Ohio's 10th Solicitor General. In that role he regularly represented the State of Ohio before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of Ohio. Most prominently, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Ben led a multi-state challenge to OSHA's vaccine mandate, ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court.
Ben is a graduate of The Ohio State University and the University of Chicago Law School. Following law school, Ben clerked for Judge Sandra Ikuta of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of this United States. Ben lives in Upper Arlington, Ohio with his wife Denise and their three very active children.
Warren County Prosecutor, State of Ohio
David P. Fornshell was sworn-in as the 38th Prosecuting Attorney of Warren County on February 17, 2011. David comes to the Prosecutor's Office after most recently serving as a partner in the litigation department at Dinsmore & Shohl LLP in Cincinnati. David started his legal practice with Dinsmore in 1999 and still maintains an Of Counsel affiliation with the firm. From 1999-2007, David also served as Prosecuting Attorney for the City of Blue Ash, Ohio.
David is actively involved in the community and serves as a member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, Ohio Prosecuting Attorney’s Association Executive and Legislative Committees, Warren County Drug Task Force Policy Board, Child Advocacy Center of Warren County Steering Committee, Ralph J. Stolle Countryside YMCA Board of Directors, and various other volunteer boards and committees. David is also the former Chairman of the Warren County Board of Elections, former Chairman of the Warren County Republican Party, former Secretary of the Warren County Board of MR/DD, and former Admissions Committee Chairperson of the Warren County Bar Association.
Since becoming Warren County Prosecutor, David has expanded the Prosecutor’s Office’s community outreach efforts. Most recently, David developed and conducted training for board members, officers, and volunteers of charitable, church, booster, youth sports, and other not-for-profit organizations on how to protect against internal organizational theft. He has also developed and conducted age-appropriate presentations for numerous Warren County high school, junior high school, middle school, and elementary school students on topics such as school threats, sexting, date rape, and juvenile decision-making.
David has prosecuted cases receiving international and national attention, including cases profiled by the BBC documentary series Life and Death Row, Good Morning America, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The UK Daily Mail, and numerous other international and national publications. David also served as a legal consultant for a network television series crime drama.
A seventh-generation Warren County resident, David grew up in the Lebanon/Turtlecreek Township area where he graduated from Lebanon High School. David graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University where he received degrees in Finance and Business Prelaw. David received his Juris Doctor from Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California, finishing in the top 10% of his graduating class. While at Pepperdine, David served on the Pepperdine Law Review, Pepperdine Moot Court Board, and also worked as a legal research and writing teaching assistant. David also won the Best Advocate Award at both the 1998 National Moot Court Competition (Los Angeles) and the 1999 Sutherland Cup National Constitutional Law Competition (Washington, D.C.), and received the American Jurisprudence Award for Civil Procedure I and Civil Procedure II.
David and his wife Amy reside in the Lebanon area with their three children. Over the past decade, David has served as volunteer coach for Lebanon youth football, basketball, baseball, and fast-pitch softball organizations. He and his family are active in Lebanon Presbyterian Church.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Eric Murphy has been a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since March 2019. He previously served as the ninth State Solicitor of Ohio. In that role, Eric briefed and argued appellate cases on behalf of Ohio and its state agencies and officers in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Ohio Supreme Court. Before his appointment as State Solicitor, Eric practiced appellate litigation at Jones Day. After graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from Miami University.
Attorney General, State of Ohio
Dave Yost was re-elected as Ohio’s 51st attorney general on Nov. 8, 2022, receiving more votes than any other attorney general in the state’s history.
During his first term as the state’s chief legal officer, he quickly gained a national reputation as a fearless advocate for the rule of law — or, as he puts it, “the same rules for everybody.”
Yost’s goal is to “do big good” for the people of Ohio by protecting consumers, rooting out corruption, defending the environment, ensuring an open and competitive marketplace, and fulfilling the many other duties of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
Yost began his public-service career as Delaware County auditor, later winning election as that county’s prosecutor. From 2011 through 2018, he served as Ohio’s auditor of state and, in January 2019, began his first term as attorney general.
Yost earned his bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University and law degree from Capital University. He and his wife, Darlene, live in Franklin County; they have three grown children and five grandchildren.
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.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
A lifelong lover of liberty, David McDonald joined Pacific Legal Foundation’s property rights team in 2023.
As the son of two former gold miners who spent his childhood visiting ghost towns and old mines in the Mojave Desert, he has always been fascinated by the frontier spirit that built this nation and sees the defense of private property rights as absolutely vital to keeping that spirit alive. After reading about eminent domain abuse for the first time in college (and Justice Clarence Thomas’ amazing dissent in Kelo), he realized he needed to become a lawyer so he could put a stop to the government’s flagrant violation of private property rights.
Prior to joining PLF, David was an attorney with Mountain States Legal Foundation in Colorado, where his practice primarily focused on the bureaucratic overreach and intransigence of federal land use agencies like the Bureau of Land Management. While at Mountain States, David represented individuals and small businesses whose rights had been violated by the government before both state and federal courts and administrative tribunals. Before that, he worked as a legal associate with the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, where he authored Supreme Court amicus briefs and scholarly articles on a number of constitutional topics.
David grew up in Southern California and received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles before attending Columbia University for law school.
When not trying to ruin government employees’ days, David can usually be found doing something nerdy like playing board games, arguing about the finer points of Tolkien lore, and taking pub trivia way too seriously.
David is a member of the bar only in the states of New York and Colorado.
President Trump's Religious Liberties Executive Order - Podcast
On May 4, President Trump signed a Religious Liberty Executive Order relaxing IRS enforcement of...
President Trump's Religious Liberties Executive Order
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In our nation's federalist system, the federal government's powers are limited to those that have...
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In our nation's federalist system, the federal government's powers are limited to those that have...
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My Goldwater Institute colleague Jonathan Butcher writes over at See Thru Edu about how SCOTUS's...
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Note from the Editor: This article discusses Auer deference, a central issue in Gloucester County...