Renée Flaherty is an attorney with the Institute for Justice. She joined the Institute in 2013 and litigates cases to secure property rights, economic liberty and school choice in federal and state courts.
Renée successfully represented families in defense of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which was upheld by the North Carolina Supreme Court in July 2015.
Renée’s views have been published in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.
Prior to joining the Institute for Justice, Renée worked in private practice as a tax controversy associate at the Washington, D.C., office of Bingham McCutchen, LLP. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School in 2011, where she was an editor of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review and served on the Executive Board of the Federalist Society. Renée graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and a Bachelor of Business Administration. Renée is originally from Odessa, Texas.
Renée Flaherty is a member of the D.C. bar.
Florida Office Managing Attorney, Institute for Justice
Justin Pearson is the Institute’s Florida Office Managing Attorney. He also coordinates aspects of the Institute’s national economic liberty efforts and personally directs IJ’s National Street Vending Initiative. Justin has devoted his career to vindicating the constitutional rights of small-business owners, and he has victoriously litigated on their behalf in trial and appellate courts across the nation.
Justin often wins in novel ways. He was the lead counsel in a federal appellate court victory vindicating the right of a Florida dairy creamery to tell the truth on its labels, which was the first victorious First Amendment challenge to a food standard of identity in U.S. history. His win against Little Rock’s ban on taxi competition was based on a provision in the Arkansas Constitution that had not been successfully relied upon in over half a century. And his victory against Fort Pierce’s food truck ban included the first preliminary injunction ever issued in this type of challenge anywhere in the nation.
In addition to litigation, Justin has testified to Florida Senate and House committees dozens of times, and provisions suggested by Justin have been enacted into law. The successful bills that Justin has actively supported include Florida’s 2021 cottage food, home-based business, and local occupational licensing reforms, Florida’s historic 2020 occupational licensing reform (which repealed the most occupational licensing barriers in U.S. history), Florida’s 2019 repeal of the certificate of need requirement for hospitals, Florida’s 2019 Fresh Start reform making it easier for individuals with criminal records to obtain employment, and Florida’s 2016 overhaul of its civil forfeiture laws.
Justin’s work has appeared in countless media outlets, and Justin has spoken to scores of law schools and attorney organizations across the nation. The law schools that have hosted Justin’s talks include Yale, the University of Chicago, Duke, NYU, Notre Dame, and the University of Michigan, among many others.
Prior to joining IJ, Justin founded and managed his own law practice to advocate for small-business owners, and Justin’s law practice was successful for many years before he made the decision to join IJ in 2012 to better fight against government power gone awry.
Justin received his law degree with honors from the University of Miami in 2002, where he was the Research and Writing Editor for, and was published in, the University of Miami Business Law Review. Justin received his undergraduate degree in business management from North Carolina State University. Justin has been honored by the Daily Business Review and Law.com for being one of South Florida’s “Most Effective Lawyers.”
Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee
Justice Sarah Campbell was confirmed to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2022. She previously served as an Associate Solicitor General in the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office and as an associate at the law firm of Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC. Justice Campbell earned her law degree from Duke University School of Law, a Master of Public Policy degree from Duke University, and her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee, where she received the Torchbearer Award. She served as a law clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the United States Supreme Court and Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Don Willett serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Before joining the federal bench, Judge Willett served 13 years on the Supreme Court
of Texas. His career spans decades of public service, including roles as legal counsel to
a Texas Attorney General, a Texas Governor, a U.S. Attorney General, and the
President of the United States.
Raised by a heroic widowed mom in a doublewide trailer in a town of 32, Judge
Willett is his family’s first college graduate. He earned a triple-major B.B.A. from Baylor
University—where he serves on the Board of Regents—and three degrees from Duke
University—where he serves on the Board of Visitors: a J.D. with honors, an A.M. in
political science, and an LL.M. in judicial studies. After law school, he clerked on the
Fifth Circuit and practiced at Haynes and Boone before entering public service.
Judge Willett publishes widely in both leading law reviews and national media, including
The Yale Law Journal, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Wall Street
Journal. The longtime editor-in-chief of Judicature—the Scholarly Journal for Judges, he
holds academic appointments at various law schools and has received more than a
dozen Green Bag honors for “exemplary legal writing.” He was named Distinguished
Jurist of the Year by the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and he is a member of the
American Law Institute and a Life Fellow of the American, Texas, and Austin Bar
Foundations.
A onetime bull rider and professional drummer, Judge Willett was named “Tweeter
Laureate of Texas” in 2015. He is the namesake of Don R. Willett Elementary
School—home of mighty Willett Wranglers—located just a mile from where he grew up.
He and his radiant wife, Tiffany have three children—Jacob, Shane-David, and
Geneviève—plus the family pup, Amicus.
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.
Thomas L. Perkins Distinguished Professor of Law, Duke Law School
Doriane Coleman is the Thomas L. Perkins Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law School, where she specializes in interdisciplinary scholarship focused on women, children, medicine, sports, and law. Her work, single- and co-authored, has been published in numerous U.S. and international journals. She also writes op-eds and is regularly cited in the press.
Her most recent scholarship has centered on sex, its evolving definition, and the implications of this evolution for law and society. The first two articles in this series – Sex in Sport and Re-affirming the Value of the Sports Exception to Title IX's General Non-Discrimination Rule – have been widely read and used in the development of eligibility criteria for the female category. A third article – Sex Neutrality – traces the history of sex in law and addresses the merits of a final move from sex skepticism to sex-blindness. Her book On Sex and Gender – A Commonsense Approach (2024) expands on these themes for a broader audience.
At Duke, Coleman is a Faculty Fellow and Member of the Advisory Council of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and a Faculty Associate of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at the School of Medicine, and the University’s Initiative for Science & Society. She is also a member of the University’s Athletic Council and co-director of the Law School’s Center for Sports Law and Policy.
She received her Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown Law and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University. She was a litigation associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering before beginning her academic career at Howard University School of Law.
Before law school, Coleman ran the 800 meters in collegiate and international competition. She was a multiple All American, All East, and All Ivy athlete, the U.S. National Collegiate Indoor Champion in the 800 meters in 1982, the U.S. National Indoor Champion in the 4 x 400 meters relay in 1982, and the Swiss National Champion in the 800 meters in 1982 and 1983. Over the course of her athletic career she competed for Villanova and Cornell, the Swiss and U.S. National Teams, Athletics West, the Santa Monica and Atoms Track Clubs, and Lausanne Sports.
Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation Chair, Lex Politica; Of Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as Chair of Lex Politica's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice overseeing the firm’s strategic appellate litigation and critical motions practice in the trial courts. Erin is an experienced litigator who represents clients in constitutional, regulatory, and appellate matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Erin has represented dozens of clients before the Supreme Court of the United States, served as lead counsel in high-profile cases raising novel constitutional and statutory issues, and authored numerous successful petitions for certiorari and briefs in opposition. She has argued in state and federal appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Erin represents diverse clients in high-stakes litigation from state governments to faith-based nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. She possesses expertise on a wide range of subject matters including administrative law, the First Amendment, religious liberty, federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, equitable jurisdiction, tax law, the Affordable Care Act, and Title IX.
Erin represents clients in cases where public communications strategy is paramount. She is a sought-after speaker and writer, has testified multiple times before Congress, and is a frequent presenter on constitutional and administrative law issues, including at the Oxford Union, the National Federalist Society Convention, and university campuses across the country. She is a frequent commentator to media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, WORLD, USA Today, the Federalist, and the Hill.
Erin previously oversaw Alliance Defending Freedom’s--where she still serves as Of Counsel--litigation strategies to empower women and protect the dignity of life, defend pregnancy centers’ First Amendment rights from government overreach, and safeguard Americans’ freedoms from the ever-encroaching administrative state.
Chair, United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Solicitor General, Missouri
D. John Sauer has served as the Solicitor General of Missouri since 2017. Before that, he served as a federal prosecutor for five years and spent time in civil practice at boutique law firms, including the firm he founded, the James Otis Law Group. Mr. Sauer has first-chaired many jury and bench trials, and served as lead counsel in many appeals. He has presented oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the Supreme Court of Missouri, and many other state and federal appellate courts. Mr. Sauer served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He was a Rhodes Scholar and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law and Deputy Dean, Harvard Law School
Molly Brady is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches property law and related subjects. Her scholarship uses historical analyses of property institutions and land use doctrines to explore broader theoretical questions. Her current research projects involve the relationship between covenants and zoning, the persistence of community knowledge in property doctrine, and the uses of history in state constitutional law. She is also an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Fourth Restatement of Property.
Previously, Professor Brady taught at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she received the 2019 UVA Student Council Distinguished Teaching Award, the 2018 Z Society Distinguished Faculty Award for “one outstanding member of the University’s faculty who has positively impacted the student body,” and an invitation to the Seven Society 27th Annual Monticello Dinner Series for “exemplary scholarship and transformative instruction of students.” Her recent article, “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds,” won both the Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarly Papers Prize for junior faculty members in their first five years of law teaching and the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize for the year’s best paper by an early-career scholar.
Professor Brady received an AB summa cum laude in history from Harvard College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was awarded the Harvard-Radcliffe Foundation for Women’s Athletics Prize for the top female scholar-athlete. Professor Brady then obtained her JD from Yale Law School, where she was the two-time recipient of the Parker Prize for legal history scholarship and was awarded the Quintin Johnstone Prize in Real Property Law, the Jewell Prize for an outstanding contribution to a Yale Law School journal, and the Cullen Prize for the best paper written by a first-year student. Following graduation, she served as a clerk to Judge Bruce M. Selya on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and practiced at Ropes and Gray in Boston as a corporate associate focusing on intellectual property transactions. After leaving practice, she was in the first graduating class of the PhD in Law program at Yale University.
Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee
Justice Sarah Campbell was confirmed to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2022. She previously served as an Associate Solicitor General in the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office and as an associate at the law firm of Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC. Justice Campbell earned her law degree from Duke University School of Law, a Master of Public Policy degree from Duke University, and her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee, where she received the Torchbearer Award. She served as a law clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the United States Supreme Court and Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Lecturer, Harvard Law School
James E. Tierney is the former Attorney General of Maine and a Lecturer at Harvard Law School where he teaches a course on the role of state attorneys general while directing the Harvard Attorney General clinic. For thirteen years he was the Director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School, and he has also taught courses at Boston College Law School, Northeastern Law School and the University of Maine School of Law.
Mr. Tierney served as the Attorney General of Maine from 1980 until 1990. During his ten years as Attorney General of Maine, Mr. Tierney played an active role in the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and has instructed newly elected state Attorneys General on the effective performance of their office. Mr. Tierney has also served as a Special Prosecutor in Florida, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Vermont and, on behalf of NAAG, has authored an analysis of the operations of state grand jury practice throughout the United States. He travels regularly to visit in offices of attorney general where he conducts ethics seminars for incumbent attorneys general and their staffs.
Tierney has served on the Board of both the American Judicature Society and was a member of the Board of Commentators of the Courtroom Television Network. In April of 2006, Professor Tierney was selected as the Columbia Law School Public Interest Professor of the Year. This award, which is given to the faculty member or administrator who has most supported and inspired a significant portion of the public interest law student community, is selected by a vote of students.
Tierney is married to Maine author Elizabeth Strout. He has five children and eight grandchildren.
Alston & Bird Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law
Professor Young teaches constitutional law, federal courts, and foreign relations law. He is one of the nation's leading authorities on the constitutional law of federalism, having written extensively on the Rehnquist Court's "Federalist Revival" and the difficulties confronting courts as they seek to draw lines between national and state authority. He also is an active commentator on foreign relations law, where he focuses on the interaction between domestic and supranational courts and the application of international law by domestic courts. Professor Young also writes on constitutional interpretation and constitutional theory. He has been known to dabble in maritime law and comparative constitutional law.
A native of Abilene, Texas, Professor Young joined the Duke Law faculty in 2008, after serving as the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, where he had taught since 1999. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1990 and Harvard Law School in 1993. After law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Boudin of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1993-94) and to Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court (1995-96). Professor Young practiced law at Cohan, Simpson, Cowlishaw, & Wulff in Dallas, Texas (1994-95) and at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. (1996-98), where he specialized in appellate litigation. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (2004-05) and Villanova University School of Law (1998-99), as well as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center (1997).
Elected to the American Law Institute in 2006, Professor Young is an active participant in both public and private litigation in his areas of interest. He has been the principal author of amicus briefs on behalf of leading constitutional scholars in several recent Supreme Court cases, including Medellin v. Texas(concerning presidential power and the authority of the International Court of Justice over domestic courts) and Gonzales v. Raich (concerning federal power to regulate medical marijuana).
Reporter, Washington Free Beacon
Aaron Sibarium is a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon where he covers law, education, and institutional capture. He has broken stories on corporate race discrimination, the race-based allocation of COVID drugs, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Princeton University, and Yale Law School. Aaron previously worked as an editor at the American Interest and earned a B.A. in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, magna cum laude, from Yale University.
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.
Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation Chair, Lex Politica; Of Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as Chair of Lex Politica's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice overseeing the firm’s strategic appellate litigation and critical motions practice in the trial courts. Erin is an experienced litigator who represents clients in constitutional, regulatory, and appellate matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Erin has represented dozens of clients before the Supreme Court of the United States, served as lead counsel in high-profile cases raising novel constitutional and statutory issues, and authored numerous successful petitions for certiorari and briefs in opposition. She has argued in state and federal appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Erin represents diverse clients in high-stakes litigation from state governments to faith-based nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. She possesses expertise on a wide range of subject matters including administrative law, the First Amendment, religious liberty, federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, equitable jurisdiction, tax law, the Affordable Care Act, and Title IX.
Erin represents clients in cases where public communications strategy is paramount. She is a sought-after speaker and writer, has testified multiple times before Congress, and is a frequent presenter on constitutional and administrative law issues, including at the Oxford Union, the National Federalist Society Convention, and university campuses across the country. She is a frequent commentator to media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, WORLD, USA Today, the Federalist, and the Hill.
Erin previously oversaw Alliance Defending Freedom’s--where she still serves as Of Counsel--litigation strategies to empower women and protect the dignity of life, defend pregnancy centers’ First Amendment rights from government overreach, and safeguard Americans’ freedoms from the ever-encroaching administrative state.
Chair, United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Solicitor General, Missouri
D. John Sauer has served as the Solicitor General of Missouri since 2017. Before that, he served as a federal prosecutor for five years and spent time in civil practice at boutique law firms, including the firm he founded, the James Otis Law Group. Mr. Sauer has first-chaired many jury and bench trials, and served as lead counsel in many appeals. He has presented oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the Supreme Court of Missouri, and many other state and federal appellate courts. Mr. Sauer served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He was a Rhodes Scholar and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.
Thomas L. Perkins Distinguished Professor of Law, Duke Law School
Doriane Coleman is the Thomas L. Perkins Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law School, where she specializes in interdisciplinary scholarship focused on women, children, medicine, sports, and law. Her work, single- and co-authored, has been published in numerous U.S. and international journals. She also writes op-eds and is regularly cited in the press.
Her most recent scholarship has centered on sex, its evolving definition, and the implications of this evolution for law and society. The first two articles in this series – Sex in Sport and Re-affirming the Value of the Sports Exception to Title IX's General Non-Discrimination Rule – have been widely read and used in the development of eligibility criteria for the female category. A third article – Sex Neutrality – traces the history of sex in law and addresses the merits of a final move from sex skepticism to sex-blindness. Her book On Sex and Gender – A Commonsense Approach (2024) expands on these themes for a broader audience.
At Duke, Coleman is a Faculty Fellow and Member of the Advisory Council of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and a Faculty Associate of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at the School of Medicine, and the University’s Initiative for Science & Society. She is also a member of the University’s Athletic Council and co-director of the Law School’s Center for Sports Law and Policy.
She received her Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown Law and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University. She was a litigation associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering before beginning her academic career at Howard University School of Law.
Before law school, Coleman ran the 800 meters in collegiate and international competition. She was a multiple All American, All East, and All Ivy athlete, the U.S. National Collegiate Indoor Champion in the 800 meters in 1982, the U.S. National Indoor Champion in the 4 x 400 meters relay in 1982, and the Swiss National Champion in the 800 meters in 1982 and 1983. Over the course of her athletic career she competed for Villanova and Cornell, the Swiss and U.S. National Teams, Athletics West, the Santa Monica and Atoms Track Clubs, and Lausanne Sports.
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.
Thomas L. Perkins Distinguished Professor of Law, Duke Law School
Doriane Coleman is the Thomas L. Perkins Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law School, where she specializes in interdisciplinary scholarship focused on women, children, medicine, sports, and law. Her work, single- and co-authored, has been published in numerous U.S. and international journals. She also writes op-eds and is regularly cited in the press.
Her most recent scholarship has centered on sex, its evolving definition, and the implications of this evolution for law and society. The first two articles in this series – Sex in Sport and Re-affirming the Value of the Sports Exception to Title IX's General Non-Discrimination Rule – have been widely read and used in the development of eligibility criteria for the female category. A third article – Sex Neutrality – traces the history of sex in law and addresses the merits of a final move from sex skepticism to sex-blindness. Her book On Sex and Gender – A Commonsense Approach (2024) expands on these themes for a broader audience.
At Duke, Coleman is a Faculty Fellow and Member of the Advisory Council of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and a Faculty Associate of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at the School of Medicine, and the University’s Initiative for Science & Society. She is also a member of the University’s Athletic Council and co-director of the Law School’s Center for Sports Law and Policy.
She received her Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown Law and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University. She was a litigation associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering before beginning her academic career at Howard University School of Law.
Before law school, Coleman ran the 800 meters in collegiate and international competition. She was a multiple All American, All East, and All Ivy athlete, the U.S. National Collegiate Indoor Champion in the 800 meters in 1982, the U.S. National Indoor Champion in the 4 x 400 meters relay in 1982, and the Swiss National Champion in the 800 meters in 1982 and 1983. Over the course of her athletic career she competed for Villanova and Cornell, the Swiss and U.S. National Teams, Athletics West, the Santa Monica and Atoms Track Clubs, and Lausanne Sports.
Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation Chair, Lex Politica; Of Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as Chair of Lex Politica's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice overseeing the firm’s strategic appellate litigation and critical motions practice in the trial courts. Erin is an experienced litigator who represents clients in constitutional, regulatory, and appellate matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Erin has represented dozens of clients before the Supreme Court of the United States, served as lead counsel in high-profile cases raising novel constitutional and statutory issues, and authored numerous successful petitions for certiorari and briefs in opposition. She has argued in state and federal appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Erin represents diverse clients in high-stakes litigation from state governments to faith-based nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. She possesses expertise on a wide range of subject matters including administrative law, the First Amendment, religious liberty, federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, equitable jurisdiction, tax law, the Affordable Care Act, and Title IX.
Erin represents clients in cases where public communications strategy is paramount. She is a sought-after speaker and writer, has testified multiple times before Congress, and is a frequent presenter on constitutional and administrative law issues, including at the Oxford Union, the National Federalist Society Convention, and university campuses across the country. She is a frequent commentator to media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, WORLD, USA Today, the Federalist, and the Hill.
Erin previously oversaw Alliance Defending Freedom’s--where she still serves as Of Counsel--litigation strategies to empower women and protect the dignity of life, defend pregnancy centers’ First Amendment rights from government overreach, and safeguard Americans’ freedoms from the ever-encroaching administrative state.
Chair, United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Solicitor General, Missouri
D. John Sauer has served as the Solicitor General of Missouri since 2017. Before that, he served as a federal prosecutor for five years and spent time in civil practice at boutique law firms, including the firm he founded, the James Otis Law Group. Mr. Sauer has first-chaired many jury and bench trials, and served as lead counsel in many appeals. He has presented oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the Supreme Court of Missouri, and many other state and federal appellate courts. Mr. Sauer served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He was a Rhodes Scholar and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law and Deputy Dean, Harvard Law School
Molly Brady is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches property law and related subjects. Her scholarship uses historical analyses of property institutions and land use doctrines to explore broader theoretical questions. Her current research projects involve the relationship between covenants and zoning, the persistence of community knowledge in property doctrine, and the uses of history in state constitutional law. She is also an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Fourth Restatement of Property.
Previously, Professor Brady taught at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she received the 2019 UVA Student Council Distinguished Teaching Award, the 2018 Z Society Distinguished Faculty Award for “one outstanding member of the University’s faculty who has positively impacted the student body,” and an invitation to the Seven Society 27th Annual Monticello Dinner Series for “exemplary scholarship and transformative instruction of students.” Her recent article, “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds,” won both the Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarly Papers Prize for junior faculty members in their first five years of law teaching and the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize for the year’s best paper by an early-career scholar.
Professor Brady received an AB summa cum laude in history from Harvard College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was awarded the Harvard-Radcliffe Foundation for Women’s Athletics Prize for the top female scholar-athlete. Professor Brady then obtained her JD from Yale Law School, where she was the two-time recipient of the Parker Prize for legal history scholarship and was awarded the Quintin Johnstone Prize in Real Property Law, the Jewell Prize for an outstanding contribution to a Yale Law School journal, and the Cullen Prize for the best paper written by a first-year student. Following graduation, she served as a clerk to Judge Bruce M. Selya on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and practiced at Ropes and Gray in Boston as a corporate associate focusing on intellectual property transactions. After leaving practice, she was in the first graduating class of the PhD in Law program at Yale University.
Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee
Justice Sarah Campbell was confirmed to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2022. She previously served as an Associate Solicitor General in the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office and as an associate at the law firm of Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC. Justice Campbell earned her law degree from Duke University School of Law, a Master of Public Policy degree from Duke University, and her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee, where she received the Torchbearer Award. She served as a law clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the United States Supreme Court and Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Lecturer, Harvard Law School
James E. Tierney is the former Attorney General of Maine and a Lecturer at Harvard Law School where he teaches a course on the role of state attorneys general while directing the Harvard Attorney General clinic. For thirteen years he was the Director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School, and he has also taught courses at Boston College Law School, Northeastern Law School and the University of Maine School of Law.
Mr. Tierney served as the Attorney General of Maine from 1980 until 1990. During his ten years as Attorney General of Maine, Mr. Tierney played an active role in the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and has instructed newly elected state Attorneys General on the effective performance of their office. Mr. Tierney has also served as a Special Prosecutor in Florida, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Vermont and, on behalf of NAAG, has authored an analysis of the operations of state grand jury practice throughout the United States. He travels regularly to visit in offices of attorney general where he conducts ethics seminars for incumbent attorneys general and their staffs.
Tierney has served on the Board of both the American Judicature Society and was a member of the Board of Commentators of the Courtroom Television Network. In April of 2006, Professor Tierney was selected as the Columbia Law School Public Interest Professor of the Year. This award, which is given to the faculty member or administrator who has most supported and inspired a significant portion of the public interest law student community, is selected by a vote of students.
Tierney is married to Maine author Elizabeth Strout. He has five children and eight grandchildren.
Alston & Bird Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law
Professor Young teaches constitutional law, federal courts, and foreign relations law. He is one of the nation's leading authorities on the constitutional law of federalism, having written extensively on the Rehnquist Court's "Federalist Revival" and the difficulties confronting courts as they seek to draw lines between national and state authority. He also is an active commentator on foreign relations law, where he focuses on the interaction between domestic and supranational courts and the application of international law by domestic courts. Professor Young also writes on constitutional interpretation and constitutional theory. He has been known to dabble in maritime law and comparative constitutional law.
A native of Abilene, Texas, Professor Young joined the Duke Law faculty in 2008, after serving as the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, where he had taught since 1999. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1990 and Harvard Law School in 1993. After law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Boudin of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1993-94) and to Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court (1995-96). Professor Young practiced law at Cohan, Simpson, Cowlishaw, & Wulff in Dallas, Texas (1994-95) and at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. (1996-98), where he specialized in appellate litigation. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (2004-05) and Villanova University School of Law (1998-99), as well as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center (1997).
Elected to the American Law Institute in 2006, Professor Young is an active participant in both public and private litigation in his areas of interest. He has been the principal author of amicus briefs on behalf of leading constitutional scholars in several recent Supreme Court cases, including Medellin v. Texas(concerning presidential power and the authority of the International Court of Justice over domestic courts) and Gonzales v. Raich (concerning federal power to regulate medical marijuana).
Managing Director, Beacon Global Strategies LLC
From 2011-2013, Mr. Allen served as the Majority Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Under Chairman Mike Rogers’ (R-MI) direction, the HPSCI restored the process of an annual intelligence authorization bill to fund and give direction to the seventeen elements of the intelligence community, enacting measures for fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013. The HPSCI also led the House of Representatives’ consideration of cyber security legislation, passing the Cyber Information Sharing Protection Act (CISPA) with bipartisan majorities in 2012 and 2013.
Prior to joining the HPSCI, he was director for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s successor to the 9/11 Commission, the National Security Preparedness Group, co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former Governor Tom Kean.
Previously, Mr. Allen served in the White House for seven years in a variety of national security policy and legislative roles. At the National Security Council (NSC), he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counter-proliferation Strategy from June 2007 to January 2009 under National Security Advisor Steve Hadley. As Senior Director, he contributed to the development of the U.S. government’s policy on counter-proliferation issues, including on the Iranian, Syrian, and North Korean nuclear files; missile defense; civilian nuclear cooperation including the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement; U.S. exports controls; bio-defense; and WMD and terrorism.
As the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Legislative Affairs from March 2005 to June 2007, Mr. Allen was the NSC’s chief liaison with the national security committees of Congress and led the confirmation teams of DNI nominees Negroponte and McConnell and CIA Director General Michael Hayden.
From December 2001 to February 2005, Mr. Allen worked in the legislative affairs office of the White House’s Homeland Security Council. As Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, Mr. Allen was part of team that managed the White House effort to enact the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
At the beginning of the Bush Administration, Mr. Allen worked in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the Department of State. Mr. Allen received his L.L.M. with distinction in International Law from the Georgetown University Law Center, his J.D. from the University of Alabama (cum laude), and his B.A. from Vanderbilt University.
In addition to his work at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in 2009, Mr. Allen taught National Security Policymaking at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs and served as an advisor for the congressionally-created Commission on WMD and Terrorism co-chaired by Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent. Mr. Allen was the Intelligence Team Lead for the Romney for President Transition Team.
Mr. Allen is the author of Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence After 9/11. (Potomac Books, September 2013).
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Former President Trump appointed Marshall S. Billingslea as Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control on April 10, 2020 and accorded him the personal rank of Ambassador from May 18, 2020 to November 17, 2020. Billingslea leads arms control negotiations on behalf of the U.S. Government.
Billingslea most recently served as the Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing at the U.S. Department of Treasury since June 2017. In that role he built international coalitions and led U.S. efforts to counter illicit financial activities. In 2018 he was selected unanimously by the 37 member countries of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — the global anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing body — to serve as its President. He also co-chaired the global Counter-ISIS Finance Group and multiple bilateral negotiating fora with friendly and allied nations.
A former senior Pentagon official, Billingslea has deep expertise in arms control and broad experience in foreign policy and national security, having previously served in the Pentagon as the Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. Billingslea has also worked as NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment, and as a Senior Professional Staff Member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Billingslea holds a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University. He has been decorated with numerous awards internationally including the Cross of Terra Mariana by the President of Estonia; the Knight’s Cross by the President of Poland; and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Czech Republic. Throughout his years of public service, he has been awarded the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service by the U.S. Secretary of Defense; decorated by the U.S. Secretary of the Navy with the Distinguished Public Service medal; he was most recently awarded the Treasury Medal by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
Professor of the Practice of Law and Executive Director, Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, Duke University Law School
Charles J. Dunlap Jr. joined the Duke Law faculty in July 2010 where he is currently a professor of the practice of law and Executive Director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. His teaching and scholarly writing focus on national security, law of armed conflict, the use of force under international law, civil-military relations, cyberwar, airpower, military justice, and ethical issues related to the practice of national security law.
Dunlap retired from the Air Force in June 2010, having attained the rank of major general during a 34-year career in the Judge Advocate General Corps. In his capacity as Deputy Judge Advocate General spanning from May 2006 to March 2010, he assisted the Judge Advocate General in the professional supervision of more than 2,200 judge advocates, 350 civilian lawyers, 1,400 enlisted paralegals, and 500 civilians around the world. In addition to overseeing an array of military justice, operational, international, and civil law functions, he provided legal advice to commanders and civilian leaders at all levels.
In the course of his career, Dunlap has been involved in various high-profile interagency and policy matters, including his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives concerning the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Dunlap previously served as the senior lawyer (staff judge advocate) at Air Combat Command Headquarters at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, at Air Education and Training Command Headquarters at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas, and at U.S. Strategic Command, Omaha, Nebraska, among other leadership posts. Additionally, he served on the faculty of the Air Force Judge Advocate General School where he taught various civil and criminal law topics. An experienced trial lawyer, he also spent two years as a military trial judge for a 22-state circuit. He served tours in the United Kingdom and Korea, and deployed for operations in the Middle East and Africa. He also led military-to-military delegations to Colombia, Uruguay, South Africa, and the Czech Republic.
A prolific author and accomplished public speaker, Dunlap’s commentary on a wide variety of national security topics has been published in leading newspapers and military journals. His 2001 essay written for Harvard University’s Carr Center on “lawfare,” a concept he defines as “the use or misuse of law as a substitute for traditional military means to accomplish an operational objective,” has been highly influential among military scholars and in the broader legal academy.
Dunlap is also the author of the prize-winning essay, “The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012”, originally published in 1992, which was selected for the 40th Anniversary Edition of Parameters (Winter 2010-2011).
Dunlap’s legal scholarship has been published in the Stanford Law Review, the Yale Journal of International Affairs, the Harvard Law’s National Security Journal, the Wake Forest Law Review, the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the University of Nebraska Law Review, the Texas Tech Law Review, Temple Law’s Journal of International & Comparative Law, the University of North Carolina’s Journal of International Law, the Connecticut Law Review, the Tennessee Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, among others.
He’s also authored numerous articles and opinion pieces in a range of publications including The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Air Force Times, Strategic Studies Quarterly, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Business Insider, the Journal of Genocide Research, The Hill, Small Wars Journal, and the blogs, Lawfare and Just Security.
Maj Gen Dunlap founded his blog Lawfire in 2015 and has since written over 300 posts on a wide variety of subjects.
Dunlap's wife, Joy, was a vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters, and later a deputy director of Government Relations for the Military Officers Association of America. She served as the elected president of Duke Campus Club, and is a recipient of the prestigious Order of the Emerald by Kappa Delta sorority. Her blog, Speaking Joyfully, won 3rd place in the blog category at the 2021 Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. They reside in Durham.
Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Angela Stent is Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs. During the academic year 2015-2016 she is a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund. From 2004-2006 she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. From 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. Stent’s academic work focuses on the triangular political and economic relationship between the United Sates, Russia and Europe. Her publications include: Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, The Soviet Collapse and The New Europe (Princeton University Pres, 1999); From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981); “Repairing US-Russian Relations: A Long Road Ahead” (2009) “Restoration and Revolution in Putin’s Foreign Policy,” (2008), “An Energy Superpower? Russia and Europe” (2008) and “Reluctant Europeans: Three Centuries of Russian Ambivalence Toward the West,” (2007), “Putin’s World” (2014). Her latest book is The Limits of Partnership: US-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014), for which she won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon prize for the best book on the practice of American Diplomacy. She is a member of the senior advisory panel for NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a contributing editor to Survival and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies, World Policy Journal, Internationale Politik and Mirovaia Ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnie Otnosheniie. She has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Russia and Central Asia. She is a Trustee of the Eurasia Foundation and of Supporters of Civil Society in Russia. Dr. Stent received her B.A. from Cambridge University, her MSc. with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her M.A. and PhD. from Harvard University.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Managing Director, Beacon Global Strategies LLC
From 2011-2013, Mr. Allen served as the Majority Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Under Chairman Mike Rogers’ (R-MI) direction, the HPSCI restored the process of an annual intelligence authorization bill to fund and give direction to the seventeen elements of the intelligence community, enacting measures for fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013. The HPSCI also led the House of Representatives’ consideration of cyber security legislation, passing the Cyber Information Sharing Protection Act (CISPA) with bipartisan majorities in 2012 and 2013.
Prior to joining the HPSCI, he was director for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s successor to the 9/11 Commission, the National Security Preparedness Group, co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former Governor Tom Kean.
Previously, Mr. Allen served in the White House for seven years in a variety of national security policy and legislative roles. At the National Security Council (NSC), he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counter-proliferation Strategy from June 2007 to January 2009 under National Security Advisor Steve Hadley. As Senior Director, he contributed to the development of the U.S. government’s policy on counter-proliferation issues, including on the Iranian, Syrian, and North Korean nuclear files; missile defense; civilian nuclear cooperation including the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement; U.S. exports controls; bio-defense; and WMD and terrorism.
As the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Legislative Affairs from March 2005 to June 2007, Mr. Allen was the NSC’s chief liaison with the national security committees of Congress and led the confirmation teams of DNI nominees Negroponte and McConnell and CIA Director General Michael Hayden.
From December 2001 to February 2005, Mr. Allen worked in the legislative affairs office of the White House’s Homeland Security Council. As Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, Mr. Allen was part of team that managed the White House effort to enact the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
At the beginning of the Bush Administration, Mr. Allen worked in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the Department of State. Mr. Allen received his L.L.M. with distinction in International Law from the Georgetown University Law Center, his J.D. from the University of Alabama (cum laude), and his B.A. from Vanderbilt University.
In addition to his work at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in 2009, Mr. Allen taught National Security Policymaking at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs and served as an advisor for the congressionally-created Commission on WMD and Terrorism co-chaired by Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent. Mr. Allen was the Intelligence Team Lead for the Romney for President Transition Team.
Mr. Allen is the author of Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence After 9/11. (Potomac Books, September 2013).
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Former President Trump appointed Marshall S. Billingslea as Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control on April 10, 2020 and accorded him the personal rank of Ambassador from May 18, 2020 to November 17, 2020. Billingslea leads arms control negotiations on behalf of the U.S. Government.
Billingslea most recently served as the Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing at the U.S. Department of Treasury since June 2017. In that role he built international coalitions and led U.S. efforts to counter illicit financial activities. In 2018 he was selected unanimously by the 37 member countries of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — the global anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing body — to serve as its President. He also co-chaired the global Counter-ISIS Finance Group and multiple bilateral negotiating fora with friendly and allied nations.
A former senior Pentagon official, Billingslea has deep expertise in arms control and broad experience in foreign policy and national security, having previously served in the Pentagon as the Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. Billingslea has also worked as NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment, and as a Senior Professional Staff Member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Billingslea holds a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University. He has been decorated with numerous awards internationally including the Cross of Terra Mariana by the President of Estonia; the Knight’s Cross by the President of Poland; and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Czech Republic. Throughout his years of public service, he has been awarded the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service by the U.S. Secretary of Defense; decorated by the U.S. Secretary of the Navy with the Distinguished Public Service medal; he was most recently awarded the Treasury Medal by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
Professor of the Practice of Law and Executive Director, Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, Duke University Law School
Charles J. Dunlap Jr. joined the Duke Law faculty in July 2010 where he is currently a professor of the practice of law and Executive Director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. His teaching and scholarly writing focus on national security, law of armed conflict, the use of force under international law, civil-military relations, cyberwar, airpower, military justice, and ethical issues related to the practice of national security law.
Dunlap retired from the Air Force in June 2010, having attained the rank of major general during a 34-year career in the Judge Advocate General Corps. In his capacity as Deputy Judge Advocate General spanning from May 2006 to March 2010, he assisted the Judge Advocate General in the professional supervision of more than 2,200 judge advocates, 350 civilian lawyers, 1,400 enlisted paralegals, and 500 civilians around the world. In addition to overseeing an array of military justice, operational, international, and civil law functions, he provided legal advice to commanders and civilian leaders at all levels.
In the course of his career, Dunlap has been involved in various high-profile interagency and policy matters, including his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives concerning the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Dunlap previously served as the senior lawyer (staff judge advocate) at Air Combat Command Headquarters at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, at Air Education and Training Command Headquarters at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas, and at U.S. Strategic Command, Omaha, Nebraska, among other leadership posts. Additionally, he served on the faculty of the Air Force Judge Advocate General School where he taught various civil and criminal law topics. An experienced trial lawyer, he also spent two years as a military trial judge for a 22-state circuit. He served tours in the United Kingdom and Korea, and deployed for operations in the Middle East and Africa. He also led military-to-military delegations to Colombia, Uruguay, South Africa, and the Czech Republic.
A prolific author and accomplished public speaker, Dunlap’s commentary on a wide variety of national security topics has been published in leading newspapers and military journals. His 2001 essay written for Harvard University’s Carr Center on “lawfare,” a concept he defines as “the use or misuse of law as a substitute for traditional military means to accomplish an operational objective,” has been highly influential among military scholars and in the broader legal academy.
Dunlap is also the author of the prize-winning essay, “The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012”, originally published in 1992, which was selected for the 40th Anniversary Edition of Parameters (Winter 2010-2011).
Dunlap’s legal scholarship has been published in the Stanford Law Review, the Yale Journal of International Affairs, the Harvard Law’s National Security Journal, the Wake Forest Law Review, the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the University of Nebraska Law Review, the Texas Tech Law Review, Temple Law’s Journal of International & Comparative Law, the University of North Carolina’s Journal of International Law, the Connecticut Law Review, the Tennessee Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, among others.
He’s also authored numerous articles and opinion pieces in a range of publications including The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Air Force Times, Strategic Studies Quarterly, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Business Insider, the Journal of Genocide Research, The Hill, Small Wars Journal, and the blogs, Lawfare and Just Security.
Maj Gen Dunlap founded his blog Lawfire in 2015 and has since written over 300 posts on a wide variety of subjects.
Dunlap's wife, Joy, was a vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters, and later a deputy director of Government Relations for the Military Officers Association of America. She served as the elected president of Duke Campus Club, and is a recipient of the prestigious Order of the Emerald by Kappa Delta sorority. Her blog, Speaking Joyfully, won 3rd place in the blog category at the 2021 Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. They reside in Durham.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Angela Stent is Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs. During the academic year 2015-2016 she is a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund. From 2004-2006 she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. From 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. Stent’s academic work focuses on the triangular political and economic relationship between the United Sates, Russia and Europe. Her publications include: Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, The Soviet Collapse and The New Europe (Princeton University Pres, 1999); From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981); “Repairing US-Russian Relations: A Long Road Ahead” (2009) “Restoration and Revolution in Putin’s Foreign Policy,” (2008), “An Energy Superpower? Russia and Europe” (2008) and “Reluctant Europeans: Three Centuries of Russian Ambivalence Toward the West,” (2007), “Putin’s World” (2014). Her latest book is The Limits of Partnership: US-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014), for which she won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon prize for the best book on the practice of American Diplomacy. She is a member of the senior advisory panel for NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a contributing editor to Survival and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies, World Policy Journal, Internationale Politik and Mirovaia Ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnie Otnosheniie. She has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Russia and Central Asia. She is a Trustee of the Eurasia Foundation and of Supporters of Civil Society in Russia. Dr. Stent received her B.A. from Cambridge University, her MSc. with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her M.A. and PhD. from Harvard University.
Annual Supreme Court Preview
Duke Student Chapter
Durham , NCLife and the Law: A Conversation with Judge Willett and Justice Campbell
Duke Student Chapter
Durham, NCShowcase Panel III: Sex, Gender, and the Law
Jennifer C. Braceras, Erin M. Hawley, Andrea R. Lucas, D. John Sauer, Doriane Lambelet Coleman
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. The 1964 Civil Rights Act outlaws...
Showcase Panel III: Sex, Gender, and the Law
Jennifer C. Braceras, Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Erin M. Hawley, Andrea R. Lucas, D. John Sauer
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. The 1964 Civil Rights Act outlaws...
Showcase Panel III: Sex, Gender, and the Law
2024 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCPanel I: Federalism and the Separation of Powers
Stephanos Bibas, Maureen Brady, Sarah Keeton Campbell, James E. Tierney, Ernest Young
It has been said that American-style split sovereignty provides the people a “double security” for...
Panel I: Federalism and the Separation of Powers
2024 National Student Symposium
Cambridge, MADuke Law School Alumni Summer Rooftop Reception
Washington, DCThe Russian Invasion of Ukraine and International Law, Order, and Security
Michael Allen, Marshall S. Billingslea, Charles J. Dunlap, Angela Stent, Chad A. Readler
In February, Russia began a full-scale military action against Ukraine. This war in Ukraine constitutes...
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and International Law, Order, and Security
Michael Allen, Marshall S. Billingslea, Charles J. Dunlap, Chad A. Readler, Angela Stent
In February, Russia began a full-scale military action against Ukraine. This war in Ukraine constitutes...