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.
Director, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Thomas Berry is the director in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation and clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His academic work has appeared in NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, Washington and Lee Law Review Online, and Federalist Society Review. His popular writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Law Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, National Review Online, and The Hill Online. He has testified before the U.S. Senate, and his work has been cited by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Berry holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was a senior editor on the Stanford Law and Policy Review and a Bradley Student Fellow in the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He graduated with a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe.
Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP
United States Representative, United States House of Representatives
Congressman Jamie Raskin proudly represents Maryland’s 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. The district includes Montgomery, Carroll, and Frederick Counties. Congressman Raskin was sworn into his second Term at the start of the 116th Congress on January 3, 2019.
Congressman Raskin is a returning Member of the House Judiciary Committee, the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and the Committee on House Administration. This Congress, he joined the House Committee on Rules and now Chairs the Rules Subcommittee on Expedited Procedures. Raskin is Vice Chair of the House Administration Committee, Chair of the Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and Vice Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. Raskin is the Caucus Leadership Representative for the 116th Congress, a role in which he represents Junior Members of the Caucus (those who have served five or less Terms) at the leadership table. He was also appointed to serve as a Senior Whip for the 116th Congress.
Prior to his time in Congress, Raskin was a three-term State Senator in Maryland, where he also served as the Senate Majority Whip. He earned a reputation for building coalitions in Annapolis to deliver a series of landmark legislative accomplishments. He was also a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for more than 25 years. He authored several books, including the Washington Post best-seller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People and the highly-acclaimed We the Students: Supreme Court Cases For and About America’s Students, which has sold more than 50,000 copies.
Congressman Raskin is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, live in Takoma Park with their dogs, Potter and Toby. They have three grown children: Tabitha, Tommy, and Hannah.
Author, The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College
Tara Ross is nationally recognized for her expertise on the Electoral College. She is the author of Why We Need the Electoral College (2019), The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule (2017), We Elect A President: The Story of our Electoral College (2016), and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College (2d ed. 2012). She is also the author of She Fought Too: Stories of Revolutionary War Heroines (2019), and a co-author of Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State (2008) (with Joseph C. Smith, Jr.). Her Prager University video, Do You Understand the Electoral College?, is Prager’s most-viewed video ever, with more than 60 million views.
Tara often appears as a guest on a variety of talk shows nationwide, and she regularly addresses civic, university, and legal audiences. She’s contributed to several law reviews and newspapers, including the National Law Journal, USA Today, the Washington Examiner, The Hill, The Washington Times, and FoxNews.com. She’s appeared before institutions such as the Cooper Union, Brown University, the Dole Institute of Politics, and Mount Vernon. She’s appeared on Fox News, CSPAN, NPR, and a variety of other national and local shows.
Tara is a retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She resides in Dallas with her husband and children.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
University Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University
George C. Edwards III is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University. He also holds the Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies and has served as the Olin Professor of American Government at Oxford and the John Adams Fellow at the University of London, and has held senior visiting appointments at Sciences Po-Paris, Peking University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He is an Associate Member of Nuffield College at the University of Oxford and was the founder and from 1991-2001 the director of The Center for Presidential Studies. In 2012-13, he will be Winant Professor of American Government at Oxford.
A leading scholar of the presidency, he has authored dozens of articles and has written or edited 25 books on American politics and public policy making. He is also editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly and general editor of the Oxford Handbook of American Politics series. Among his recent books, On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit examines the effectiveness of presidential leadership of public opinion; Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America evaluates the consequences of the method of electing the president; Governing by Campaigning analyzes the politics of the Bush presidency; and The Strategic President offers a new formulation for understanding presidential leadership. His most recent book,Overreach, analyzes presidential leadership during the Obama presidency.
Professor Edwards has served as president of the Presidency Research Section of the American Political Science Association, which has named its annual dissertation prize in his honor and awarded him its Career Service Award. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, he has received the Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service from the U.S. Army and the Pi Sigma Alpha Prize from the Southern Political Science Association. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has spoken to more than 200 universities and other groups in the U.S. and abroad, keynoted numerous national and international conferences, done hundreds of interviews with the national and international press, and can be heard on National Public Radio. Grants from the National Science Foundation, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and the Ford Foundation have funded his work. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Roper Center and the Board of Trustees of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and on many editorial boards.
Dr. Edwards also applies his scholarship to practical issues of governing, including advising Brazil on its constitution and the operation of its presidency, Russia on building a democratic national party system, Mexico on elections, and Chinese scholars on democracy. He also authored studies for the 1988 and 2000 U.S. presidential transitions.
Founder and Executive Director, Save Our States
Trent England defends the Electoral College as the founder and director of Save Our States. He also serves as the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.
Trent previously served as Executive Vice President of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and earlier of the Olympia, Washington-based Freedom Foundation. He was also a morning-drive radio host, a state legislative candidate, a legal policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, and a research analyst at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Trent is the author of "Why We Must Defend the Electoral College," co-author of "The Case Against Ranked-Choice Voting," and a contributor to "The Heritage Guide to the Constitution" and "One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty." His writing has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Times, and other newspapers. He is a producer of the feature-length documentary "Safeguard: An Electoral College Story."
Trent earned a law degree from The George Mason University School of Law and a bachelor of arts in government from Claremont McKenna College. He lives in Oklahoma City with his wife and their three children.
Chair, National Popular Vote
John R. Koza received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan in 1972. He published a board game involving Electoral College strategy in 1966. From 1973 through 1987, he was co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Scientific Games Inc. where he co-invented the rub-off instant lottery ticket used by state lotteries. In the 1980s, he and attorney Barry Fadem were active in promoting adoption of lotteries by various states through the citizen-initiative process and state legislative action. Between 1988 and 2003, he taught a course on genetic algorithms and genetic programming at Stanford University, where he was a consulting professor. He is lead author of the book Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote and originator of the National Popular Vote legislation. He is Chair of National Popular Vote and a member of the Board of Directors. Koza has visited 29 states on behalf of National Popular Vote.
Author, The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College
Tara Ross is nationally recognized for her expertise on the Electoral College. She is the author of Why We Need the Electoral College (2019), The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule (2017), We Elect A President: The Story of our Electoral College (2016), and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College (2d ed. 2012). She is also the author of She Fought Too: Stories of Revolutionary War Heroines (2019), and a co-author of Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State (2008) (with Joseph C. Smith, Jr.). Her Prager University video, Do You Understand the Electoral College?, is Prager’s most-viewed video ever, with more than 60 million views.
Tara often appears as a guest on a variety of talk shows nationwide, and she regularly addresses civic, university, and legal audiences. She’s contributed to several law reviews and newspapers, including the National Law Journal, USA Today, the Washington Examiner, The Hill, The Washington Times, and FoxNews.com. She’s appeared before institutions such as the Cooper Union, Brown University, the Dole Institute of Politics, and Mount Vernon. She’s appeared on Fox News, CSPAN, NPR, and a variety of other national and local shows.
Tara is a retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She resides in Dallas with her husband and children.
Nathaniel L. Nathanson Professor of Law Emeritus, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
A scholar in the field of constitutional law, Robert Bennett has been a member of the faculty of the Northwestern University School of Law since 1969, serving as the school’s dean from 1985 to 1995. Since 2002 he has been the Nathaniel L. Nathanson Professor of Law at Northwestern. With some regularity Professor Bennett teaches a seminar in the Law of American Democracy and courses in contracts, legislation, constitutional law, and constitutional theory. Professor Bennett has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, the University of Virginia School of Law, the University of Southern California Law Center, Brooklyn Law School, and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University.
Professor Bennett is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and served as the Foundation’s president from 1992 to 1994. He has been a member of the American Law Institute since 1979. He was also a co-founder of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and served as its president. Professor Bennett is the author of numerous books and articles. His two most recent books are Talking It Through: Puzzles of American Democracy, published by Cornell University Press in 2002 and Taming The Electoral College, published by Stanford University Press in 2006. At the present time he is at work on a (co-authored) book about constitutional interpretation for Cornell University Press, tentatively titled Originalism and Living Constitutionalism. Professor Bennett received his BA, summa cum laude, in 1962 from Harvard University and his LLB, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1965. At Harvard College he was elected to phi beta kappa and at Harvard Law School he was a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review. Professor Bennett received a Knox Memorial Fellowship from Harvard University for study at the London School of Economics in 1965-66, and the following year he served as legal assistant to Commissioner Nicholas Johnson of the Federal Communications Commission. He was Reginald Heber Smith Fellow at the Office of Economic Opportunity, assigned to the Chicago Legal Aid Bureau in 1967-68, and he practiced law as an associate at the Chicago law firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt in 1968-69. Professor Bennett and his wife, Harriet Trop, live in Chicago and they have one daughter, Ariana Trop Bennett, who does as well.
Director, Center for Representative Government, Cato Institute
John Samples directs Cato's Center for Representative Government, which studies campaign finance regulation, delegation of legislative authority, term limits, and the political culture of limited government and the civic virtues necessary for liberty. He is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University. Samples is the author of The Struggle to Limit Government: A Modern Political History and The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform. Prior to joining Cato, Samples served eight years as director of Georgetown University Press, and before that, as vice president of the Twentieth Century Fund. He has published scholarly articles in Society, History of Political Thought, and Telos. Samples has also been featured in mainstream publications like USA Today, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on NPR, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Samples received his Ph.D. in political science from Rutgers University.
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