Ashe Family Chair Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law
Eric J. Segall graduated from Emory University, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, and from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was the research editor for the Law Review and member of Order of the Coif. He clerked for the Chief Judge Charles Moye Jr. for the Northern District of Georgia, and Albert J. Henderson of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. After his clerkships, Segall worked for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and the U.S. Department of Justice, before joining the Georgia State faculty in 1991.
Segall teaches federal courts and constitutional law I and II. He is the author of the books Originalism as Faith and Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges. His articles on constitutional law have appeared in, among others, the Harvard Law Review Forum, the Stanford Law Review On Line, the UCLA Law Review, the George Washington Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, and Constitutional Commentary among many others.
Segall’s op-eds and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, The Atlantic, SLATE, Vox, Salon, and the Daily Beast, among others. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and France 24 and all four of Atlanta’s local television stations. He has also appeared on numerous local and national radio shows.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Partner, Clement & Murphy, PLLC
Paul served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. Before his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for over three years.
Paul has argued over 100 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, United States v. Booker, MGM v. Grokster, Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Rucho v. Common Cause, Facebook v. Duguid, and TransUnion v. Ramirez. Paul has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. He has also argued many important cases in the lower courts, including Walker v. Cheney, United States v. Moussaoui and NFL v. Brady.
Paul’s practice focuses on appellate matters, constitutional litigation and strategic counseling. He represents a broad array of clients in the Supreme Court and in federal and state appellate courts. Last year, for example, he successfully argued Supreme Court cases involving significant issues of energy regulation, statutory interpretation, state sovereign immunity and Article III standing, and successfully argued a trademark appeal in the Fourth Circuit, and a constitutional appeal before the en banc Eleventh Circuit.
Paul focuses on high-stakes appeals. In recent years, he successfully defended a $1.2 billion jury verdict for clients in a Tenth Circuit case, while securing the reversal of an over $2 billion jury verdict for another client in the Seventh Circuit and the approval of a nearly $1 billion dollar class action settlement in the Third Circuit. He has initiated major administrative law challenges and constitutional litigation against the federal government, such as the successful challenge to the HHS drug-pricing rule and threatened challenges that led to the withdrawal of the Treasury Department’s proposed cryptocurrency regulations. He also counsels clients on a variety of strategic legal questions, whether arising from pending legislation, government inquiries or ongoing litigation.
Paul has undertaken substantial pro bono engagements in the Supreme Court, such as twice successfully representing the defendant in Bond v. United States and successfully representing the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska v. Parker, the guardian ad litem in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, the defendant in Sekhar v. United States, a high school football coach in Kennedy v. Bremerton, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. Paul’s pro bono representation also precipitated the federal government’s confession of error in United States v. Rojas.
Following law school, Paul clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, he went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights.
Paul is a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught in various capacities since 1998. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute. He is the Justice Joseph Story Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Gray Center at Scalia Law School.
Founder & CEO, Edelson PC
Jay Edelson is the founder of Edelson PC. He is considered one of the nation’s leading plaintiff’s lawyers, with his firm having helped secure over $45 billion in settlements and verdicts on behalf of classes, individuals, and governmental entities. Law360 described Jay as a “Titan of the Plaintiff’s Bar.” Jay has been recognized as one of “America’s top trial lawyers” in the mass action arena. LawDragon named him one of the top Plaintiff Financial Lawyers in the country. He has been called “probably the best known, and most innovative, consumer privacy lawyer on the planet,” with he and his firm holding records for the largest trial verdict in a consumer privacy case ($925m), the largest consumer privacy settlement ($650m) and the largest TCPA settlement ($76m).
Jay has been appointed to represent state and local regulators on some of the largest issues of the day, ranging from opioids suits against pharmaceutical companies, to environmental actions against polluters, to breaches of trust against energy companies and for-profit hospitals, to privacy suits against Google, Facebook, and others.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Founder, Original Jurisdiction
David Lat is a lawyer turned writer. He publishes Original Jurisdiction, a newsletter on Substack about law and legal affairs, and he writes for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Prior to launching Original Jurisdiction, David founded Above the Law, one of the nation's most widely read legal news websites, and Underneath Their Robes, a popular blog about federal judges that he wrote under a pseudonym. He is also the author of a novel set in the world of the federal courts, Supreme Ambitions. Before entering the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Partner, Clement & Murphy, PLLC
Paul served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. Before his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for over three years.
Paul has argued over 100 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, United States v. Booker, MGM v. Grokster, Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Rucho v. Common Cause, Facebook v. Duguid, and TransUnion v. Ramirez. Paul has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. He has also argued many important cases in the lower courts, including Walker v. Cheney, United States v. Moussaoui and NFL v. Brady.
Paul’s practice focuses on appellate matters, constitutional litigation and strategic counseling. He represents a broad array of clients in the Supreme Court and in federal and state appellate courts. Last year, for example, he successfully argued Supreme Court cases involving significant issues of energy regulation, statutory interpretation, state sovereign immunity and Article III standing, and successfully argued a trademark appeal in the Fourth Circuit, and a constitutional appeal before the en banc Eleventh Circuit.
Paul focuses on high-stakes appeals. In recent years, he successfully defended a $1.2 billion jury verdict for clients in a Tenth Circuit case, while securing the reversal of an over $2 billion jury verdict for another client in the Seventh Circuit and the approval of a nearly $1 billion dollar class action settlement in the Third Circuit. He has initiated major administrative law challenges and constitutional litigation against the federal government, such as the successful challenge to the HHS drug-pricing rule and threatened challenges that led to the withdrawal of the Treasury Department’s proposed cryptocurrency regulations. He also counsels clients on a variety of strategic legal questions, whether arising from pending legislation, government inquiries or ongoing litigation.
Paul has undertaken substantial pro bono engagements in the Supreme Court, such as twice successfully representing the defendant in Bond v. United States and successfully representing the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska v. Parker, the guardian ad litem in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, the defendant in Sekhar v. United States, a high school football coach in Kennedy v. Bremerton, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. Paul’s pro bono representation also precipitated the federal government’s confession of error in United States v. Rojas.
Following law school, Paul clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, he went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights.
Paul is a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught in various capacities since 1998. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute. He is the Justice Joseph Story Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Gray Center at Scalia Law School.
Founder & CEO, Edelson PC
Jay Edelson is the founder of Edelson PC. He is considered one of the nation’s leading plaintiff’s lawyers, with his firm having helped secure over $45 billion in settlements and verdicts on behalf of classes, individuals, and governmental entities. Law360 described Jay as a “Titan of the Plaintiff’s Bar.” Jay has been recognized as one of “America’s top trial lawyers” in the mass action arena. LawDragon named him one of the top Plaintiff Financial Lawyers in the country. He has been called “probably the best known, and most innovative, consumer privacy lawyer on the planet,” with he and his firm holding records for the largest trial verdict in a consumer privacy case ($925m), the largest consumer privacy settlement ($650m) and the largest TCPA settlement ($76m).
Jay has been appointed to represent state and local regulators on some of the largest issues of the day, ranging from opioids suits against pharmaceutical companies, to environmental actions against polluters, to breaches of trust against energy companies and for-profit hospitals, to privacy suits against Google, Facebook, and others.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Founder, Original Jurisdiction
David Lat is a lawyer turned writer. He publishes Original Jurisdiction, a newsletter on Substack about law and legal affairs, and he writes for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Prior to launching Original Jurisdiction, David founded Above the Law, one of the nation's most widely read legal news websites, and Underneath Their Robes, a popular blog about federal judges that he wrote under a pseudonym. He is also the author of a novel set in the world of the federal courts, Supreme Ambitions. Before entering the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Stephen Cranney has a dual PhD in sociology and demography from the University of Pennsylvania and is a freelance data scientist in the Washington, DC, area.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Chat GPT and Libel Law
Georgia State Student Chapter
Atlanta, GAThe State of Law Schools Series Part 1: Discussion, Coercion, and The Pursuit of Truth: The Role of Law Schools in Promoting Civility
Paul D. Clement, Jay Edelson, James C. Ho, David Lat, Renée Lettow Lerner, Eugene Volokh
Recent events at a number of law schools have raised concerns about civility and respect...
The State of Law Schools Series Part 1: Discussion, Coercion, and The Pursuit of Truth: The Role of Law Schools in Promoting Civility
Open Minds with Prof. Eugene Volokh & Prof. Joshua Kleinfeld, Part III
Eugene Volokh, Joshua Kleinfeld
Finally, we turn to the present moment and consider the current challenges to American free...
Open Minds with Prof. Eugene Volokh & Prof. Joshua Kleinfeld, Part II
Eugene Volokh, Joshua Kleinfeld
What are the fundamentals of how free speech law works and what are the outer...
Open Minds with Prof. Eugene Volokh & Prof. Joshua Kleinfeld, Part I
Eugene Volokh, Joshua Kleinfeld
What made Professor Volokh the independent and influential thinker he is today? It began with...
Measuring and Evaluating Public Responses to Religious Rights Rulings
Creighton Roland Meland, Stephen Cranney
The story of Jack Phillips and his cake shop—Masterpiece Cakeshop—is by now familiar. Jack Phillips...
Litigation Update: Volokh et al v. James
Eugene Volokh
In early December, Prof. Eugene Volokh, Rumble Canada, and Locals Technology filed a complaint in...
Litigation Update: Volokh et al v. James
Eugene Volokh
In early December, Prof. Eugene Volokh, Rumble Canada, and Locals Technology filed a complaint in...
Litigation Update: Volokh et al v. James
Teleforum