Author and Columnist
Bruce Bawer is the author of several books, including the bestselling While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within (2006), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom (2009). His earlier books include the influential A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society (1993), which was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”; Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity (1997); and several volumes of literary criticism, film criticism, and poetry. His essays have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, The American Scholar, Newsweek, The Wilson Quarterly, Standpoint, City Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and he has been a prolific book reviewer, contributing regularly to The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, and The Wall Street Journal. He is a native New Yorker, holds a doctorate in English from Stony Brook University, and has lived in Norway for over a decade. His website is http://www.brucebawer.com.
Barrister
Paul Diamond is a barrister who practices in the field of the law of religious liberty. He is one of Britain’s and Europe’s leading attorneys in this area. He has been instructed in some of the most controversial cases; for example, the case of the British Airways employee who was prevented from wearing a Cross (whilst other religious groups were permitted to manifest their faith), the right to free religious speech during a General Election by the ProLife Alliance and in cases over the repeated clash between the religious rights of individuals and the same sex agenda. In his recent major case, on the right of a Christian marriage counselor to be exempted from the counseling of same sex partners, he acted on behalf of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey. Paul’s counsel is sought after by a number of religious leaders and organizations.
The rapid growth of the militant secular agenda which seek to remove religious values from public life has turned a rather specialist and sleepy area of law into the front line in the battle to maintain Judeo Christian civilized values. This gave the opportunity to Paul to develop his legal skills.
Paul was always fascinated with the issue of religion and felt the call of God in his life. After studying Middle East Government, Paul attended Magdalene College, Cambridge to study law. From there, he won a scholarship to the Hague Academy of International Law, The Netherlands. An early article by Paul, attracted the attention of Lord Denning (the most famous British Judge) who openly supported Paul’s arguments. He commenced practice thereafter and has appeared before all levels of court including the House of Lords.
Early in his career, he became the barrister to the Keep Sunday Special Campaign (until the mid 1990s, Britain had a ban on Sunday trading and the campaign sought to keep Sundays as a ‘day of rest’). As standing Counsel, Paul handled many leading controversial cases and built a reputation for his future work in religious liberties. The issue of Sunday working was one that directly affected family life as the pressures on low income families to work has become relentless in recent years.
Paul has been involved in a number of controversial cases. In 2009, he was instructed to prevent a Hizbollah terrorist from entering the United Kingdom by the use of the threat of an international arrest warrant; and in 2011, Vladimir Bukovsky, the famous Soviet dissident instructed Paul to seek legal redress against former Soviet President Gorbachev.
Vicar of St Mary, Australia
Mark Durie completed an Arts Degree with First Class Honours and a University Medal in Germanic Languages and Linguistics. He gained his PhD in Linguistics from the Australian National University in 1984 with a study of the language of the Acehnese, a Muslim people of Indonesia. He conducted field research trips in Aceh during the 1980’s and 1990’s, producing several books, and many research articles. The dialects he documented were among those obliterated by the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004.
Dr. Durie was a visiting researcher at the University of Leiden in 1985, investigating the Dutch Acehnese manuscripts, many of which are concerned with Islamic jihad. Then he spent two years as a Harkness Fellow in the USA, holding positions as visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Los Angeles and Stanford University. After coming to Melbourne, Dr. Durie became Head of the Department of Linguistics and Language Studies before taking up an Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellowship in the mid 1990’s. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1991, and awarded an Australian Centennial Medal in 2001 for contributions to linguistics.
After a change in career, Dr. Durie now works as the Vicar of St Mary’s Anglican Church, Caulfield in Melbourne. He is a human rights activist, writing and speaking extensively in Australia and internationally on issues relating to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the persecution of religious minorities, particularly Christians living under the Islamic sharia. He speaks across Australia and internationally on Islam. He also writes on issues related to world missions, interfaith dialogue and religious conflict. His book Revelation: do we worship the same God? was published by CityHarvest in July 2006 and is into its second edition. His latest books The Third Choice and Liberty to the Captives, appeared in 2010. They are on understanding Islam, the experience of non-Muslims living under Islamic rule, and how to find spiritual freedom in the face of the challenge of Islam.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Lecturer in Law, UCLA Law
Amjad Mahmood Khan teaches Fundamentals of U.S. Contract Law for Foreign Lawyers. A partner at Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP (bnsklaw.com), he represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of high-stakes business litigation, including disputes related to commercial contracts, civil fraud, business torts, intellectual property, energy, insurance, antitrust and unfair competition and the False Claims Act. Amjad's clients have included a range of high-profile corporations, executives and organizations, including mortgage lenders, energy companies, technology firms, major airlines, municipalities and religious establishments. Amjad has extensive stand-up trial experience, having won multiple significant jury verdicts, including an award of approximately $12.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Amjad has significant appellate experience briefing and arguing appeals in both state and federal courts across the nation. Amjad has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by Southern California Super Lawyers every year since 2012.
Amjad previously served as litigation counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, associate at Latham & Watkins LLP and judicial clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Amjad received his J.D. in 2004 from Harvard Law School. While in law school, Amjad served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Law Journal and as a teaching assistant to Professor Scott Brewer (Contracts, Jurisprudence). Amjad graduated summa cum laude from Claremont McKenna College in 2001, with a B.A. in Government and English (Literature).
In addition to his litigation practice, Amjad devotes a considerable portion of his time to pro bono matters. Amjad has special expertise in asylum and refugee law, deportation defense and providing legal aid to disaster victims. Amjad was co-chair of Latham & Watkins’ global human rights and refugee practice group. Amjad has first chaired over two dozen successful immigration and asylum matters. Amjad has received numerous awards and accolades for his pro bono work, which includes sharing the 2012 Muslim Advocates Thurgood Marshall Award. Amjad has also served as an expert witness in asylum cases and has testified five times before the U.S. House of Representatives on the human rights abuses of religious minorities in the Near East and South Asia. Amjad is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Amjad has published articles on qui tam and derivative suit litigation in Financial Fraud Law Report and Securities Regulation and Law Report. Amjad’s academic work focuses on transnational legal studies, comparative constitutional law and national security. He is a recognized expert on religious freedom in the Islamic world, and his scholarship has appeared in Harvard International Law Journal,Harvard National Security Law Journal, Harvard Human Rights Journaland Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business.
Director of Legal Affairs, Center for Political Studies
Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at the Center for Political Studies, a think tank based in Copenhagen, where he focuses on advocacy and academic research in the fields of human rights with a specific focus on freedom of expression. He is also an external lecturer in international human rights law at the University of Copenhagen. He has published numerous articles in academic journals as well as in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Globe and Mail, National Review, Reason, The Australian, South China Morning Post, Jerusalem Post, Hürriet Daily News, Voice of Russia, China Post, and Daily News (Egypt). His work has been mentioned in international media including the Economist, Courrier International and CBS.com. He is a frequent commentator for Danish TV and radio. In 2010 he was voted the most influential Danish public intellectual under the age of 40 by Danish newspaper Politiken.
Research Fellow, Hudson Institute
Before joining Hudson in 2011, Tadros was a Senior Partner at the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth, an organization that aims to spread the ideas of classical liberalism in Egypt. He has received his MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University and his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Mr. Tadros has previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked on the Muslim Brotherhood and worked as a consultant for the Hudson Institute on Moderate Islamic Thinkers, and most recently the Heritage Foundation on Religious Freedom in Egypt. In 2007 he was chosen by the State Department in its first Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in collaboration with Syracuse University's Maxwell School. His articles have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal, the American Thinker, the American Interest and the Weekly Standard. Mr. Tadros is a Professional Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Lecturer in Law, UCLA Law
Amjad Mahmood Khan teaches Fundamentals of U.S. Contract Law for Foreign Lawyers. A partner at Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP (bnsklaw.com), he represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of high-stakes business litigation, including disputes related to commercial contracts, civil fraud, business torts, intellectual property, energy, insurance, antitrust and unfair competition and the False Claims Act. Amjad's clients have included a range of high-profile corporations, executives and organizations, including mortgage lenders, energy companies, technology firms, major airlines, municipalities and religious establishments. Amjad has extensive stand-up trial experience, having won multiple significant jury verdicts, including an award of approximately $12.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Amjad has significant appellate experience briefing and arguing appeals in both state and federal courts across the nation. Amjad has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by Southern California Super Lawyers every year since 2012.
Amjad previously served as litigation counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, associate at Latham & Watkins LLP and judicial clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Amjad received his J.D. in 2004 from Harvard Law School. While in law school, Amjad served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Law Journal and as a teaching assistant to Professor Scott Brewer (Contracts, Jurisprudence). Amjad graduated summa cum laude from Claremont McKenna College in 2001, with a B.A. in Government and English (Literature).
In addition to his litigation practice, Amjad devotes a considerable portion of his time to pro bono matters. Amjad has special expertise in asylum and refugee law, deportation defense and providing legal aid to disaster victims. Amjad was co-chair of Latham & Watkins’ global human rights and refugee practice group. Amjad has first chaired over two dozen successful immigration and asylum matters. Amjad has received numerous awards and accolades for his pro bono work, which includes sharing the 2012 Muslim Advocates Thurgood Marshall Award. Amjad has also served as an expert witness in asylum cases and has testified five times before the U.S. House of Representatives on the human rights abuses of religious minorities in the Near East and South Asia. Amjad is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Amjad has published articles on qui tam and derivative suit litigation in Financial Fraud Law Report and Securities Regulation and Law Report. Amjad’s academic work focuses on transnational legal studies, comparative constitutional law and national security. He is a recognized expert on religious freedom in the Islamic world, and his scholarship has appeared in Harvard International Law Journal,Harvard National Security Law Journal, Harvard Human Rights Journaland Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business.
Director of Legal Affairs, Center for Political Studies
Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at the Center for Political Studies, a think tank based in Copenhagen, where he focuses on advocacy and academic research in the fields of human rights with a specific focus on freedom of expression. He is also an external lecturer in international human rights law at the University of Copenhagen. He has published numerous articles in academic journals as well as in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Globe and Mail, National Review, Reason, The Australian, South China Morning Post, Jerusalem Post, Hürriet Daily News, Voice of Russia, China Post, and Daily News (Egypt). His work has been mentioned in international media including the Economist, Courrier International and CBS.com. He is a frequent commentator for Danish TV and radio. In 2010 he was voted the most influential Danish public intellectual under the age of 40 by Danish newspaper Politiken.
Research Fellow, Hudson Institute
Before joining Hudson in 2011, Tadros was a Senior Partner at the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth, an organization that aims to spread the ideas of classical liberalism in Egypt. He has received his MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University and his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Mr. Tadros has previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked on the Muslim Brotherhood and worked as a consultant for the Hudson Institute on Moderate Islamic Thinkers, and most recently the Heritage Foundation on Religious Freedom in Egypt. In 2007 he was chosen by the State Department in its first Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in collaboration with Syracuse University's Maxwell School. His articles have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal, the American Thinker, the American Interest and the Weekly Standard. Mr. Tadros is a Professional Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Professor Ronald M. Levin is a nationally known scholar who specializes in administrative law and related public law issues. He is the co-author of a casebook on state and federal administrative law, now in its third edition, as well as a nutshell on administrative law and process, now in its fifth edition. Formerly the law school's associate dean, he has published numerous articles and book chapters on administrative law topics, including judicial review, rulemaking, and legislative reform of the regulatory process. He also has written about the law of legislation, lobbying, and legislative ethics. Among his professional affiliations, Professor Levin has chaired the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice and served as the ABA's advisor to the drafting committee to revise the Model State Administrative Procedure Act. He also has chaired the Section on Administrative Law and the Section on Legislation of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Currently a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), he previously served as a consultant to ACUS and to the Supreme Court of Indonesia. Before joining the law faculty, Professor Levin clerked for the Hon. John C. Godbold, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and practiced for three years in Washington, D.C., with the firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan.
Senior Fellow, Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Peter J. Wallison holds the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Financial Policy Studies and is co-director of AEI’s program on Financial Policy Studies. Prior to joining AEI, he practiced banking, corporate and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. Mr. Wallison has held a number of government positions. From June 1981 to January 1985, he was General Counsel of the United States Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan Administration's proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan, and between 1972 and 1976, he served first as Special Assistant to New York's Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller as vice president of the United States.
Mr. Wallison was admitted to practice before the courts of New York and the District of Columbia, and is retired from practice in New York. He continues to be a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1963 and law degree from Harvard Law School in 1966.
Mr. Wallison is the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, published in December 2002 by Westview Press. On campaign finance, he is the author (with Joel Gora) of Better Parties, Better Government, (AEI Press 2009). On financial or regulatory matters, he is the author of Back From the Brink, a proposal for a private deposit insurance system, and co-author of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Internet Age; Competitive Equity: A Better Way to Organize Mutual Funds; Bad History, Worse Policy: How a False Narrative about the Financial Crisis Led to the Dodd-Frank Act (AEI Press 2013); and Hidden In Plain Sight: What Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why it Could Happen Again (Encounter Books 2015). His most recent book is Judicial Fortitude: The Last Chance to Rein in the Administrative State, published by Encounter Books in October 2018.
He testifies frequently before committees of Congress, and is a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and other print and online journals. He has also been a speaker at many conferences on financial services, housing, the causes of the financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act, accounting, and corporate governance, and was a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee between 1995 and 2015. He was a member of the SEC Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (2008), co-Chair of the Pew Financial Reform Task Force (2009), and a member of the congressionally- appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2009-2011). In May 2011, for his work in financial policy, Mr. Wallison received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Colorado.
Professor Emeritus, The George Washington University Law School
Art Wilmarth is a Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School (GW Law). He was a member of GW Law’s full-time faculty from 1986 to 2020. Prior to joining the faculty, he was a partner in Jones Day’s Washington, DC office. He served as Executive Director of GW Law’s Center for Law, Economics & Finance from 2011 to 2014.
Professor Wilmarth is the author of Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act (Oxford University Press, 2020), and co-editor of The Panic of 2008: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Reform (Edward Elgar, 2010). He has published more than 50 law review articles and book chapters in the fields of financial regulation and American constitutional history.
In 2005, the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers (ACCFSL) awarded Professor Wilmarth its annual prize for the best law review article published in the field of consumer financial services law. He has testified before committees of the U.S. Congress, the California legislature, and the U.K. House of Lords on financial regulatory issues. In 2010, he served as a consultant to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the body established by Congress to investigate the causes of the global financial crisis of 2007-09. He is a Fellow of ACCFSL and a member of the international advisory board of the Journal of Banking Regulation (Springer). He received his B.A. degree from Yale University and his J.D. degree from Harvard University.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Professor Ronald M. Levin is a nationally known scholar who specializes in administrative law and related public law issues. He is the co-author of a casebook on state and federal administrative law, now in its third edition, as well as a nutshell on administrative law and process, now in its fifth edition. Formerly the law school's associate dean, he has published numerous articles and book chapters on administrative law topics, including judicial review, rulemaking, and legislative reform of the regulatory process. He also has written about the law of legislation, lobbying, and legislative ethics. Among his professional affiliations, Professor Levin has chaired the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice and served as the ABA's advisor to the drafting committee to revise the Model State Administrative Procedure Act. He also has chaired the Section on Administrative Law and the Section on Legislation of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Currently a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), he previously served as a consultant to ACUS and to the Supreme Court of Indonesia. Before joining the law faculty, Professor Levin clerked for the Hon. John C. Godbold, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and practiced for three years in Washington, D.C., with the firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan.
Senior Fellow, Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Peter J. Wallison holds the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Financial Policy Studies and is co-director of AEI’s program on Financial Policy Studies. Prior to joining AEI, he practiced banking, corporate and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. Mr. Wallison has held a number of government positions. From June 1981 to January 1985, he was General Counsel of the United States Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan Administration's proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan, and between 1972 and 1976, he served first as Special Assistant to New York's Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller as vice president of the United States.
Mr. Wallison was admitted to practice before the courts of New York and the District of Columbia, and is retired from practice in New York. He continues to be a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1963 and law degree from Harvard Law School in 1966.
Mr. Wallison is the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, published in December 2002 by Westview Press. On campaign finance, he is the author (with Joel Gora) of Better Parties, Better Government, (AEI Press 2009). On financial or regulatory matters, he is the author of Back From the Brink, a proposal for a private deposit insurance system, and co-author of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Internet Age; Competitive Equity: A Better Way to Organize Mutual Funds; Bad History, Worse Policy: How a False Narrative about the Financial Crisis Led to the Dodd-Frank Act (AEI Press 2013); and Hidden In Plain Sight: What Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why it Could Happen Again (Encounter Books 2015). His most recent book is Judicial Fortitude: The Last Chance to Rein in the Administrative State, published by Encounter Books in October 2018.
He testifies frequently before committees of Congress, and is a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and other print and online journals. He has also been a speaker at many conferences on financial services, housing, the causes of the financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act, accounting, and corporate governance, and was a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee between 1995 and 2015. He was a member of the SEC Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (2008), co-Chair of the Pew Financial Reform Task Force (2009), and a member of the congressionally- appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2009-2011). In May 2011, for his work in financial policy, Mr. Wallison received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Colorado.
Professor Emeritus, The George Washington University Law School
Art Wilmarth is a Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School (GW Law). He was a member of GW Law’s full-time faculty from 1986 to 2020. Prior to joining the faculty, he was a partner in Jones Day’s Washington, DC office. He served as Executive Director of GW Law’s Center for Law, Economics & Finance from 2011 to 2014.
Professor Wilmarth is the author of Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act (Oxford University Press, 2020), and co-editor of The Panic of 2008: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Reform (Edward Elgar, 2010). He has published more than 50 law review articles and book chapters in the fields of financial regulation and American constitutional history.
In 2005, the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers (ACCFSL) awarded Professor Wilmarth its annual prize for the best law review article published in the field of consumer financial services law. He has testified before committees of the U.S. Congress, the California legislature, and the U.K. House of Lords on financial regulatory issues. In 2010, he served as a consultant to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the body established by Congress to investigate the causes of the global financial crisis of 2007-09. He is a Fellow of ACCFSL and a member of the international advisory board of the Journal of Banking Regulation (Springer). He received his B.A. degree from Yale University and his J.D. degree from Harvard University.
Author and Columnist
Bruce Bawer is the author of several books, including the bestselling While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within (2006), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom (2009). His earlier books include the influential A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society (1993), which was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”; Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity (1997); and several volumes of literary criticism, film criticism, and poetry. His essays have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, The American Scholar, Newsweek, The Wilson Quarterly, Standpoint, City Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and he has been a prolific book reviewer, contributing regularly to The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, and The Wall Street Journal. He is a native New Yorker, holds a doctorate in English from Stony Brook University, and has lived in Norway for over a decade. His website is http://www.brucebawer.com.
Barrister
Paul Diamond is a barrister who practices in the field of the law of religious liberty. He is one of Britain’s and Europe’s leading attorneys in this area. He has been instructed in some of the most controversial cases; for example, the case of the British Airways employee who was prevented from wearing a Cross (whilst other religious groups were permitted to manifest their faith), the right to free religious speech during a General Election by the ProLife Alliance and in cases over the repeated clash between the religious rights of individuals and the same sex agenda. In his recent major case, on the right of a Christian marriage counselor to be exempted from the counseling of same sex partners, he acted on behalf of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey. Paul’s counsel is sought after by a number of religious leaders and organizations.
The rapid growth of the militant secular agenda which seek to remove religious values from public life has turned a rather specialist and sleepy area of law into the front line in the battle to maintain Judeo Christian civilized values. This gave the opportunity to Paul to develop his legal skills.
Paul was always fascinated with the issue of religion and felt the call of God in his life. After studying Middle East Government, Paul attended Magdalene College, Cambridge to study law. From there, he won a scholarship to the Hague Academy of International Law, The Netherlands. An early article by Paul, attracted the attention of Lord Denning (the most famous British Judge) who openly supported Paul’s arguments. He commenced practice thereafter and has appeared before all levels of court including the House of Lords.
Early in his career, he became the barrister to the Keep Sunday Special Campaign (until the mid 1990s, Britain had a ban on Sunday trading and the campaign sought to keep Sundays as a ‘day of rest’). As standing Counsel, Paul handled many leading controversial cases and built a reputation for his future work in religious liberties. The issue of Sunday working was one that directly affected family life as the pressures on low income families to work has become relentless in recent years.
Paul has been involved in a number of controversial cases. In 2009, he was instructed to prevent a Hizbollah terrorist from entering the United Kingdom by the use of the threat of an international arrest warrant; and in 2011, Vladimir Bukovsky, the famous Soviet dissident instructed Paul to seek legal redress against former Soviet President Gorbachev.
Vicar of St Mary, Australia
Mark Durie completed an Arts Degree with First Class Honours and a University Medal in Germanic Languages and Linguistics. He gained his PhD in Linguistics from the Australian National University in 1984 with a study of the language of the Acehnese, a Muslim people of Indonesia. He conducted field research trips in Aceh during the 1980’s and 1990’s, producing several books, and many research articles. The dialects he documented were among those obliterated by the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004.
Dr. Durie was a visiting researcher at the University of Leiden in 1985, investigating the Dutch Acehnese manuscripts, many of which are concerned with Islamic jihad. Then he spent two years as a Harkness Fellow in the USA, holding positions as visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Los Angeles and Stanford University. After coming to Melbourne, Dr. Durie became Head of the Department of Linguistics and Language Studies before taking up an Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellowship in the mid 1990’s. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1991, and awarded an Australian Centennial Medal in 2001 for contributions to linguistics.
After a change in career, Dr. Durie now works as the Vicar of St Mary’s Anglican Church, Caulfield in Melbourne. He is a human rights activist, writing and speaking extensively in Australia and internationally on issues relating to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the persecution of religious minorities, particularly Christians living under the Islamic sharia. He speaks across Australia and internationally on Islam. He also writes on issues related to world missions, interfaith dialogue and religious conflict. His book Revelation: do we worship the same God? was published by CityHarvest in July 2006 and is into its second edition. His latest books The Third Choice and Liberty to the Captives, appeared in 2010. They are on understanding Islam, the experience of non-Muslims living under Islamic rule, and how to find spiritual freedom in the face of the challenge of Islam.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Lecturer in Law, UCLA Law
Amjad Mahmood Khan teaches Fundamentals of U.S. Contract Law for Foreign Lawyers. A partner at Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP (bnsklaw.com), he represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of high-stakes business litigation, including disputes related to commercial contracts, civil fraud, business torts, intellectual property, energy, insurance, antitrust and unfair competition and the False Claims Act. Amjad's clients have included a range of high-profile corporations, executives and organizations, including mortgage lenders, energy companies, technology firms, major airlines, municipalities and religious establishments. Amjad has extensive stand-up trial experience, having won multiple significant jury verdicts, including an award of approximately $12.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Amjad has significant appellate experience briefing and arguing appeals in both state and federal courts across the nation. Amjad has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by Southern California Super Lawyers every year since 2012.
Amjad previously served as litigation counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, associate at Latham & Watkins LLP and judicial clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Amjad received his J.D. in 2004 from Harvard Law School. While in law school, Amjad served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Law Journal and as a teaching assistant to Professor Scott Brewer (Contracts, Jurisprudence). Amjad graduated summa cum laude from Claremont McKenna College in 2001, with a B.A. in Government and English (Literature).
In addition to his litigation practice, Amjad devotes a considerable portion of his time to pro bono matters. Amjad has special expertise in asylum and refugee law, deportation defense and providing legal aid to disaster victims. Amjad was co-chair of Latham & Watkins’ global human rights and refugee practice group. Amjad has first chaired over two dozen successful immigration and asylum matters. Amjad has received numerous awards and accolades for his pro bono work, which includes sharing the 2012 Muslim Advocates Thurgood Marshall Award. Amjad has also served as an expert witness in asylum cases and has testified five times before the U.S. House of Representatives on the human rights abuses of religious minorities in the Near East and South Asia. Amjad is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Amjad has published articles on qui tam and derivative suit litigation in Financial Fraud Law Report and Securities Regulation and Law Report. Amjad’s academic work focuses on transnational legal studies, comparative constitutional law and national security. He is a recognized expert on religious freedom in the Islamic world, and his scholarship has appeared in Harvard International Law Journal,Harvard National Security Law Journal, Harvard Human Rights Journaland Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business.
Director of Legal Affairs, Center for Political Studies
Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at the Center for Political Studies, a think tank based in Copenhagen, where he focuses on advocacy and academic research in the fields of human rights with a specific focus on freedom of expression. He is also an external lecturer in international human rights law at the University of Copenhagen. He has published numerous articles in academic journals as well as in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Globe and Mail, National Review, Reason, The Australian, South China Morning Post, Jerusalem Post, Hürriet Daily News, Voice of Russia, China Post, and Daily News (Egypt). His work has been mentioned in international media including the Economist, Courrier International and CBS.com. He is a frequent commentator for Danish TV and radio. In 2010 he was voted the most influential Danish public intellectual under the age of 40 by Danish newspaper Politiken.
Research Fellow, Hudson Institute
Before joining Hudson in 2011, Tadros was a Senior Partner at the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth, an organization that aims to spread the ideas of classical liberalism in Egypt. He has received his MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University and his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Mr. Tadros has previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked on the Muslim Brotherhood and worked as a consultant for the Hudson Institute on Moderate Islamic Thinkers, and most recently the Heritage Foundation on Religious Freedom in Egypt. In 2007 he was chosen by the State Department in its first Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in collaboration with Syracuse University's Maxwell School. His articles have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal, the American Thinker, the American Interest and the Weekly Standard. Mr. Tadros is a Professional Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Panel II: Growing Repression in the West
Bruce Bawer, Paul Diamond, Mark Durie
The 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the deadly 2006 Danish cartoon riots brought worldwide...
Panel I: The Muslim World
David F. Forte, James P. Kelly, Amjad M. Khan, Jacob Mchangama, Samuel Tadros
The 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the deadly 2006 Danish cartoon riots brought worldwide...
Panel I: The Muslim World
David F. Forte, James P. Kelly, Amjad M. Khan, Jacob Mchangama, Samuel Tadros
The 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the deadly 2006 Danish cartoon riots brought worldwide...
Panel II: Growing Repression in the West
Silenced: Are Global Trends to Ban Religious Defamation, Religious Insult, and Islamophobia a New Challenge to First Amendment Freedoms?
Washington, DCPanel I: The Muslim World
Silenced: Are Global Trends to Ban Religious Defamation, Religious Insult, and Islamophobia a New Challenge to First Amendment Freedoms?
Washington, DCDiscussion on the Legal and Constitutional Issues Concerning the Dodd-Frank Act
The Piedmont Triad Lawyers Chapter
Winston-Salem, NCDodd-Frank: Costly, Complex…Constitutional? Assessing the Constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010
Charlotte, North CarolinaBar Watch Bulletin for August 9, 2011
Reporting live from the ABA Meetings in Toronto. House of Delegates Recommendation 10B, proposed by...
Financial Services Panel: The Constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank Financial Services Reform Act
Carlos T. Bea, C. Boyden Gray, Ronald M. Levin, Peter J. Wallison, Arthur E. Wilmarth
Hon. C. Boyden Gray, Gray & Schmitz LLP, and former U.S. Ambassador to the European...
Financial Services Panel: The Constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank Financial Services Reform Act
Carlos T. Bea, C. Boyden Gray, Ronald M. Levin, Peter J. Wallison, Arthur E. Wilmarth
Hon. C. Boyden Gray, Gray & Schmitz LLP, and former U.S. Ambassador to the European...