President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Associate Professor of Law, Center for Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship, University of Missouri School of Law
Professor Lietzan researches, writes, and teaches primarily in the areas of food and drug regulation, intellectual property, and administrative law. Some of her recent scholarship has focused on the nature and purpose of the new drug approval system, federal regulation of fecal microbiota transplantation, federal regulation of products derived from cannabis, the political economy of the Hatch-Waxman (generic drug) statute, and incentives to study already approved drugs for new uses. She is an award-winning teacher, and she has been an elected member of the American Law Institute since 2006.
Professor Lietzan brings to her scholarship and teaching eighteen years of private practice experience, eight of them as a partner in the food and drug group at Covington & Burling in Washington, DC. In practice, she handled a wide range of complex legal problems and broader legislative and regulatory policy questions affecting FDA-regulated companies. This work included lifecycle management and strategy issues, regulatory strategy and advocacy, white collar defense, congressional investigations, briefing in products liability cases, and international regulatory policy work. She was involved in every major amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) between 1997 and 2014 and was deeply immersed for more than a decade in the development of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2010. She has been consistently identified by her peers in private practice as a “Best Lawyer in America” in the categories of FDA law (since 2013) and Biotechnology Law (since 2007).
Professor Lietzan has held one leadership position or another at the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI) since 2004, including a stint on its Board of Directors from 2008 to 2012. She also held leadership positions in the American Bar Association’s Section of Science and Technology Law for fourteen years.
Professor Lietzan received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina, where she graduated with honors in history. She holds a master’s degree in history from UCLA and a law degree with high honors from Duke Law School.
Associate Professor, Northern Illinois University
Evan Bernick joined the NIU Law faculty in 2021. He teaches courses in constitutional law, criminal law, criminal procedure, administrative law and legislation.
From 2020 to 2021, Professor Bernick was a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Before that, he served as a clerk to Judge Diane S. Sykes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. From April 2017 to April 2019, he was a visiting lecturer at Georgetown and a resident fellow of the Center for the Constitution.
His scholarship covers a range of topics, from constitutional law, to philosophy of law, to social movements, to law enforcement. He has published with the Georgetown Law Journal, the Notre Dame Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review and the George Mason Law Review, among other journals. His book, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit (2021), with Randy E. Barnett, was published by Harvard University Press under its Belknap imprint "for books of long-lasting importance, superior in scholarship and physical production, chosen whether or not they might be profitable."
Professor Bernick received his bachelor's degree in 2008 from the University of Chicago, where he studied philosophy and graduated with honors. He received his juris doctorate in 2011 from the University of Chicago Law School.
Cecil C. Humphreys Professor of Law, University of Memphis School of Law
Professor William Kratzke is the Cecil C. Humphreys Professor of Law at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law. His teaching interests include Torts, Federal Income Taxation, Unfair Competition, and Economic Analysis of Law.
Before joining the Memphis School of Law faculty in 1979, Professor Kratzke was an Assistant Professor of Law at Oklahoma City University from 1977-1979. He also served as a visiting Professor of Law at Santa Clara University from 1986-1987.
Professor Kratzke Co-authored, with Earl W. Kintner, three volumes of a nine volumes treatise entitled Federal Antitrust Law (volume 6, 7, and 8). He has also published law review articles on trademark law, Federal Tort Claims Act, Tennessee administrative law, labor law, products liability law, and Russian law. He is a member of the American Law Institute and was a Fulbright Scholar in the Spring of 1997 and from 2001-2002.
Cecil C. Humphreys Professor of Law, University of Memphis School of Law
Professor William Kratzke is the Cecil C. Humphreys Professor of Law at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law. His teaching interests include Torts, Federal Income Taxation, Unfair Competition, and Economic Analysis of Law.
Before joining the Memphis School of Law faculty in 1979, Professor Kratzke was an Assistant Professor of Law at Oklahoma City University from 1977-1979. He also served as a visiting Professor of Law at Santa Clara University from 1986-1987.
Professor Kratzke Co-authored, with Earl W. Kintner, three volumes of a nine volumes treatise entitled Federal Antitrust Law (volume 6, 7, and 8). He has also published law review articles on trademark law, Federal Tort Claims Act, Tennessee administrative law, labor law, products liability law, and Russian law. He is a member of the American Law Institute and was a Fulbright Scholar in the Spring of 1997 and from 2001-2002.
Partner, Hollingsworth LLP, Washington, DC.
Mr. Lasker litigates a wide variety of complex civil matters, with a current focus on toxic torts, environmental litigation, Alien Tort Statute litigation, and pharmaceutical products liability. Mr. Lasker has also represented clients in a variety of civil and criminal government investigation-related matters involving bank regulatory compliance, False Claims Act claims, and alleged price fixing, and he served as lead counsel in successfully defending a foreign client against a Foreign Corrupt Practices claim in a jury trial that was featured in the Legal Times. He represents clients in jury and bench trials, before arbitral panels and administrative courts, and both at trial and on appeal.
Mr. Lasker has significant experience defending against all matter of legal claims involving FDA- and EPA-regulated products and alleged toxins and environmental contaminants. He has represented clients in pharmaceutical products liability claims involving antipsychotic medications, obstetrical drugs, antifungals, antiepileptics, and cough/cold medicines, and in toxics/environmental matters involving herbicides, asbestos, lead paint, nonionizing radiation, and chemical solvents. He has represented clients in matters arising both in the United States and abroad, and in matters arising under both domestic and international law. Mr. Lasker's practice also includes matters involving sensitive national security issues, and he has represented his clients’ interests in meetings with both U.S. and foreign government officials. He has extensive expertise in developing and implementing sophisticated medical causation and science-based defenses, and he has successfully litigated issues involving Daubert, the federal preemption defense, and natural resource damages claims. He also assists clients in due diligence investigations as relates to environmental and toxics liabilities and through amicus briefing on key legal issues.
Mr. Lasker played a prominent role in helping to establish asbestos defendants’ rights to insurance non-products coverage through a successful amicus effort that secured one of the seminal judicial opinions recognizing the existence of such coverage, litigation efforts resulting in securing several hundreds of millions of dollars in asbestos non-products insurance recoveries, and oral presentations and publications on issues involving non-products coverage. He has also defended personal injury claims in asbestos litigation, advancing medical causation defenses as the asbestos litigation has extended to tertiary and even more remotely-situated corporate defendants.
Mr. Lasker is frequently requested to speak and publish on issues of interest to his clients, and he has been interviewed on such topics in numerous fora, including the AMA's American Medical News, Bloomberg News, the National Law Journal, and thePhiladelphia Inquirer. Mr. Lasker serves on the Board of Editors of LJN's Product Liability Law & Strategy newsletter and he is the Chair of the Toxics & Hazardous Substances Committee of the International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC), an invitation-only professional association for corporate and insurance defense attorneys around the world. He also serves as a member of the Defense Research Institute (DRI).
Partner, Hollingsworth LLP, Washington, DC.
Ms. Womeldorf joined the Hollingsworth LLP following clerkships with the Honorable Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court. She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert R. Merhige, Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Ms. Womeldorf concentrates her practice on complex civil litigation. She has substantial experience in the defense of high-stakes mass torts, including serving as a member of the defense steering committee in the substantial welding fume Multidistrict Litigation (“MDL”) pending in Cleveland. She also represents pharmaceutical manufacturers in the defense of personal injury claims involving prescription drugs.
Ms. Womeldorf counsels clients on a wide range of issues designed to minimize potential liability, including issues related to workplace practices, Sunshine in Litigation legislation and class action treatment of medical monitoring claims. She is a member of the Sedona Conference Working Group on Protective Orders, Confidentiality and Public Access, and she actively participates with Lawyers for Civil Justice (“LCJ”). Her practice extends into general complex commercial litigation and employment law issues, and she previously served as counsel in the Office of the Senate Chief Counsel for Employment of the United States Senate.
Ms. Womeldorf participates in the Georgetown University Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute, which conducts moot courts for approximately 50 percent of the cases argued before the United States Supreme Court in any given term. She served as Lead Articles Editor for the Washington & Lee Law Review, and is a member of the Defense Research Institute (DRI).
Ms. Womeldorf is recognized in the Washington, DC edition of Super Lawyers for 2013 as she was in 2012.
Partner, Consovoy McCarthy Park PLLC
Mr. Consovoy assists clients on a broad range of litigation and appellate issues primarily before the Supreme Court of the United States and federal appellate and district courts, as well as before federal agencies. Mr. Consovoy represents clients in cases involving constitutional issues, interpretation and enforcement of federal statutes, administrative law, civil rights disputes, and a variety of other civil litigation issues. Mr. Consovoy recently argued two cases—Spokeo v. Robbins and Evenwel v. Abbott—before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Mr. Consovoy is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the 17th Judicial Circuit of Virginia. Mr. Consovoy is a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court and was named by Law360 as a “rising star” in appellate law for 2013. Since 2011, Mr. Consovoy has been the co-director of the Supreme Court Clinic at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he also is the co-director of the Administrative Law Clinic.
Mr. Consovoy earned his B.A. from Monmouth University, and his J.D. magna cum laude from George Mason University School of Law. Mr. Consovoy is a member of the Virginia and District of Columbia bars.
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