Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence, New York University Law School
Bob Bauer is Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU Law, and Co-Director of NYU’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. He served as White House Counsel to President Obama, and returned to private practice in June 2011. In 2013, the President named Bauer to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which in January of 2014 submitted to the President its findings and recommendations in "The American Voting Experience: Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration."
Bauer was General Counsel to Obama for America, the President’s campaign organization, in 2008 and 2012. Bob has also served as co-counsel to the New Hampshire State Senate in the trial of Chief Justice David A. Brock (2000) and counsel to the Democratic Leader in the trial of President William Jefferson Clinton (1999).
He is the author on books on campaign finance law and articles on various topics for law reviews and periodicals. He is a contributing editor of Lawfare and writes legal commentary for Just Security, and has published opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and other publications. In 2000, he received the "Burton Award for Legal Achievement" for his legal writing.
Partner, Dechert LLP
In a career spanning both private and public practice, Steven A. Engel is a leading litigator and counselor, acting as an advocate in high-profile trial and appellate matters and advising clients on their most sensitive and complex legal issues. Mr. Engel is the Chair of Dechert’s Appellate and Regulatory Litigation Group and has appeared in courts across the country, handling a wide range of civil litigation matters, including administrative law, commercial litigation, constitutional law and securities cases. He regularly counsels clients on challenges to agency regulations and in connection with government, congressional and internal investigations.
Until January 2021, Mr. Engel served as the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. As the head of the office, Mr. Engel served as the chief counsel to the Attorney General and the principal legal adviser to the Executive Branch, providing legal advice to the President and cabinet secretaries on the most critical constitutional and statutory questions, including matters pertaining to national security, administrative law, criminal law, congressional oversight, and executive orders. In December 2020, Mr. Engel was awarded the Department of Justice’s highest honor, the Edmund J. Randolph Award, for outstanding service to the Department.
Before his appointment as Assistant Attorney General in 2017, Mr. Engel had been a partner at Dechert since 2009 and previously served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Engel clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court for Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for Judge Alex Kozinski.
Mr. Engel is a member of the Advisory Committee on Rules for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the Administrative Conference of the United States. He has been an Adjunct Professor at the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University and the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America and was formerly the Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. He has been nationally ranked as a leading lawyer in The Legal 500 USA and Benchmark Litigation. Mr. Engel has frequently commented on legal subjects in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and has appeared on national news programs as a legal analyst, including on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network. Mr. Engel has testified on several occasions before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Paul Avelar is the Managing Attorney of the Institute for Justice Arizona Office. He joined the Institute in March 2010 and litigates free speech, property rights, economic liberty, school choice and other constitutional cases in federal and state courts.
As the head of IJ’s national Braiding Freedom Initiative, Paul represents natural hair braiders across the country to protect their right to earn an honest living. The Initiative uses lawsuits, activism and research to remove laws that require potential braiders to undergo hundreds of costly training hours just to braid hair. Since IJ launched the Braiding Freedom Initiative in 2014, 12 additional states have freed braiders from unnecessary licensing burdens. Paul drafted the model Natural Hair Braiding Protection Act, which has been adopted in Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Texas and South Dakota. He is currently representing braiders in Missouri, where state laws infringe upon their right to earn an honest living.
In his free speech work, Paul has challenged numerous laws that trample First Amendment rights. In Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, he represented candidates and independent groups in a successful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the “matching funds” provision of Arizona’s publicly financed elections system. He represented grassroots groups and individuals in Arizona, Mississippi and Washington, where state laws burdened their political speech by requiring them to register with the government, to navigate complex regulations and to face fines and possible criminal penalties merely because they talked about political issues. In Washington, Paul protected a lawyer’s right to defend, pro-bono, the First Amendment rights of political speakers. Through litigation and legislation, Paul leads the fight against abusive civil forfeiture laws in Arizona and elsewhere.
Paul also co-authored the most comprehensive published study of economic liberty protections in the Arizona Constitution. The Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court appointed Paul to the Task Force on the Review of the Role and Governance Structure of the State Bar of Arizona, where he dissented from the majority report and called on leaders to substantially reform the Bar and state regulation of the practice of law. He often speaks at law schools across the country about constitutional issues and his work at IJ.
Prior to joining IJ-AZ, Paul worked as an attorney in Philadelphia. He clerked for Judge Roger Miner on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Andrew Hurwitz on the Arizona Supreme Court, and Judge Daniel Barker on the Arizona Court of Appeals.
Paul graduated manga cum laude from the Arizona State University College of Law in 2004 and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 2000.
Of Counsel, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.
Lauren Hicks devotes the majority of her practice to representing federal contractors and subcontractors in compliance evaluations and administrative enforcement actions triggered by the United States Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).
Ms. Hicks counsels employers on the preparation, management, and defense of their affirmative action programs and related matters, including jurisdictional analyses and preventative strategies. She has extensive experience with investigating and resolving systemic discrimination issues stemming from statistical disparities in hiring, compensation, and testing. Ms. Hicks has litigated numerous claims before courts and administrative agencies.
Ms. Hicks most recently served as a District Director for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs in the United States Department of Labor. In that role Ms. Hicks oversaw hundreds of OFCCP compliance evaluations, resolving several of the agency’s largest discrimination cases. Prior to her employment with the government, Ms. Hicks litigated a broad spectrum of employment matters on behalf of Plaintiffs, including collective actions.
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Peter Huber, who died in 2021, was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he wrote on drug development, energy, technology, and the law. He was the author of The Cure in the Code: How 20th Century Law Is Undermining 21st Century Medicine (2013); The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy (2005), coauthored with Mark P. Mills, which Bill Gates said “is the only book I’ve ever seen that really explains energy, its history and what it will be like going forward”; and Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists (2000), which William F. Buckley, Jr., called “the richest contribution ever made to the greening of the political mind” and which set out a new conservative manifesto on the environment that advocates a return to conservation and environmental policy based on sound science and market economics.
Huber’s other books included Judging Science: Scientific Knowledge and the Federal Courts (1999), Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm (1997), Orwell’s Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest (1994), Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom (1991), and Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences (1988). He published articles in scholarly journals, such as the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal, and in such publications as Science, Wall Street Journal, Reason, Regulation, and National Review. He appeared on numerous TV and radio programs, including Face the Nation and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Before joining MI, Huber was an associate professor at MIT. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and on the U.S. Supreme Court for Sandra Day O’Connor. Huber was a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen and Todd. He held a J.D. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT.
Former Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Kozinski served as a United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit from November 1985 until December 2017. He served as Chief Judge from 2007 to 2014. He graduated from UCLA, receiving an A.B. degree in 1972, and from UCLA Law School, receiving a J.D. degree in 1975.
Prior to his appointment to the appellate bench, Judge Kozinski served as Chief Judge of the United States Claims Court, 1982-85; Special Counsel, Merit Systems Protection Board, 1981-82; Assistant Counsel, Office of Counsel to the President, 1981; Deputy Legal Counsel, Office of President-Elect Reagan, 1980-81; Attorney, Covington & Burling, 1979-81; Attorney, Forry Golbert Singer & Gelles, 1977-79; Law Clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, 1976-77; and Law Clerk to Circuit Judge Anthony M. Kennedy, 1975-76.
Judge Kozinski is married to Marcy Jane Tiffany and has three children: Yale, Wyatt and Clayton, and three grandchildren: Quinn, Owen and Anna.
Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Page’s academic work lies in the fields of torts, products liability, and food, drug and cosmetics regulation. His most recent scholarship includes a book entitled Torts: Proximate Cause (2003); articles entitled “Roscoe Pound, Melvin Belli and the Personal-Injury Bar: The Tale of an Odd Coupling,’ in 26 Thomas M. Cooley Law Review 639 (2009), and “The Voice of Reason: The Products Liability Scholarship of Gary T. Schwartz,” in 53 South Carolina Law Review 797 (2002); and chapters entitled “American Tort Law and the Right to Privacy,” in Personality Rights in European Tort Law (G. Bruggemeier et al. Eds., 2010), and “Reflections on Pain-and-Suffering Damages in the United States,” in Liability in the Third Millennium (A. Ciacchi et al. Eds., 2009).
Professor Page has engaged in advocacy promoting consumer product safety and workplace health and safety before committees of Congress and in the national media, has served on the Board of Directors of Public Citizen, Inc., and is currently the faculty advisor to the Stabile Graduate Law Fellow, dealing with issues relating to the safety of personal-care products.
In addition, he writes about Latin America. His latest volume on the subject, The Brazilians,explains what makes Brazilians Brazilian. His other Latin America-related publications include The Revolution That Never Was: Northeast Brazil, 1955-1964 (1972); Perón: A Biography (1983); a lengthy introduction to Eva Perón, In My Own Words (1996); the prologue to Argentina y la Europa del nazismo: Sus secuelas (I. Klich & C. Buchrucker Eds., 2009); and numerous articles and reviews in newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Argentina and Brazil. From 2003 to 2017 he served as the Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Rule of Law in the Americas at the Law Center. He continues to be a member of the Associated Faculty of the Latin American Studies Program at Georgetown University.
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Peter Huber, who died in 2021, was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he wrote on drug development, energy, technology, and the law. He was the author of The Cure in the Code: How 20th Century Law Is Undermining 21st Century Medicine (2013); The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy (2005), coauthored with Mark P. Mills, which Bill Gates said “is the only book I’ve ever seen that really explains energy, its history and what it will be like going forward”; and Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists (2000), which William F. Buckley, Jr., called “the richest contribution ever made to the greening of the political mind” and which set out a new conservative manifesto on the environment that advocates a return to conservation and environmental policy based on sound science and market economics.
Huber’s other books included Judging Science: Scientific Knowledge and the Federal Courts (1999), Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm (1997), Orwell’s Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest (1994), Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom (1991), and Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences (1988). He published articles in scholarly journals, such as the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal, and in such publications as Science, Wall Street Journal, Reason, Regulation, and National Review. He appeared on numerous TV and radio programs, including Face the Nation and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Before joining MI, Huber was an associate professor at MIT. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and on the U.S. Supreme Court for Sandra Day O’Connor. Huber was a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen and Todd. He held a J.D. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT.
Former Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Kozinski served as a United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit from November 1985 until December 2017. He served as Chief Judge from 2007 to 2014. He graduated from UCLA, receiving an A.B. degree in 1972, and from UCLA Law School, receiving a J.D. degree in 1975.
Prior to his appointment to the appellate bench, Judge Kozinski served as Chief Judge of the United States Claims Court, 1982-85; Special Counsel, Merit Systems Protection Board, 1981-82; Assistant Counsel, Office of Counsel to the President, 1981; Deputy Legal Counsel, Office of President-Elect Reagan, 1980-81; Attorney, Covington & Burling, 1979-81; Attorney, Forry Golbert Singer & Gelles, 1977-79; Law Clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, 1976-77; and Law Clerk to Circuit Judge Anthony M. Kennedy, 1975-76.
Judge Kozinski is married to Marcy Jane Tiffany and has three children: Yale, Wyatt and Clayton, and three grandchildren: Quinn, Owen and Anna.
Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Page’s academic work lies in the fields of torts, products liability, and food, drug and cosmetics regulation. His most recent scholarship includes a book entitled Torts: Proximate Cause (2003); articles entitled “Roscoe Pound, Melvin Belli and the Personal-Injury Bar: The Tale of an Odd Coupling,’ in 26 Thomas M. Cooley Law Review 639 (2009), and “The Voice of Reason: The Products Liability Scholarship of Gary T. Schwartz,” in 53 South Carolina Law Review 797 (2002); and chapters entitled “American Tort Law and the Right to Privacy,” in Personality Rights in European Tort Law (G. Bruggemeier et al. Eds., 2010), and “Reflections on Pain-and-Suffering Damages in the United States,” in Liability in the Third Millennium (A. Ciacchi et al. Eds., 2009).
Professor Page has engaged in advocacy promoting consumer product safety and workplace health and safety before committees of Congress and in the national media, has served on the Board of Directors of Public Citizen, Inc., and is currently the faculty advisor to the Stabile Graduate Law Fellow, dealing with issues relating to the safety of personal-care products.
In addition, he writes about Latin America. His latest volume on the subject, The Brazilians,explains what makes Brazilians Brazilian. His other Latin America-related publications include The Revolution That Never Was: Northeast Brazil, 1955-1964 (1972); Perón: A Biography (1983); a lengthy introduction to Eva Perón, In My Own Words (1996); the prologue to Argentina y la Europa del nazismo: Sus secuelas (I. Klich & C. Buchrucker Eds., 2009); and numerous articles and reviews in newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Argentina and Brazil. From 2003 to 2017 he served as the Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Rule of Law in the Americas at the Law Center. He continues to be a member of the Associated Faculty of the Latin American Studies Program at Georgetown University.
Professor of Law and Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, University of Miami School of Law
Mary Anne Franks, Professor of Law and Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on the intersection of civil rights and technology. She teaches classes on criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law, Second Amendment law, family law, and law and technology. Professor Franks is also an Affiliated Faculty member of the University of Miami Department of Philosophy and an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP).
Dr. Franks is the author of the award-winning book, The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019). In 2020, she was awarded a grant from the Knight Foundation to support research for her second book, Fearless Speech (expected 2022). Her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. Dr. Franks has also authored numerous articles for the popular press, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Newsweek. She has delivered more than a hundred lectures to a range of audiences around the world, including law schools, domestic violence organizations, law firms, and tech companies. She was named a member of the American Law Institute in October 2018.
Dr. Franks is the President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating online abuse and discrimination. In 2013, she drafted the first model criminal statute on nonconsensual pornography (sometimes referred to as “revenge porn”), which has served as the template for multiple state laws and for pending federal legislation on the issue. She also served as the reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s 2018 Uniform Civil Remedies for the Unauthorized Disclosure of Intimate Images Act. Dr. Franks is a principal investigator for a 2020 National Science Foundation grant project, COVID-19 and sexual cyberviolence: Impact on general users and vulnerable populations. She regularly advises legislators, tech industry leaders, and advocacy organizations on issues relating to online privacy, sexual exploitation, extortion, harassment, and threats.
Dr. Franks holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School as well as a doctorate and a master’s degree from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She previously taught at the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law and at Harvard University as a lecturer in social studies and philosophy.
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
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 and Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, University of Miami School of Law
Mary Anne Franks, Professor of Law and Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on the intersection of civil rights and technology. She teaches classes on criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law, Second Amendment law, family law, and law and technology. Professor Franks is also an Affiliated Faculty member of the University of Miami Department of Philosophy and an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP).
Dr. Franks is the author of the award-winning book, The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019). In 2020, she was awarded a grant from the Knight Foundation to support research for her second book, Fearless Speech (expected 2022). Her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. Dr. Franks has also authored numerous articles for the popular press, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Newsweek. She has delivered more than a hundred lectures to a range of audiences around the world, including law schools, domestic violence organizations, law firms, and tech companies. She was named a member of the American Law Institute in October 2018.
Dr. Franks is the President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating online abuse and discrimination. In 2013, she drafted the first model criminal statute on nonconsensual pornography (sometimes referred to as “revenge porn”), which has served as the template for multiple state laws and for pending federal legislation on the issue. She also served as the reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s 2018 Uniform Civil Remedies for the Unauthorized Disclosure of Intimate Images Act. Dr. Franks is a principal investigator for a 2020 National Science Foundation grant project, COVID-19 and sexual cyberviolence: Impact on general users and vulnerable populations. She regularly advises legislators, tech industry leaders, and advocacy organizations on issues relating to online privacy, sexual exploitation, extortion, harassment, and threats.
Dr. Franks holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School as well as a doctorate and a master’s degree from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She previously taught at the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law and at Harvard University as a lecturer in social studies and philosophy.
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
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).
President, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Religious Liberty, Catholic University; Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
Mark joined the Becket team in 2011 and splits his time as Associate Professor at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, and as Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Mark teaches constitutional law, religious liberty, torts, and evidence. He has been voted Teacher of the Year three years in a row by the Law School’s Student Bar Association.
Mark has broad experience litigating First Amendment religious exercise and free speech cases. He has represented the winning parties in a variety of Supreme Court First Amendment cases including Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters, Wheaton College, and Holt. In January 2014, Mark argued before the Supreme Court in McCullen v. Coakley, a First Amendment challenge to a Massachusetts speech restriction outside of abortion clinics. The Justices ruled in favor of his clients 9-0. Mark also led a successful eight-year litigation battle against Governor Blagojevich’s effort to force religious pharmacists to distribute the morning-after and week-after pills.
Mark’s academic writing focuses on the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and has appeared in a variety of prestigious journals, including the Harvard Law Review.
Mark is a widely sought after speaker on constitutional issues, particularly concerning abortion and the First Amendment. Professor Rienzi has been invited to discuss these issues at Harvard Law School, Columbia University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Notre Dame Law School, the National Press Club, and the Capitol. He has been quoted on constitutional law issues on NPR, in the Washington Times, The New York Daily News, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Mark has also been featured on the Kelly File, Fox News Sunday, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Geraldo at Large, CNN Tonight, CNN Live, Andrea Mitchell Reports, and Wall Street Journal Live.
Prior to joining Becket, Mark served as counsel for the litigation department and the intellectual property litigation practice group of WilmerHale LLP. His practice focused on complex civil and appellate litigation with a particular emphasis on intellectual property and First Amendment issues. Prior to joining WilmerHale, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Stephen F. Williams, senior circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Prior to that, Mark was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and B.A. from Princeton University, both with honors.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor Saikrishna Prakash’s scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law and Presidential Powers at the Law School.
Prakash’s most recent book, “The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers,” was published by Harvard Belknap Press in 2020. He also authored “Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive” (Yale University Press, 2015). The former book focuses on the modern presidency while the latter considers the presidency of the Founders.
Prakash has authored over 75 law review articles. Among them are “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” in the Harvard Law Review, “The Indefensible Duty to Defend” in the Columbia Law Review, and “50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend” and “The Executive Power Over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal.
Prakash has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. At the request of Democrats and Republicans, he has testified before Congress on matters of presidential removal, the Mueller Report and how Congress might better check the presidency. He is currently a Miller Center Senior Fellow. In 2015, he received the Roger Traynor award for faculty scholarship. In the same year, he received an honorable mention from the American Society of Legal Writers for his book “Imperial from the Beginning.” He has given named lectures at William & Mary Law School, Princeton University and Toledo Law School, and keynote addresses at several conferences.
Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He subsequently clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War & Peace at Stanford University.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Baker Botts Fellow in Energy & Environmental Regulatory Affairs, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University
Gabriel Collins is the Baker Botts Fellow in Energy & Environmental Regulatory Affairs at Rice University's Baker Institute. He was previously an associate attorney at Baker Hostetler, LLP, and is the co-founder of the China SignPost™ (洞察中国) analysis portal. Collins has worked in the Department of Defense as a China analyst and as a private sector global commodity researcher, authoring more than 100 commodity analysis reports, both for private clients and for publication.
Collins’ research portfolio is global. His work currently focuses on legal, environmental and economic issues relating to water — including the food-water-energy nexus — as well as unconventional oil and gas development, and the intersection between global commodity markets and a range of environmental, legal and national security issues. His analysis draws from a broad swath of geospatial and other data streams, and often incorporates insights from sources in Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
Collins received his B.A. from Princeton University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. He is licensed to practice law in Texas.
Managing Director, SCF Partners
Daniel G. West invests in energy services, equipment, and technology companies at SCF Partners in Houston, Texas. He provides equity capital and strategic growth assistance to entrepreneurs and leaders of both start-up ventures and established, growing businesses.
Prior to joining the private sector, Mr. West served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps. As a platoon commander with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the USS Mesa Verde, he led the Tactical Recovery of Aircraft and Personnel force in support of the NATO aerial campaign over Libya. He then served as executive officer of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines as it mentored Afghan forces to assume lead security responsibility and executed counter-narcotics missions in Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He also served as a clerk for Judge Laurence H. Silberman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Mr. West holds degrees in law, business administration, and economics from Harvard University, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review and taught undergraduate courses in economics and government. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International & National Security Law Practice Group of the Federalist Society and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Department of Justice: Executive Supervision or Independence?
Bob Bauer, Steven A. Engel, Jamie Gorelick, Michael B. Mukasey, Chad A. Readler
On June 17, 2021, The Federalist Society's Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group hosted...
State Court Docket Watch: Schires v. Carlat
Paul Avelar
Note from the Editor: Mr. Avelar served on an outside moot panel for the taxpayers’...
Courthouse Steps Decision Webinar: Fulton v. City of Philadelphia
Religious Liberties Practice Group Teleforum
TeleforumTalks with Authors: What Are the Extent and Limits of Executive Power?
Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group Teleforum
TeleforumChina, the U.S., and Global Climate Policy: Cooperation, or Competition?
Practice Groups Teleforum
OFCCP in the Biden Administration
Lauren B. Hicks
This session will cover changes – both observed to-date and anticipated – by OFCCP in...
Debate: Liability: The New "New Property" [Archive Collection]
Peter Huber, Alex Kozinski, Joseph A. Page
On March 10-11, 1989, the Federalist Society's University of Michigan student chapter hosted the eighth...
Debate: Liability: The New "New Property" [Archive Collection]
Peter Huber, Alex Kozinski, Joseph A. Page
On March 10-11, 1989, the Federalist Society's University of Michigan student chapter hosted the eighth...
Textual Challenges of Section 230
Mary Anne Franks, Philip A. Hamburger, Gregory G. Katsas, Eugene Volokh
This panel addressed the textual questions of §230: is the statute correctly understood to permit...
Textual Challenges of Section 230
Mary Anne Franks, Philip A. Hamburger, Gregory G. Katsas, Eugene Volokh
This panel addressed the textual questions of §230: is the statute correctly understood to permit...