U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Retired Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
With the exception of two periods of United States Government service, Harris Weinstein practiced law with Covington's Washington office as an associate, partner, and senior counsel between 1962 and his retirement from practice in 2009. He was with the Department of Justice during the period 1967-1969 as an Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States and with the Department of the Treasury during 1990-1992 as Chief Counsel of the then Office of Thrift Supervision. Before joining Covington, Mr. Weinstein was law clerk to Judge William H. Hastie of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
His private practice focused on civil litigation, including disputes under antitrust, securities, tax and banking laws, and patent and related trade issues. He has appeared in federal trial and appellate courts throughout the United States and, as a government attorney, argued nine cases in the United States Supreme Court.
From January 2007 through December 2016, Mr. Weinstein served as a Distinguished Lecturer on the faculty of the Columbus School of Law of The Catholic University of America, teaching International Commercial Arbitration as well as other subjects. He also coached the law school’s team in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot. He has taught the arbitration course at the University of California, Davis and lectured on the subject at Penn State Law School and the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Mr. Weinstein’s teaching activity has included lectures on banking law or corporate fiduciary issues at American University, George Washington University, and the Universities of Illinois, Michigan and Virginia. He has also taught one-week courses on Banking and International Arbitration under United States Law as part of Catholic University’s American Law program at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.
In his pro bono work, Mr. Weinstein was a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and chaired the Conference’s Committee on Government Processes. He also has been a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President of its alumni/ae association, and Chair of its Alumni/ae Fund; Counsel to the Contests and Credentials Committees of the Republican National Conventions of 1984 and 1988; and a member of the initial advisory committee of the Commonwealth Institute (Richmond, VA).
His law degree is from Columbia University, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He received S.B. and S.M. degrees in mathematics from M.I.T. and was elected an associate member of the Sigma Xi science honorary society.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Retired Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
With the exception of two periods of United States Government service, Harris Weinstein practiced law with Covington's Washington office as an associate, partner, and senior counsel between 1962 and his retirement from practice in 2009. He was with the Department of Justice during the period 1967-1969 as an Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States and with the Department of the Treasury during 1990-1992 as Chief Counsel of the then Office of Thrift Supervision. Before joining Covington, Mr. Weinstein was law clerk to Judge William H. Hastie of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
His private practice focused on civil litigation, including disputes under antitrust, securities, tax and banking laws, and patent and related trade issues. He has appeared in federal trial and appellate courts throughout the United States and, as a government attorney, argued nine cases in the United States Supreme Court.
From January 2007 through December 2016, Mr. Weinstein served as a Distinguished Lecturer on the faculty of the Columbus School of Law of The Catholic University of America, teaching International Commercial Arbitration as well as other subjects. He also coached the law school’s team in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot. He has taught the arbitration course at the University of California, Davis and lectured on the subject at Penn State Law School and the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Mr. Weinstein’s teaching activity has included lectures on banking law or corporate fiduciary issues at American University, George Washington University, and the Universities of Illinois, Michigan and Virginia. He has also taught one-week courses on Banking and International Arbitration under United States Law as part of Catholic University’s American Law program at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.
In his pro bono work, Mr. Weinstein was a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and chaired the Conference’s Committee on Government Processes. He also has been a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President of its alumni/ae association, and Chair of its Alumni/ae Fund; Counsel to the Contests and Credentials Committees of the Republican National Conventions of 1984 and 1988; and a member of the initial advisory committee of the Commonwealth Institute (Richmond, VA).
His law degree is from Columbia University, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He received S.B. and S.M. degrees in mathematics from M.I.T. and was elected an associate member of the Sigma Xi science honorary society.
Shareholder, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Bruce J. Sarchet has focused his entire legal career on the representation of management in labor and employment law matters and has particular expertise in issues involving:
He regularly appears in state and federal courts and before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on matters involving:
With energy, enthusiasm, and intense focus, Bruce provides clients with superior quality work and exceptional client service and has earned a reputation as a hands-on problem solver. He provides consultation and representation to large, medium and small businesses across California in a variety of industries, including food and beverage, healthcare, transportation, technology, and construction. He also represents public sector employers. He crafts practical, real world solutions to workplace problems such as dealing with difficult employees and recognizing and balancing business realities and necessities with the need to minimize exposure to litigation.
For unionized employers, Bruce frequently serves as chief spokesperson in collective bargaining negotiations and provides representation in grievances and arbitration hearings. He also represents employers during union organizing drives and unfair labor practice charges under the National Labor Relations Act.
An animated, effective and entertaining public speaker, Bruce regularly makes presentations to local professional organizations on labor and employment law topics and has also presented numerous in-house training sessions and workshops to management teams at private and public employers. Bruce has published numerous articles for local business journals, providing practical, hands-on labor and employment law advice to small business owners.
From 2005 to 2013, Bruce served on the firm's five-attorney Management Committee, which handles the firm's operations. In this capacity, he oversaw thirteen Littler offices in seven states. Prior to his selection to the Management Committee, he served as the office-managing shareholder for the firm's Sacramento office and served several terms as a member of the firm's Board of Directors.
Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Robert Kagan is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His new book is The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World (Knopf, 2018). His previous book was The New York Times bestseller, The World America Made (Knopf, 2012).
He is also the author of Return of History and the End of Dreams (Knopf, 2008), Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century (Knopf 2006), Of Paradise and Power (Knopf 2003), and A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990 (Free Press, 1996).
For his writings, Politico Magazine named Kagan one of the “Politico 50” in 2016, the “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.” His most recent pieces include “The Twilight of the Liberal World Order” in “Brookings Big Ideas for America” and “Backing into World War III” in Foreign Policy.
He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and holds a doctorate in American history from American University.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Professor of History and Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage, Hillsdale College
After reading Litterae Humaniores at Wadham College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship from 1971-1974, Paul A. Rahe completed a Ph.D. in ancient history at Yale University under the direction of Donald Kagan in 1977. In subsequent years, he taught at Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Tulsa, where he spent twenty-four years before accepting a position at Hillsdale College, where he is Professor of History and Political Science and holds The Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage.
Professor Rahe’s entire scholarly career has been focused on studying the origins and evolution of self-government within the West. His range is considerable. His first book, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992), was 1200 pages in length and surveyed the origins and development of self-government in ancient Greece and Rome, its re-emergence in a new form in the Middle Ages, the transformation it underwent at the hands of the political philosophers of early modernity, and the statesmanship of the American Founding Fathers. Within the first thirteen months of publication, the hardback edition sold out. Thereafter, it reappeared as an alternative selection of the History Book Club. In 1994, it was reissued in a three-volume paperback edition by the University of North Carolina Press, and it remains in print.
In the course of his career, Professor Rahe has published dozens of chapters on related subjects in edited books and scholarly articles in journals such as The American Journal of Philology, Historia, The American Journal of Archaeology, The American Historical Review, The Review of Politics, The American Journal of Business and Professional Ethics, The Journal of the Historical Society, The National Interest, The Woodrow Wilson Quarterly, and History of Political Thought. He spent two years in Istanbul, Turkey in the mid-1980s as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs; he has been awarded research fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Earhart Foundation; and he has held research fellowships at the Center for Hellenic Study, the National Humanities Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D. C. , Clare College at Cambridge University, All Souls College at Oxford University, and the American Academy in Berlin; and he has given a host of public lectures at universities in the United States and abroad – most recently at the Hebrew University and at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England and the Free University in Berlin. In 1997-98, he was named to the Templeton Honor Rolls for Education in a Free Society by The John M. Templeton Foundation, and in 2006 the Society for French Historical Studies awarded him the Koren Prize for the Best Article Published in French History the preceding year.
Professor Rahe co-edited Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws(2001) with David W. Carrithers and Michael A. Mosher, and he edited Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy (2006). His second book, Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic, which examines the political thought inspired by the abortive republican experiment that took place in England in the period stretching from 1649 to 1660, was published by Cambridge University Press in April, 2008. His third and fourth books, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville on the Modern Prospect, were published by Yale University Press in 2009. For his fifth book, The Spartan Way of War, which he hopes to have finished by the end of 2010, Professor Rahe has received a contract from Yale University Press.
Shareholder, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Bruce J. Sarchet has focused his entire legal career on the representation of management in labor and employment law matters and has particular expertise in issues involving:
He regularly appears in state and federal courts and before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on matters involving:
With energy, enthusiasm, and intense focus, Bruce provides clients with superior quality work and exceptional client service and has earned a reputation as a hands-on problem solver. He provides consultation and representation to large, medium and small businesses across California in a variety of industries, including food and beverage, healthcare, transportation, technology, and construction. He also represents public sector employers. He crafts practical, real world solutions to workplace problems such as dealing with difficult employees and recognizing and balancing business realities and necessities with the need to minimize exposure to litigation.
For unionized employers, Bruce frequently serves as chief spokesperson in collective bargaining negotiations and provides representation in grievances and arbitration hearings. He also represents employers during union organizing drives and unfair labor practice charges under the National Labor Relations Act.
An animated, effective and entertaining public speaker, Bruce regularly makes presentations to local professional organizations on labor and employment law topics and has also presented numerous in-house training sessions and workshops to management teams at private and public employers. Bruce has published numerous articles for local business journals, providing practical, hands-on labor and employment law advice to small business owners.
From 2005 to 2013, Bruce served on the firm's five-attorney Management Committee, which handles the firm's operations. In this capacity, he oversaw thirteen Littler offices in seven states. Prior to his selection to the Management Committee, he served as the office-managing shareholder for the firm's Sacramento office and served several terms as a member of the firm's Board of Directors.
Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Robert Kagan is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His new book is The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World (Knopf, 2018). His previous book was The New York Times bestseller, The World America Made (Knopf, 2012).
He is also the author of Return of History and the End of Dreams (Knopf, 2008), Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century (Knopf 2006), Of Paradise and Power (Knopf 2003), and A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990 (Free Press, 1996).
For his writings, Politico Magazine named Kagan one of the “Politico 50” in 2016, the “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.” His most recent pieces include “The Twilight of the Liberal World Order” in “Brookings Big Ideas for America” and “Backing into World War III” in Foreign Policy.
He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and holds a doctorate in American history from American University.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Professor of History and Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage, Hillsdale College
After reading Litterae Humaniores at Wadham College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship from 1971-1974, Paul A. Rahe completed a Ph.D. in ancient history at Yale University under the direction of Donald Kagan in 1977. In subsequent years, he taught at Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Tulsa, where he spent twenty-four years before accepting a position at Hillsdale College, where he is Professor of History and Political Science and holds The Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage.
Professor Rahe’s entire scholarly career has been focused on studying the origins and evolution of self-government within the West. His range is considerable. His first book, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992), was 1200 pages in length and surveyed the origins and development of self-government in ancient Greece and Rome, its re-emergence in a new form in the Middle Ages, the transformation it underwent at the hands of the political philosophers of early modernity, and the statesmanship of the American Founding Fathers. Within the first thirteen months of publication, the hardback edition sold out. Thereafter, it reappeared as an alternative selection of the History Book Club. In 1994, it was reissued in a three-volume paperback edition by the University of North Carolina Press, and it remains in print.
In the course of his career, Professor Rahe has published dozens of chapters on related subjects in edited books and scholarly articles in journals such as The American Journal of Philology, Historia, The American Journal of Archaeology, The American Historical Review, The Review of Politics, The American Journal of Business and Professional Ethics, The Journal of the Historical Society, The National Interest, The Woodrow Wilson Quarterly, and History of Political Thought. He spent two years in Istanbul, Turkey in the mid-1980s as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs; he has been awarded research fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Earhart Foundation; and he has held research fellowships at the Center for Hellenic Study, the National Humanities Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D. C. , Clare College at Cambridge University, All Souls College at Oxford University, and the American Academy in Berlin; and he has given a host of public lectures at universities in the United States and abroad – most recently at the Hebrew University and at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England and the Free University in Berlin. In 1997-98, he was named to the Templeton Honor Rolls for Education in a Free Society by The John M. Templeton Foundation, and in 2006 the Society for French Historical Studies awarded him the Koren Prize for the Best Article Published in French History the preceding year.
Professor Rahe co-edited Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws(2001) with David W. Carrithers and Michael A. Mosher, and he edited Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy (2006). His second book, Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic, which examines the political thought inspired by the abortive republican experiment that took place in England in the period stretching from 1649 to 1660, was published by Cambridge University Press in April, 2008. His third and fourth books, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville on the Modern Prospect, were published by Yale University Press in 2009. For his fifth book, The Spartan Way of War, which he hopes to have finished by the end of 2010, Professor Rahe has received a contract from Yale University Press.
Texas Supreme Court
Justice Jimmy Blacklock was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court in January 2018 by Governor Greg Abbott. Before that, Jimmy served as Governor Abbott’s General Counsel and in the Attorney General’s Office under then-AG Abbott. While at the AG’s Office, he handled appeals and trials of constitutional cases in state and federal court involving matters such as federalism, religious liberty, and the separation of powers. As Deputy Attorney General for Legal Counsel, he oversaw the Open Records and Opinions divisions of the AG’s Office. Earlier in his career, Jimmy was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and he worked in private practice in Houston and Austin. He clerked for Judge Jerry Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit after graduating from U.T.-Austin (B.A., Plan II/History) and Yale Law School. He was born in Houston and now lives in Austin with his wife and three daughters.
Partner, Clement & Murphy PLLC
Erin Murphy is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading Supreme Court and appellate advocates. She has argued dozens of cases in appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court and nearly all of the federal courts of appeals. Erin is one of only seven women in the top two bands of Chambers & Partners rankings for Appellate Law–Nationwide, and the National Law Journal has named her one of the nation’s “Outstanding Women Lawyers.” Erin has litigated appeals involving myriad provisions of the Constitution, including several cases involving the Constitution’s structural protections of liberty. She has litigated a wide range of statutory issues as well, including cases involving the Affordable Care Act, the Bankruptcy Code, the False Claims Act, the Federal Arbitration Act, the Federal Power Act, the Natural Gas Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and more. The National Law Journal named Erin a “Litigation Trailblazer” for her work representing institutional clients, which includes successfully arguing before the Supreme Court on behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Wisconsin State Legislature. Erin also has an active pro bono practice, through which she has successfully represented many religious organizations and adherents, criminal defendants, asylum applicants, adoptive parents, and more.
Erin is an adjunct professor at her alma mater the Georgetown University Law Center, a member and former officer of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a frequent speaker on topics relating to the Supreme Court and appellate advocacy. In her spare time, Erin serves on the boards of directors of Street Law and the Mother of Light Center.
CEO, Ainsley Shea and Senior Consultant, National Popular Vote Campaign
Patrick Rosenstiel is a nationally recognized figure in the world of public affairs, international relations, public relations and market research. Having cut his teeth in the campaign world, including the Forbes for President campaign, Pat brings nearly two decades of senior level public affairs expertise to the table.
With a proactive philosophy toward public affairs, he has advanced initiatives related to defense, Social Security reform, Medicare Part D and drug re-importation. He has won impressive brand victories for Pfizer, Progress for America, Business Roundtable, Recombinetics, Inc., the United States Chamber of Commerce and countless Fortune 500 companies that compete in regulated industries.
As Executive Director of the Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity (TAPP), Rosenstiel led a national public affairs, public relations and citizen lobbying effort against the Section 421 (Trade Act of 1974) petition asking the Obama administration to impose a 35% tariff on low-cost tires manufactured in China. As a direct result, the eventual tariff was reduced by 20 points and shortened.
As a political field director, Rosenstiel successfully directed grassroots efforts across the West and Midwest to garner Senate support for U.S. Supreme Court candidates John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
As a media relations professional, he has placed his clients in The Washington Post, Fox News, The New York Times, Business 2.0 and The Wall Street Journal, as well as hundreds of regional broadcast, local and trade media relevant to the geo-specific needs of the client.
In addition to his work as the CEO of Ainsley Shea, a Twin Cities-based public affairs firm with a worldwide impact, Rosenstiel presently serves as a senior consultant to the National Popular Vote campaign.
Author, The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College
Tara Ross is nationally recognized for her expertise on the Electoral College. She is the author of Why We Need the Electoral College (2019), The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule (2017), We Elect A President: The Story of our Electoral College (2016), and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College (2d ed. 2012). She is also the author of She Fought Too: Stories of Revolutionary War Heroines (2019), and a co-author of Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State (2008) (with Joseph C. Smith, Jr.). Her Prager University video, Do You Understand the Electoral College?, is Prager’s most-viewed video ever, with more than 60 million views.
Tara often appears as a guest on a variety of talk shows nationwide, and she regularly addresses civic, university, and legal audiences. She’s contributed to several law reviews and newspapers, including the National Law Journal, USA Today, the Washington Examiner, The Hill, The Washington Times, and FoxNews.com. She’s appeared before institutions such as the Cooper Union, Brown University, the Dole Institute of Politics, and Mount Vernon. She’s appeared on Fox News, CSPAN, NPR, and a variety of other national and local shows.
Tara is a retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She resides in Dallas with her husband and children.
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Nicholas Stephanopoulos’s research and teaching interests include election law, constitutional law, administrative law, legislation, and comparative law. His work is particularly focused on the intersection of democratic theory, empirical political science, and the American electoral system. His academic articles have appeared in, among others, the Columbia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, New York University Law Review, Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. He has also written for popular publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlantic, New Republic, Slate, and Vox. He has been involved in several litigation efforts as well, including two partisan gerrymandering cases based on his scholarship and decided by the Supreme Court.
Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty, Stephanopoulos was a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He was previously an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School and an Associate in the Washington, DC office of Jenner & Block LLP. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge Raymond C. Fisher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
A graduate of Yale Law School, Stephanopoulos also holds an M.Phil. in European Studies from Cambridge University and an A.B. in Government from Harvard College, graduating summa cum laude. While at Yale, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law, received the Jewell Prize for best second-year student contribution to a law journal, and was a finalist in both the moot court and mock trial competitions.
Stephanopoulos is a frequent television and radio commentator on legal issues. He is a co-founder of PlanScore, a website evaluating past, present, and proposed district plans. He is a member of policy reform initiatives including the Campaign Legal Center’s Litigation Strategy Council and the Committee for the Study of Digital Platforms. He has been named to The Politico 50 list as well as the National Law Journal’s “Chicago’s 40 Under 40.”
United States Senator, Texas
Ted Cruz represents 28 million Texans in the U.S. Senate as a passionate fighter for limited government and economic growth. He has authored 39 legislative measures signed into law. Recent victories include expanding 529 college savings accounts to allow parents to save for K–12 public, private, and religious education, leading the effort to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, imposing sanctions on terrorists who use civilians as human shields, designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, reauthorizing and reforming NASA, ensuring the availability of additional records to help solve civil rights cold cases, supporting thousands of Texas jobs, and leading the fight to confirm principled constitutionalists to our courts.
Senator Cruz is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, a former law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and former solicitor general of Texas. He has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court. In November of 2018, he was re-elected to the Senate by the people of Texas.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Justice, Supreme Court of Texas
Justice Kyle D. Hawkins was appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas by Governor Greg Abbott in October 2025.
Justice Hawkins previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as Counselor to the Solicitor General, where he represented the United States before the U.S. Supreme Court. Previously, he served as the Texas Solicitor General, the state’s chief appellate advocate charged with representing the state, its agencies, and its officers in state and federal appellate courts. Earlier in his career, he served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and for Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. As an appellate practitioner, Justice Hawkins argued five cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, nine in the Texas Supreme Court, and dozens more in other federal and state appellate courts.
In addition to his government service, Justice Hawkins served as a partner in the Dallas and Houston offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and he chaired the Texas appellate practice of Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP, a national litigation boutique. Justice Hawkins has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law.
Justice Hawkins lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and four children.
Sheila M. McDevitt Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Election Law Center, Florida State University College of Law
Professor Morley joined FSU Law in 2018, and teaches and writes in the areas of election law, constitutional law, remedies, and the federal courts. He is best known for his work on election emergencies and post-election litigation, nationwide and other defendant-oriented injunctions, the jurisdiction of the federal courts and their equitable powers more generally. He has testified before congressional committees, made presentations to election officials for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and participated in bipartisan blue-ribbon groups to develop election reforms. The governor of Florida also appointed Professor Morley to the Criminal Punishment Code Task Force, to propose potential revisions to the legislature.
The U.S. Supreme Court has cited several of his articles, and he was counsel of record for the successful Petitioner in a landmark campaign finance case. Professor Morley has appeared on C-SPAN, Court TV, Fox News and numerous local news programs, and has been quoted in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Roll Call, Politico, U.S. News and World Report, and a wide range of other national publications. His work has been published in many of the nation’s top law reviews, including the Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, Boston University Law Review and Emory Law Journal.
Before joining FSU Law, Professor Morley was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to his experience in academia, he served in government as special assistant to the General Counsel of the Army at the Pentagon, as well as a law clerk for Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. During his tenure with the Army General Counsel’s office, he was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award and the Army Staff Lapel Pin. He also worked as an associate at Williams & Connolly LLP and the Supreme Court & Appellate group of Winston & Strawn, LLP, both in Washington, D.C.
Professor Morley earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 2003, where he was a senior editor on the Yale Law Journal; served on the moot court board; and received the Thurman Arnold Prize for Best Oralist in the Morris Tyler Moot Court of Appeals.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Andrew Oldham is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before ascending to the bench, Judge Oldham served as General Counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, where he advised the Governor on a range of issues under federal and state law and managed litigation in which the Governor was an interested party. Before that he served as Deputy Solicitor General for the State of Texas, where he represented Texas in federal courts across the country, including twice before the United States Supreme Court. Before moving to Texas, Judge Oldham was an attorney at Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick in Washington, D.C. His practice focused on appellate litigation in federal courts of appeals throughout the country. Before entering private practice, Judge Oldham served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., at the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also worked as an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2006 to 2008. Judge Oldham earned a B.A. from the University of Virginia with highest honors, a Truman Scholarship for graduate school, an M. Phil., first class (with distinction), from Cambridge University, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
Associate Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Alan M. Trammell teaches and writes primarily in the fields of civil procedure, federal courts, constitutional law, and conflict of laws. He is recognized as one of the leading authorities on universal injunctions and has been invited to present his research at numerous conferences, on podcasts, and in popular media. His scholarship has appeared in the Columbia Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Texas Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Law Review.
Before joining the W&L faculty in 2020, Professor Trammell taught as an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville). He has also served as an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brooklyn Law School, where the student body selected him as Professor of the Year in 2014.
Professor Trammell earned his law degree from the University of Virginia where he was a Hardy Cross Dillard Scholar and served as Articles Development Editor of the Virginia Law Review. After graduation, he clerked for the Honorable Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the Honorable Theodor Meron of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (Netherlands). He then spent three years as a litigation associate at the firm now known as Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick PLLC in Washington, D.C.
Before law school, he received a bachelor's degree from Wake Forest University and master's degrees from the London School of Economics & Political Science and Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.
Board Member, U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Beth A. Williams is a Board Member of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an agency whose mission is to ensure that the federal government's efforts to prevent terrorism are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.
Prior to her Board service, Ms. Williams was the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice from August 2017 to December 2020. In that role, she served as the primary policy advisor to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, and as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department. Ms. Williams also led the judicial nomination process for the Department, assisting in the selection and confirmation of more than 230 Article III judges to the bench.
Prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Williams was a litigation and appellate partner at a national law firm, where her practice focused on complex commercial, securities, appellate, and First Amendment litigation. From 2005-2006, Ms. Williams served as Special Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she assisted with the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Ms. Williams clerked for the Hon. Richard C. Wesley on the United State Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude, with a degree in History and Literature, and she earned her law degree from Harvard Law School, where she served as Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Socialization of Risk: Bankruptcy Law & Financial Institutions [Archive Collection]
Frank H. Easterbrook, C. Boyden Gray, Edith H. Jones, Elizabeth Warren, Harris Weinstein
On September 13-14, 1991, the Federalist Society held its Fifth Annual National Lawyers Convention on...
Socialization of Risk: Bankruptcy Law & Financial Institutions [Archive Collection]
Frank H. Easterbrook, C. Boyden Gray, Edith H. Jones, Elizabeth Warren, Harris Weinstein
On September 13-14, 1991, the Federalist Society held its Fifth Annual National Lawyers Convention on...
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The status of independent contractors in California has been hotly debated over the past year,...
Book Review: The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World
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So many international developments vie for America’s attention. Dr. Robert Kagan’s book, The Jungle Grows...
Independent Contractor Or Employee: Sometimes, Things Are Not As Easy As A-B-C
TeleforumBook Review: The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World
TeleforumPanel Three: Election Issues Roundtable
2019 Texas Chapters Conference
Austin, TXSecond Annual Gregory S. Coleman Memorial Lecture & Luncheon
2019 Texas Chapters Conference
Austin, TXPanel Two: Discussion on Nationwide Injunctions
2019 Texas Chapters Conference
Austin, TXA Celebration of Constitution Day
Orange County Lawyers Chapter
Orange County, CA