Former Vice President & Director, External Relations, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Jonathan Bunch is the former Vice President and Director of External Relations for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. Jonathan was responsible for a broad range of strategic, programming, and media relations decisions that were integral to the Society's mission. In addition to his work for the Society, Jonathan regularly advised other organizations and public officials on matters of legal policy and judicial selection. Before joining the Society, Jonathan ran a 501c4 in Missouri, where he had served on the staff of Missouri Governor Matt Blunt and as a law clerk for The Honorable Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. on the Supreme Court of Missouri. Jonathan is a graduate of John Brown University and the University of Missouri School of Law. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, Amanda, and their four children.
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Paul Marshall is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and the author and editor of more than twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom, including more recently, Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion (2009), Religious Freedom in the World (2008), Radical Islam's Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law (2005), The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003), Islam at the Crossroads (2002), God and the Constitution (2002), The Talibanization of Nigeria (2002), Massacre at the Millennium (2001), Religious Freedom in the World (2000), Egypt's Endangered Christians (1999), Just Politics(1998), Heaven Is Not My Home (1998), A Kind of Life Imposed on Man (1996), and the best-selling, award-winning survey of religious persecution worldwide Their Blood Cries Out (1997).
He is the author of several hundred articles, and his writings have been translated into Russian, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Albanian, Japanese, Malay, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese. He is in frequent demand for lectures and media appearances, including interviews on ABC Evening News; CNN; PBS; Fox; the British, Australian, Canadian, South African, and Japanese Broadcasting Corporations; and Al Jazeera. His work has been published in, or is the subject of, articles in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, First Things, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Reader's Digest, and many other newspapers and magazines.
Director, Center for Religious Freedom, Hudson Institute
An international human-rights lawyer for over thirty years, Nina Shea joined Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow in November 2006, where she directs the Center for Religious Freedom. Shea works extensively for the advancement of individual religious freedom and other human rights in U.S. foreign policy as it confronts an ascendant Islamic extremism, as well as nationalist and remnant communist regimes. She undertakes scholarship and advocacy in defense of those persecuted for their religious beliefs and identities and on behalf of diplomatic measures to end religious repression and violence abroad, whether from state actors or extremist groups.
Ms. Shea was appointed by the U.S. House of Representatives to serve seven terms as a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (June 1999 - March 2012). During the Soviet era, Shea’s first client before the United Nations was Soviet Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov. Since then, she has been appointed as a U.S. delegate to the United Nation's main human rights body by both Republican and Democratic administrations. She also served as a member of the Clinton administration's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. In 2009, she was appointed to serve as a member of the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO.
Ms. Shea played a leading role in building grassroot support for the adoption of the International Religious Freedom Act (1998). For seven years ending in 2005, she helped organize and lead a coalition of churches and religious groups that worked to end a religious war against non-Muslims and dissident Muslims in southern Sudan. In 2014, she initiated and helped lead a coalition of hundreds of prominent American religious leaders to issue The Pledge of Solidarity for Persecuted Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian Christians and Other Minorities, which was released by a bi-partisan Congressional panel on May 7. In summer 2014, she met with Pope Francis to discuss the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.
At Hudson, she has organized conferences for Nigerian schoolgirls and others who survived Boko Haram attacks, Christian converts formerly imprisoned in Iran, Coptic bishops from Egypt, Catholic bishops from China and the Gulf, Muslim scholars, and many others. Ms. Shea advocates in the nation's capital on behalf of a broad range of persecuted religious minorities around the world; and, for such work, was honored by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA with the Community's inaugural "Ahmadiyya Muslim Humanitarian Award."
She has authored and/or edited four widely-acclaimed reports on Saudi state educational materials that promote extremist views and in 2011 had an opportunity to travel to Saudi Arabia and speak directly about her findings with the Ministers of Education, Justice and Islamic Affairs. Her reports include: Ten Years On: Saudi Arabia's Textbooks Still Promote Religious Violence (2011), Update: Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance (2008), Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance (2006), and Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques (2005), all of which translated and analyzed Saudi governmental publications that teach hatred and violence against the religious "other."
She is the co-author of Silenced: How Apostasy & Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide, with a Foreword by Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, the former President of Indonesia and head of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization (Oxford University Press, 2011). Her most recent book, which she also co-authored, is Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2013). She regularly presents testimony before Congress, delivers public lectures, organizes briefings and conferences, and writes frequently on religious freedom issues. Her writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, CQ Researcher, Weekly Standard, National Review Online, CNN, Fox, The Daily Beast, HuffingtonPost, and RealClearWorld, among others.
For the ten years prior to joining Hudson, Ms. Shea worked at Freedom House, where she directed the Center for Religious Freedom, an entity which she had helped found in 1986 as the Puebla Institute.
She is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia. She is a graduate of Smith College, and American University's Washington College of Law.
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia
Chief Justice David E. Nahmias (pronounced “NAH-mee-iss”) has served on the Georgia Supreme Court since his appointment by Governor Sonny Perdue in August 2009, winning election to six-year terms in 2010 and 2016. He became the Court’s Presiding Justice in September 2018 and its Chief Justice in July 2021. As Chief Justice, he leads the State’s judicial branch and chairs the Judicial Council of Georgia, the policy-making body for the judicial branch. Chief Justice Nahmias also chairs the Court’s Justice for Children Committee and the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. Before taking the bench, he was a federal prosecutor for almost 15 years, including service as a line prosecutor and as the United States Attorney in Atlanta, where he prosecuted and supervised many high-profile cases, and service as a senior Justice Department official in Washington, where he oversaw terrorism cases and other matters for three years after the 9/11 attacks.
Chief Justice Nahmias is a graduate of Briarcliff High School in DeKalb County, where he was the state’s STAR Student in 1982; Duke University, where he finished second in his class; and Harvard Law School, where he served on the Law Review with former President Barack Obama. He was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Chief Justice Nahmias has received numerous local, state, and national awards and honors for his public service, and he has served on several committees and boards that work to improve the legal system and the community. Chief Justice Nahmias has two teenage sons. His wife, Catherine O’Neil, was a partner at King & Spalding before she passed away in 2017.
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.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
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.
Executive Vice President and Director of Litigation, EdChoice Legal Advocates
Before founding a public interest law firm at EdChoice, Tom Fisher served as Indiana’s first Solicitor General from 2005-2023. Fisher has argued dozens of high-profile cases before both the Indiana Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and five cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. A two-time recipient of the National Association of Attorneys General Best Brief Award, Fisher is a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and a Sagamore of the Wabash. Fisher is a graduate of Wabash College and Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where he serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law.
Distinguished Professor and Lawrence A. Jegen III Professor, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Gerard N. Magliocca is a Distinguished Professor and the Lawrence A. Jegen III Professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Professor Magliocca is the author of five books on constitutional law. His next book will be about Justice Robert Jackson’s landmark concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer. His biography of Justice Bushrod Washington won the Erwin N. Griswold Prize from the Supreme Court Historical Society.
Professor Magliocca received his undergraduate degree from Stanford and his law degree from Yale. He joined the faculty in 2001 after two years as an attorney and one year as a law clerk for Judge Guido Calabresi on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In 2008, Professor Magliocca held the Fulbright-Dow Distinguished Research Chair of the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg, The Netherlands. He was a Fellow at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon from 2019-2021.
Partner, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Brian J. Paul is an appellate lawyer and leads law teams in high-stakes commercial litigation. He has briefed and argued everything from weighty abstract constitutional issues to dollars-and-cents business issues and everything in-between, both on appeal and in trial courts around the country. A member of the American Law Institute, recent past-president of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association and top-tier ranked Chambers appellate lawyer, Brian had one client say about him: “Brian is one of the most respected and skilled appellate lawyers, not only in Indianapolis but across the country. He is trusted to deliver timely guidance on complex issues.” Another said: “He is excellent. I enjoyed working with him. He is able to put things into layman’s terms and explains things really well. His written and oral advocacy are short, crisp and to the point.”
Clients hire Brian to digest the complex, and make the complex simple and compelling for busy, generalist judges. In his writing, he strives to cut through jargon and legalese, and distill things down to what’s important. In his oral advocacy, by intense preparation, he strives to be the advocate whom judges trust for the right answers. In the dozens of cases he has argued, Brian has helped clients win on both sides of the “v.” His recent representations include:
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Times. Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University.
Executive Vice President and Director of Litigation, EdChoice Legal Advocates
Before founding a public interest law firm at EdChoice, Tom Fisher served as Indiana’s first Solicitor General from 2005-2023. Fisher has argued dozens of high-profile cases before both the Indiana Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and five cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. A two-time recipient of the National Association of Attorneys General Best Brief Award, Fisher is a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and a Sagamore of the Wabash. Fisher is a graduate of Wabash College and Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where he serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law.
Distinguished Professor and Lawrence A. Jegen III Professor, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Gerard N. Magliocca is a Distinguished Professor and the Lawrence A. Jegen III Professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Professor Magliocca is the author of five books on constitutional law. His next book will be about Justice Robert Jackson’s landmark concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer. His biography of Justice Bushrod Washington won the Erwin N. Griswold Prize from the Supreme Court Historical Society.
Professor Magliocca received his undergraduate degree from Stanford and his law degree from Yale. He joined the faculty in 2001 after two years as an attorney and one year as a law clerk for Judge Guido Calabresi on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In 2008, Professor Magliocca held the Fulbright-Dow Distinguished Research Chair of the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg, The Netherlands. He was a Fellow at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon from 2019-2021.
Partner, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Brian J. Paul is an appellate lawyer and leads law teams in high-stakes commercial litigation. He has briefed and argued everything from weighty abstract constitutional issues to dollars-and-cents business issues and everything in-between, both on appeal and in trial courts around the country. A member of the American Law Institute, recent past-president of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association and top-tier ranked Chambers appellate lawyer, Brian had one client say about him: “Brian is one of the most respected and skilled appellate lawyers, not only in Indianapolis but across the country. He is trusted to deliver timely guidance on complex issues.” Another said: “He is excellent. I enjoyed working with him. He is able to put things into layman’s terms and explains things really well. His written and oral advocacy are short, crisp and to the point.”
Clients hire Brian to digest the complex, and make the complex simple and compelling for busy, generalist judges. In his writing, he strives to cut through jargon and legalese, and distill things down to what’s important. In his oral advocacy, by intense preparation, he strives to be the advocate whom judges trust for the right answers. In the dozens of cases he has argued, Brian has helped clients win on both sides of the “v.” His recent representations include:
Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide - An Overview by the Authors
Silenced: Are Global Trends to Ban Religious Defamation, Religious Insult, and Islamophobia a New Challenge to First Amendment Freedoms?
Washington, DCFive Mistakes that Some Conservatives Are Making in the Immigration Debate
Tampa, FloridaThe Federalist Paper, November 2011
We are pleased to bring you the fall issue of The Federalist Paper. Inside, as...
Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security.
Atlanta, GeorgiaIs Obamacare Constitutional
Senate Bill 5 & Issue 2: Legal and Policy Implications
Columbus, OhioObamaCare Debate
St. Louis, MissouriA Debate Over the Constitutionality of the Health Care Reform Act
Thomas M. Fisher, Gerard N. Magliocca, Brian J. Paul
On October 25, 2011, the Indianapolis Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society hosted a debate...
A Debate Over the Constitutionality of the Health Care Reform Act
Indianapolis Lawyers Chapter
Indianapolis, INThe Morality of Capitalism: Property Rights, Legal Regimes, and Markets
Austin, Texas