Partner, Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC
Abhishek (Abhi) Kambli is a partner at Holtzman Vogel who represents clients in high-stakes appellate and complex litigation, constitutional challenges, and matters involving state attorneys general and federal agencies. He is one of a handful of lawyers nationally who has both led federal litigation from inside the Department of Justice and multi-state coalition work from a State Attorney General’s office—giving clients a 360-degree perspective on government enforcement, regulatory challenges, and constitutional advocacy.
Prior to joining Holtzman Vogel, Abhi served as Deputy Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, where he acted as lead counsel in high-priority matters for the Trump Administration, oversaw the Department’s civil components on behalf of the Associate Attorney General, advised the White House Counsel’s Office and federal agencies on litigation risk and strategy, and developed the Department’s national affirmative civil litigation strategy.
Earlier, he served as Deputy Attorney General and Division Chief of the Special Litigation and Constitutional Issues Division at the Kansas Attorney General’s Office, where he launched the division and led multi-state coalitions in trial and appellate courts nationwide, including the United States Supreme Court. He began his career as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Indiana, prosecuting more than 100 federal cases from investigation through appeal.
Abhi is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps, having served on active duty and in the reserves since 2013. His military service includes criminal trials as both prosecutor and defense attorney, appellate representation before the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and representation of a high-profile detainee before the Military Commissions at Guantánamo Bay.
Attorney and Legal Commentator
John Shu is an attorney and legal commentator. His focus areas include constitutional law, securities & corporate law, antitrust law, administrative law, politics, and international affairs. Mr. Shu has lectured and published on a wide variety of issues.
Mr. Shu served President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush. He also served Judge Stanley Sporkin, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was Director of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, and Judge Paul Roney, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, who was Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
Mr. Shu is a member of the National Committee on U.S. - China Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Foreign Policy Association.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Michael Bindas is a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice (IJ) and leads IJ’s educational choice team. In this role, he oversees a talented group of IJ attorneys who help policymakers design constitutionally defensible educational choice programs and who defend educational choice programs in courtrooms nationwide. He joined IJ in 2005.
Michael was part of IJ’s litigation team in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held the exclusion of religious options from Montana’s educational choice program unconstitutional, and he led IJ’s defense of the Choice Scholarship Program for elementary and secondary students in Douglas County, Colorado. He also successfully challenged Washington’s denial of special education services to children in religious schools, as well as the state’s exclusion of sectarian options from its state work study program. Currently, he leads IJ’s team in Carson v. Makin, challenging Maine’s exclusion of religious options from its educational choice program.
Prior to leading IJ’s educational choice team, Michael litigated extensively to secure economic liberty, property rights, and freedom of speech throughout the nation. He was counsel of record at the U.S. Supreme Court for Kimbrough Fine Wine & Spirits in Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas, a successful challenge to Tennessee’s durational residency requirements for retail liquor licenses. He also led successful challenges to the municipal sign codes of St. Louis, Mo. and Norfolk, Va., after those cities attempted to silence protests of their abusive eminent domain practices.
Prior to joining IJ, Michael spent three years as an attorney with Perkins Coie LLP. He is a former law clerk to Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and served as an engineer officer in the United States Army and Pennsylvania Army National Guard before beginning his legal career.
Michael received his law degree cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2001, where he served as Articles Editor for the Journal of Constitutional Law and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He received his undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1995.
John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Associate Dean for External Engagement, University of Notre Dame Law School
Nicole Stelle Garnett is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, where she also serves as the Associate Dean for External Engagement and directs the Notre Dame Education Law Project. Her teaching and research focus on education law and policy, religious liberty, and topics related to property law (especially land use and urban development policies). In addition to dozens of articles on these subjects, she is the author of Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America (University of Chicago Press, 2014) and Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing and the Restoration of Urban America (Yale University Press, 2009).
Garnett received her B.A. with distinction in Political Science from Stanford University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Morris S. Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. Before joining the law school faculty in 1999, she worked for two years as a staff attorney at the Institute for Justice, a non-profit public-interest law firm in Washington, D.C., where she helped to defend the constitutionality of the nation's first private-school-choice programs.
At Notre Dame, Garnett is a faculty fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate, and deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture. She also is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Senior Fellow, American Federation for Children
Shaka Mitchell serves as a Senior Fellow for the American Federation for Children.
He brings experience from several high-performing charter school networks, including Rocketship Education and LEAD Public schools, that serve over 2,500 students in Nashville.
Shaka began his career in education as the Associate Director of Policy and Planning at the D.C.-based Center for Education Reform. He then led outreach efforts at the Institute for Justice, a constitutional law firm based in Arlington, VA.
He is an alumnus of Belmont University where he teaches American Government and Constitutional Law as an adjunct faculty member. He earned his Juris Doctorate from the Wake Forest University School of Law where he sits on the Board of Advisors for the Journal of Law and Policy. Shaka is a co-founder of MoreMarrowDonors.org, a non-profit committed to providing scholarships to bone marrow donors who are matches for patients with various blood diseases. Shaka is the Chair of the Tennessee State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
He is a member of the American Enterprise Institute’s Leadership Network and Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellowship. Shaka and his wife Stephanie are members of Edgefield Church in Nashville and are active in several non-profit organizations.
Associate Professor and C. Boyden Gray Distinguished Scholar, University of North Carolina School of Law
Mark Storslee joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2025 and serves as Associate Professor and C. Boyden Gray Distinguished Scholar. His teaching and research interests include constitutional law, civil procedure, administrative law, and federal courts. Among other topics, his scholarship focuses on constitutional history, religious freedom, and First Amendment law generally. Storslee’s work has appeared in publications such as the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the University of Virginia Law Review, Vanderbilt University Law Review, and the Journal of Law & Religion.
Storslee holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies (ethics) from the University of Virginia. He also holds masters degrees from Duke University and the University of Edinburgh and a B.A. from Furman University. After law school, Storslee clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and later for Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch on the United States Supreme Court. He previously taught at Penn State Law School and Emory Law School, and served as the Executive Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. He also worked as an appellate litigator at Williams & Connolly LLP.
Chief Counsel, Arizona Chamber Law Center
Prior to joining the Chamber, Nate was an Attorney at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) and an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona. At TPPF, he brought cases seeking to limit federal government overreach. As an Assistant AG, he practiced criminal appeals in Arizona appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He began his legal career as a clerk at the Arizona Supreme Court for Justices Clint Bolick and John Lopez before going on to clerk at the U.S. District Court for Judge Susan Brnovich.
Nate earned his J.D. from the University of Arizona, where he was an Articles Editor for the Arizona Law Review and President of the Federalist Society. He is licensed to practice law in Arizona and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and DC Circuits.
Director, Children's Law Clinic, Center for the Rights of Abused Children
Tom Jose is a lawyer who protects the rights of abused children throughout the foster care process and beyond.
Tom heads up our one-of-a-kind pro bono Children’s Law Clinic, where he represents abused children, foster parents, kinship placements, and biological parents in dependency and severance proceedings to ensure that the state respects their rights. He litigates to protect the rights of abused children throughout the foster process and beyond. Tom also represents transition-aged youth in a variety of matters to give them their best chance at starting adult lives.
Tom’s passion for protecting abused children was ignited while working for an appeals court, shortly after he graduated from law school. He was shocked at the sheer volume of abused children who passed through—and remained in—the foster system every year and how little was being done to protect the rights of these innocent children. Since then, he has spent his legal career helping abused children in Arizona.
Before joining the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, Tom worked for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in its Child and Family Protection Appeals Unit. He handled hundreds of appeals, filed over 75 substantive briefs, and had five oral arguments before the Arizona Supreme Court and the Arizona Court of Appeals. In 2020, the Attorney General’s Office presented Tom with an award for Outstanding Appellate Advocacy.
Tom holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a law degree from Arizona State University. He lives in Mesa, Arizona, with his son Eric, where he enjoys collecting (and playing) vintage video games and going camping around our beautiful state.
Vice President for Litigation & General Counsel, Goldwater Institute
Jon Riches is the Vice President for Litigation for the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and General Counsel for the Institute. He litigates in federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, regulatory reform, free speech, taxpayer protections, public labor issues, government transparency, and school choice, among others.
Jon has developed and authored several pieces of legislation, including the landmark Right to Earn a Living Act, which provides some of the greatest protections in the country to job-seekers and entrepreneurs facing arbitrary licensing regulations. He also developed legislation eliminating deference to administrative agencies in Arizona—a first-of-its-kind regulatory reform that can serve as a model for the rest of the country.
His work at the Institute has been covered by national media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CBS This Morning, Bloomberg News, and Politico. Jon is also a member of the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project: State and Local Working Group.
Prior to joining the Goldwater Institute, Jon served on active duty in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. While on active duty, Jon represented hundreds of clients, litigated dozens of court-martial cases, and advised commanders on a vast array of legal issues.
He previously clerked for Sen. Jon Kyl on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, worked for the Rules Committee in the Arizona State Senate, and clerked in the Office of Counsel to the President at the White House. Jon received his B.A. from Boston College, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D. from the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law.
Jon served as a presidentially appointed Panel Member on the Federal Service Impasses Panel. He is an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University School of Law. Jon is a native of Phoenix.
Constitutional Scholarship Director and Senior Legal Analyst, Pacific Legal Foundation
Anastasia Boden is Director of Constitutional Scholarship at Pacific Legal Foundation, where she leads the organization’s Supreme Court commentary and directs scholarly analysis in support of the firm’s litigation. She has represented entrepreneurs and small businesses nationwide in challenges to onerous licensing regimes, anti-competitive titling restrictions, Certificate of Need (“competitor’s veto”) laws, and other forms of unnecessary red tape that block economic opportunity.
Prior to this role, Anastasia developed nearly a dozen constitutional challenges to Certificate of Need laws across the country, helping spur legislative reform in Montana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Her victories include a ruling invalidating Houston’s busking restrictions, multiple appellate decisions expanding access to the courts for civil rights plaintiffs, and the legislative repeal of Virginia’s happy-hour advertising ban.
Her writings on law and liberty have been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more, and she has appeared on Headline News, CBS News, Fox News, ReasonTV, Newsmax, and John Stossel. In 2020, she was featured on Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s Supreme Court shortlist.
Anastasia earned her BA with dean’s honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was research assistant to Professor Randy E. Barnett—the “intellectual godfather” of the constitutional challenge to Obamacare. She is the co-creator of the podcast Dissed, about infamous Supreme Court dissents. She authors the biweekly newsletter SCOTUS Scoop and the column, “In Dissent” for SCOTUSblog.
Associate Justice, Tennessee Supreme Court
Sworn in by Governor Bill Haslam in September 2014, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Holly Kirby is the first graduate of the University of Memphis ever to sit on Tennessee’s highest court. A career jurist, Justice Kirby has authored well over a thousand opinions from appeals all across the state.
Prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Kirby served for almost 19 years on the Tennessee Court of Appeals, Tennessee’s intermediate appellate court for civil cases. She represented a gender milestone on the Court of Appeals—when she was appointed in 1995, she became the first woman ever to sit on that Court.
A lifelong Tennessean, Justice Kirby was born in Memphis and graduated from high school in Columbia, Tennessee. As an undergraduate at the University of Memphis, she held a number of student leadership positions and graduated in 1979 with high honors, with a B.S. in mechanical engineering.
In 1982, Justice Kirby graduated from the University of Memphis School of Law with high honors. Upon graduation, she served as a judicial law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
After her clerkship, Justice Kirby joined the Memphis law firm of Burch, Porter & Johnson, where she was active in politics and community service. When she was selected as partner in 1990, she became the firm’s first female partner.
From the time of her appointment to the Court of Appeals in 1995 to the present, Justice Kirby has won 5 statewide elections, in 1996, 1998, 2006, 2014, and 2016.
Justice Kirby was chosen as Outstanding Young Alumna for the University of Memphis in 1996, Outstanding Alumna for the University of Memphis College of Engineering in 2002, and Special Distinguished Alumna for the School of Law in 2016. She is married to Memphis businessman Russell Ingram and has two grown children. The family belongs to Idlewild Presbyterian Church.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
Morris Sheppard Arnold is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. Prior to his appointment, he served on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas after a nomination by Ronald Reagan in 1985. He assumed senior status on October 9, 2006.
Morris also served as a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review from 2008 to 2013. He was the presiding judge on that court from 2012 to 2013.
Constitutional Scholarship Director and Senior Legal Analyst, Pacific Legal Foundation
Anastasia Boden is Director of Constitutional Scholarship at Pacific Legal Foundation, where she leads the organization’s Supreme Court commentary and directs scholarly analysis in support of the firm’s litigation. She has represented entrepreneurs and small businesses nationwide in challenges to onerous licensing regimes, anti-competitive titling restrictions, Certificate of Need (“competitor’s veto”) laws, and other forms of unnecessary red tape that block economic opportunity.
Prior to this role, Anastasia developed nearly a dozen constitutional challenges to Certificate of Need laws across the country, helping spur legislative reform in Montana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Her victories include a ruling invalidating Houston’s busking restrictions, multiple appellate decisions expanding access to the courts for civil rights plaintiffs, and the legislative repeal of Virginia’s happy-hour advertising ban.
Her writings on law and liberty have been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more, and she has appeared on Headline News, CBS News, Fox News, ReasonTV, Newsmax, and John Stossel. In 2020, she was featured on Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s Supreme Court shortlist.
Anastasia earned her BA with dean’s honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was research assistant to Professor Randy E. Barnett—the “intellectual godfather” of the constitutional challenge to Obamacare. She is the co-creator of the podcast Dissed, about infamous Supreme Court dissents. She authors the biweekly newsletter SCOTUS Scoop and the column, “In Dissent” for SCOTUSblog.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Patrick J. Bumatay was confirmed as a U.S. Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in December 2019. He is based in San Diego, California.
Prior to his appointment, Judge Bumatay served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, where he was a member of the Appellate and Narcotics Sections. He also served as a Counselor to the Attorney General on criminal law issues, including on national opioid strategy and combating transnational organized crime. Judge Bumatay has also worked in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of the Associate Attorney General, and the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. Judge Bumatay has twice received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award.
Judge Bumatay previously worked as an associate at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, and Bohrer in New York, New York. Judge Bumatay clerked for the Honorable Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Honorable Sandra L. Townes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Judge Bumatay earned his B.A., cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.
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