Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Amul R. Thapar serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. His judicial career began in 2007 when President George W. Bush nominated him to serve on the Eastern District of Kentucky, making him the first South Asian Article III judge in American history. In 2017, he became President Donald J. Trump’s first appellate court nominee.
Before joining the bench, Judge Thapar served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. While United States Attorney, Judge Thapar worked on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (“AGAC”) and chaired the AGAC’s Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture subcommittee. He also served on the Terrorism and National Security subcommittee, the Violent Crime subcommittee, and the Child Exploitation working group.
Judge Thapar has worked in private practice, at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cincinnati, Ohio. He also served as an Assistant United States Attorney in both the Southern District of Ohio and the District of Columbia.
Judge Thapar received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating, Judge Thapar worked as a law clerk to the Honorable S. Arthur Spiegel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Judge Thapar has also published in the Yale Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, and Catholic University Law Review. He teaches courses on originalism, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and legal writing at Notre Dame Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Vanderbilt Law School.
Principal, DeGroot Legal
Mr. DeGroot represents businesses in complex litigation, focusing on licensing, insurance, intellectual property, contract disputes, and toxic torts. He has experience in cases involving fraud, breach of contract, unfair competition, patents, business torts, mergers and acquisitions, creditors’ rights, and bankruptcy. He has extensive experience in all aspects of civil litigation, both in federal and state courts, including prejudgment remedies, discovery, trial, appeals, arbitration and mediation.
Mr. DeGroot works with clients in a variety of industries, including financial institutions, insurance, software, construction, semiconductors, and real estate.
Dean, Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs
John Graham is Dean of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), a professional school with more than 2500 students and 100 faculty covering the fields of environmental science, criminal justice, arts administration, non-profit management, public finance and budgeting, public management and policy analysis. SPEA’s Master’s in Public Affairs program was recently ranked #2 in the country by U.S. News and World Report.
From 2001 to 2006 Dr. Graham served as the Senate-confirmed administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In this capacity, he was responsible for federal regulatory, information and statistical policies.
Prior to his government service, Dr. Graham was a tenured professor of policy and decision sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health where he founded and led the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
He holds a BA degree (politics and economics) from Wake Forest University, an MA degree (public affairs) from Duke University and a Ph.D. degree (public affairs) from Carnegie-Mellon University.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
In 1994, Professor of Law Michael I. Krauss became the law school's first recipient of the university's "Teacher of the Year" award for his engaging and challenging approach in the classroom. Born in the United States but raised in Canada, Professor Krauss speaks legalese in two languages. He earned his B.A. cum laude from Carleton University, his LL.B. summa cum laude from the Université de Sherbrooke, and his LL.M. from Yale Law School, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He was Columbia University's Law and Economics Fellow in 1981. He has been teaching at George Mason since 1987 and also has taught at the law schools of Seattle University, the University of Toronto, and the Université de Sherbrooke.
Hired as a law clerk by Justice Louis-Philippe Pigeon of Canada's Supreme Court, Professor Krauss practiced law for Quebec City's largest law firm before entering academia. He also served for five years on Québec's Human Rights Commission. A Salvatori Fellow of the Heritage Foundation and an academic fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Professor Krauss sits on the advisory boards of several think tanks. He served as president of the Virginia Association of Scholars and on the Board of Governors of the Education Section of the Virginia State Bar, and is currently a member of the Board of Governors of the National Association of Scholars.
Professor Krauss teaches Torts, Legal Ethics and Jurisprudence, and has a strong interest in national security issues. His research on torts and ethics is nationally known. He co-authored the first edition of Legal Ethics in a Nutshell in May 2003. This book digests the Model Rules in an engaging and often critical fashion. The second edition was published in 2006. Professor Krauss is now under contract with West Publications to produce an innovative textbook on Products Liability in late 2008.
Professor Krauss received his B.A. cum laude from Carleton University, his LL.B. summa cum laude from the Université de Sherbrooke, and his LL.M. from Yale Law School.
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law
Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.
Prior to assuming this position, from 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science. Before that he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. He also has taught at DePaul College of Law and UCLA Law School.
He is the author of eleven books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century (Picador Macmillan) published in November 2018, and two books published by Yale University Press in 2017, Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable and Free Speech on Campus (with Howard Gillman).
He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He writes a regular column for the Sacramento Bee, monthly columns for the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.
In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Sandra Segal Ikuta was confirmed as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 19, 2006. She filled a judgeship vacant since September 1, 2000, when Chief Judge Emeritus James R. Browning took senior status.
Before becoming a U.S. Circuit Judge, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to be deputy secretary and general counsel of the California Resources Agency in January 2004.
Prior to her political appointment, Judge Ikuta was a partner at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She joined the law firm in 1990 as an associate and became a partner in 1997. She specialized in environmental and natural resources law and co-chaired the firm's environmental practice group. She previously served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 1989-90, and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1988-89.
Prior to her legal career, Judge Ikuta took an unorthodox career path, which included serving as the first female editor-in-chief of a national martial arts magazine.
She received her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and a Master of Science from Columbia University School of Journalism. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.
In addition to her duties as an active U.S. Circuit Judge, Judge Ikuta was an appointed member of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.
U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (1983-1989); U.S. Solicitor General (1989-1993)
Kenneth Starr is a former United States Federal Court of Appeals Judge, U.S. Solicitor General, and Independent Counsel. He is the former President and Chancellor of Baylor University where he held the Louise L. Morrison Chair of Constitutional Law at Baylor University Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama (Retired); Professor of Law, Belmont University College of Law?
Shareholder, Maynard Cooper & Gale
Tommy’s trial practice concentrates on complex mass tort, environmental, and product liability cases, often handling the defense of class actions or mass consolidated cases throughout the South. He has handled cases in Alabama, Virginia, California, Texas, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi and the District of Columbia. Tommy is active in the American Bar Association, having served as the Association’s President in 2008-2009. His skills as a litigator have been highly recognized throughout the years, including being listed in The Best Lawyers in America© and one of Alabama’s Top Ten attorneys in Super Lawyers®. He is a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, the Litigation Counsel of America and the American College of Environmental Lawyers.
Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Professor Dent taught law at New York University, Cardozo, and the New York Law School before joining the faculty in 1990. Earlier he had clerked for Judge Paul R. Hays of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, and practiced corporate law in New York with Debevoise, Plimpton, Lyons & Gates. He teaches Business Associations, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Business Planning and is the faculty supervisor for the Business Organizations Concentration. He has published many articles on corporate and securities law, including “Academics in Wonderland: The Team Production and Director Primacy Models of Corporate Governance,” Houston Law Review (2008); “Corporate Governance: Still Broke, No Fix in Sight,” Journal of Corporation Law (2005); “Lawyers and Trust in Business Alliances,” Business Lawyer (2002); and “Gap Fillers and Fiduciary Duties in Strategic Alliances,” The Business Lawyer (2001). He also writes on law and religion, as in “Civil Rights for Whom: Gay Rights Versus Religious Freedom,” University of Kentucky Law Journal (2006-07); and “How Does Same-Sex Marriage Threaten You?,” Rutgers Law Review (2007). Mr. Dent serves as a director of the National Association of Scholars and as president of the Ohio Association of Scholars. He serves as an officer of Cleveland Chapter of the Federalist Society. He heads the Law Section of the Association for the Study of Free Institutions. He is chairman of the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown Law
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1971, Professor Seidman served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He then was a staff attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service until joining the Law Center faculty in 1976. He teaches a variety of courses in the fields of constitutional and criminal law. He is co-author of a constitutional law casebook and the author of many articles concerning criminal justice and constitutional law. His most recent books are Silence and Freedom (Stanford 2007), Our Unsettled Constitution: A New Defense of Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Yale 2001) and Equal Protection of the Laws (Foundation 2002).
Counsel, The Judicial Confirmation Network
Wendy Long is legal counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. Until March 2005, she was a litigation partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Wendy was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge Ralph Winter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. She is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law, cum laude and Order of the Coif, where she was articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review, and of Dartmouth College. She previously served as a press secretary in the U.S. Senate, for former U.S. Senator Bill Armstrong (R-Colo.) and former U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.).
Director, William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and t, The Witherspoon Institute
Matthew J. Franck is the Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, in Virginia, where he taught constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy from 1989 to 2010, and was Chairman of the Department of Political Science from 1995 to 2010. He is also a Visiting Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University.
Professor Franck earned his B.A. in political science from Virginia Wesleyan College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Northern Illinois University. He has taught at Marquette University and Southern Illinois University, and was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 1998, and a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, in 2008-09.
He is the author, editor of, or contributor to several books on religious freedom, constitutional law, the Supreme Court, and American politics, and has published essays and reviews in numerous academic journals, as well as many general-interest articles and commentaries in newspapers, magazines, and online, including the Washington Post, First Things, National Review, and Public Discourse, the daily online essay publication of the Witherspoon Institute.
Professor Franck is a regular blogger on National Review Online’s “Bench Memos” page and the “First Thoughts” page at First Things magazine, and has appeared numerous times on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show, as well as on CNN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and Relevant Radio.
Partner, Goldstein & Russell PC
Thomas C. Goldstein has argued 28 cases before the Supreme Court, including matters involving federal patent law, class action practice, labor and employment, and disability law. In addition to practicing law, Tom teaches Supreme Court Litigation at Harvard Law School and taught at Stanford Law School as well from 2004-2012.
In the Supreme Court and elsewhere, Mr. Goldstein litigates and advises clients in a broad range of issues. For example, he regularly litigates and lectures on questions of federal patent law. Mr. Goldstein frequently advises clients, litigates, and consults on legislative matters relating to the First Amendment. And he regularly represents parties in questions relating to the game of poker, including its lawfulness as a matter of federal and state law. Tom's clients include plaintiffs, criminal defendants, and major corporations such as BG Group, Home Depot, Humana, IMS Health, Nike, PokerStars, POM Wonderful, and Pemex.
In addition to practicing law, Tom founded, and is the publisher of, SCOTUSblog, which in 2013 became the only weblog ever to receive the Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media. It also won the 2013 Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi) prize for deadline reporting for its coverage of the Supreme Court’s healthcare ruling. In 2010, it became the first blog to receive the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for fostering the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system.
Tom has been repeatedly recognized as a leading member of the bar. In 2010, The National Law Journal named him one of the 40 most influential lawyers of the decade; Tom notably was ten years younger than any other law firm partner listed. Legal Times named him one of the “90 Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Last 30 Years” and praised him for “transforming the practice” of law before the Supreme Court. He is also included in both of the National Law Journal’s most recent lists of the nation’s 100 most influential lawyers (2006 and 2013). He has been repeatedly recognized as one of the nation’s top appellate advocates. GQ Magazine named him one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.
Tom is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and a member of the American Law Institute. He is involved with a number of professional organizations. He serves as the vice chair of the Amicus Committee of the ABA’s Intellectual Property Section and previously served for two years on the ABA’s Standing Committee on Amicus Curiae Briefs. In those capacities, he has authored several Supreme Court amicus briefs for the ABA. In addition, Tom serves on the boards of advisors of the Washington Legal Foundation and the Georgetown University Supreme Court Institute.
Before founding Goldstein & Howe in 1999, Tom practiced law at Boies & Schiller, LLP and at Jones Day Reavis & Pogue. Tom left the firm he founded in 2006 to create the Supreme Court Practice at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where he also was a partner and principal co-chair of the firmwide litigation practice. He returned to what is now Goldstein & Russell in 2011.
Tom clerked for the Honorable Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Law School
Scott Moss joined CU Law School in 2007 after six years as an attorney in New York City and three years as a professor at Marquette Law School, where he was the 2007 recipient of the James D. Ghiardi Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching, Student Body Support, and Scholarship. In New York, Professor Moss was a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Motley and then a plaintiff's employment lawyer at Outten & Golden LLP, the largest plaintiff-side employment law practice in the country, where he litigated individual and class action cases of discrimination, harassment, and minimum/overtime wage violations. He also has argued and briefed appeals of employment cases and has undertaken pro bono projects such as First Amendment right-to-protest litigation with the New York Civil Liberties Union, low-income worker clinics in lower Manhattan, and court-sponsored mediations for pro se litigants. Professor Moss received his J.D. (magna cum laude) in 1998 from Harvard Law School, where he was a Senior Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review; his B.A. (Economics) and M.A. (Media Studies) are from Stanford University. Professor Moss's research interests have included employment law, discrimination, constitutional law, various civil procedure rules, and economic analysis of all of the preceding topics.
B.A., Stanford
M.A., Stanford
J.D., Harvard
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
What Is the Federalist Society?
What Is the Federalist Society?
The Thousand-Page Prescription: Is a Federal Take-Over the Cure for America’s Health Crisis?
What Is the Federalist Society?
The Present and Future of the Roberts Court
U.S. Supreme Court Appointments: Perspectives on the Sotomayor Nomination
Judicial Voter Guides: Good For Accountability Or Bad For Independence?
Tampa, FloridaCaperton vs. A.T. Massey Coal Company
Birmingham, AlabamaThe Growing Clash Between Religious Freedom and the Gay Movement
George W. Dent
I want to thank the Federalist Society for inviting me today. At many law schools...
The Sotomayor Nomination, Part III
Louis Michael Seidman, Wendy Long, Matthew J. Franck, Thomas C. Goldstein, Scott Moss, David R. Stras, Edward Whelan
On May 26th, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter as an Associate...