Former Managing Director, BlackRock Inc.
Joanne Medero was until July 2020 a Managing Director at BlackRock where she was member of their Global Public Policy Group and a Senior Advisor to the Vice Chairman on the intersection of public policy and corporate governance. In June 2021, Ms. Medero was appointed a director/trustee of the Nuveen Funds.
Ms. Medero's service with BlackRock dates back to 1996, including her years with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which merged with BlackRock in 2009. She joined BGI as its Global General Counsel in 1996 and after more than ten years in that role, became the global head of Government Relations and Public Policy for Barclays’ investment banking and investment management businesses. Prior to joining BGI, Ms. Medero was a partner with Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe specializing in derivatives and market regulation issues. Ms. Medero also served as general counsel of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (1989-1993) and as an associate director for legal and financial affairs at the Office of Presidential Personnel, The White House (1986-1989).
Ms. Medero is a graduate of St. Lawrence University and received her JD from George Washington University.
United States Senator, Kentucky
Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader. Elected to that position unanimously by his Republican colleagues first in 2014 and again in 2016, he is only the second Kentuckian to ever serve as Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate. The first, Senator Alben Barkley, led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949.
Senator McConnell has served, again by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, as the Republican Leader since the 110th Congress. He is the longest-serving Senate Republican Leader in the history of the United States. McConnell previously served in leadership as the Majority Whip in the 108th and 109th Congresses and as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles.
McConnell has been called “the most conservative leader of either party in the history of the Senate.” He has also earned a reputation as a “master tactician” for permanently locking in critical tax relief for working families and small businesses, and putting in place the most significant spending reduction legislation in a generation.
He has received praise from numerous media outlets for his work as Senate Majority Leader, and in 2015 TIME Magazine named McConnell one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
First elected to the Senate in 1984, McConnell is Kentucky’s longest-serving senator. He made history that year as the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent Democrat and as the first Republican to win a statewide Kentucky race since 1968. On November 4, 2014, he was elected to a record sixth term by receiving broad support across Kentucky, winning 110 of the Commonwealth’s 120 counties.
McConnell graduated with honors from the University of Louisville College of Arts and Sciences, where he served as student body president. He also is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was elected president of the Student Bar Association.
McConnell worked as an intern on Capitol Hill for Senator John Sherman Cooper before serving as chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General to President Gerald Ford.
Before his election to the Senate, he served as judge-executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky, from 1978 until he commenced his Senate term on January 3, 1985.
McConnell currently serves as a senior member of the Appropriations, Agriculture and Rules Committees. He is the proud father of three daughters.
McConnell is married to Secretary Elaine L. Chao, the 18th U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Previously, Secretary Chao served for eight years as President George W. Bush’s U.S. Secretary of Labor. She is also a former president of the United Way of America and director of the Peace Corps.
I. Herman Stern Professor of Law
David Post is currently the I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at the Beasley School of Law at Temple University, where he teaches intellectual property law and the law of cyberspace. Professor Post is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, a Fellow at the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, and a contributor to the influential Volokh Conspiracy blog. [More detail on Professor Post's research and writings can be found here.]
Trained originally as a physical anthropologist, Professor Post spent two years studying the feeding ecology of yellow baboons in Kenya's Amboseli National Park, and he taught at the Columbia University Department of Anthropology from 1976 through 1981. He then attended Georgetown Law Center, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1986. After clerking with then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, he spent 6 years at the Washington D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, practicing in the areas of intellectual property law and high technology commercial transactions. He then clerked again for Justice Ginsburg during her first term on the Supreme Court before joining the faculty of, first, the Georgetown University Law Center (1994-1997) and then the Temple University Law School (1997-present).
Professor Post is the author of Cyberlaw: Problems of Policy and Jurisprudence in the Information Age (3d Edition, West, 2007) (co-authored with Paul Schiff Berman and Patricia Bellia), and In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (Oxford U. Press, forthcoming 2008), as well as numerous articles on intellectual property, the law of cyberspace, and the application of complexity theory to Internet legal questions that have appeared in the Stanford Law Review, Journal of Legal Studies, Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Esther Dyson's Release 1.0, Journal of Online Law, University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vanderbilt Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, and numerous other publications. For four years (1994-1998) he wrote a monthly column on law and technology ("Plugging In") for the American Lawyer, and from 1998-2004 he wrote the "On the Horizon" column for InformationWeek (with Bradford Brown). He has appeared as a commentator on the Lehrer News Hour, Court TV's Supreme Court Preview, NPR's All Things Considered, BBC's World, and other television and radio shows, and recently was featured in the PBS documentary The Supreme Court. During 1996-1997 he conducted, along with two colleagues (Professors Larry Lessig and Eugene Volokh) the first Internet-wide e-mail course on "Cyberspace Law for Non-Lawyers" which attracted over 20,000 subscribers. He also sings and plays guitar, piano, banjo, and harmonica in the bands "Bad Dog," "The Dwights," and "The Zen Cohens."
Professor Post's writings can be accessed online via his publications page and personal site (http://www.davidpost.com).
J.D., Georgetown University
Ph.D. (Anthropology), Yale University
B.A., Yale University
Professor of Law, Southern Illinois University School of Law
Professor Mark F. Schultz joined the faculty in 2003. He teaches and writes primarily in the area of intellectual property.
Professor Schultz is a frequent author and speaker known for his work on the law and economics of the global intellectual property system. In one of his most influential projects, he worked with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to construct a groundbreaking global trade secret protection index (the TSPI). The TSPI is influencing policy discussions on this cutting-edge topic in capitals around the world. Other recent projects have included an empirical study that quantified for the first time the backlogs in patent offices worldwide, a report on how patented innovation is meeting global health challenges, and the construction of a new global index of copyright strength.
Professor Schultz is an influential voice in public policy debates regarding intellectual property. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on copyright law at the invitation of the House Judiciary Committee and has briefed the staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on trade secret legislation. He speaks frequently around the world about the connection between secure and effective intellectual property rights and flourishing national economies and individual lives, with invitations from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the U.S. Copyright Office, as well as numerous academic institutions, think tanks, and industry groups. He served as an NGO delegate to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for several years during the WIPO Development Agenda talks. He is also one of the organizers of an ongoing multilateral diplomatic dialogue on best practices in national trade secret laws, and is co-founder of the Center for Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) at George Mason University in Washington, D.C.
Among the awards and recognition he has received for his scholarship was the School of Law's Outstanding Scholar of the Year award in 2008. He has been a distinguished visiting scholar at the University of Botswana and a visiting professor at DePaul University College of Law.
Professor Schultz graduated with honors from the George Washington University School of Law. Following law school, he was a judicial clerk for the Hon. Daniel M. Friedman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., and the Hon. Eric G. Bruggink of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Prior to joining academia, he practiced law for a decade, serving as outside general counsel to several tech startups and helping technology companies to expand their businesses and commercialize their intellectual property in dozens of countries. He holds a B.A. in International Economics from George Washington University and has done PhD level coursework in development economics at Southern Illinois University.
He is active in leadership roles in local and national organizations. He has served as chair of the Federalist Society's Intellectual Property Practice Group and the AALS Section on Internet and Computer Law. He is an officer of the American Bar Association's International IP Committee of the International Law Section and the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Trade Secret Law Committee. He currently is chair of the Academic Advisory Board of the Copyright Alliance.
Professor Schultz teaches Copyright Law, Trade Secret Law, Trademark Law, and a senior seminar on Intellectual Property and Global Development. He established and directs both the Specialization in Intellectual Property Law and the IP Semester in Practice Externship Program. He also co-founded a Legal Globalization Class, offered every other year, that takes students to South Africa and Botswana after spending a semester learning about the legal system, culture, history, and politics of southern Africa. The popular course is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that introduces students to leading lawyers, judges, government officials, and human rights advocates, taking them from Cape Town to Johannesburg to Gaborone as well as many popular destinations including game reserves, national parks, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Cradle of Humankind.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Aristotle International
The Honorable David M. Mason is General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Aristotle. He assists campaigns, PACs, and political parties in maximizing their effectiveness while complying with federal and state regulatory requirements.
Mr. Mason served as Commissioner and Chairman (2002 and 2008) of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 until 2008, a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed position.
President Reagan appointed Mason as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Legislative Affairs) where he was instrumental in working with Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci and Representative Dick Armey in securing passage of base closing legislation.
Commissioner Mason has testified before Congress over 20 times, addressed international conferences on elections and appeared in or wrote for scores of American print and broadcast media outlets. He is an honors graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Government, graduated with highest honors from Concord Law School and is a member of the California Bar.
Partner, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP
Francis J. Menton, Jr. is a partner in the Litigation Department and Co-Chair of the Business Litigation Practice Group of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York. Mr. Menton specializes in complex and technical commercial litigation, principally contract and securities claims. He has a nationwide trial practice, and has tried cases in state and federal courts including Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Puerto Rico, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
Mr. Menton is the author of "New Opportunities for Defendants in Securities Class Actions," Engage (Fall 2007), "Can You Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft?" New York Law Journal (April 29, 2002), and "Top Ten Federal Government Efforts to Suppress Free Speech," Federalist Society Free Speech and Election Law News (Summer 2000, 1999, 1998). He also authored "Evaluating Claims Under The Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995," New York Law Journal (January 6, 1996).
Clinical Professor of Law, Dale E. Fowler School of Law, Chapman University
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
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.
Jennifer Anju Grossman -- JAG-- became the CEO of the Atlas Society in March of 2016. She shifted the organization's focus to the engagement of young people with the ideas of Ayn Rand in creative ways, like animated videos, graphic novels, and social media, and through the expansion into international markets.
Prior to joining The Atlas Society, she served as Senior Vice President of Dole Food Company, launching the Dole Nutrition Institute — a research and education organization— at the behest of Dole Chairman David H. Murdock. Previously Grossman served as Director of Education at the Cato Institute, and worked closely with the late philanthropist Theodore J. Forstmann to launch the Children's Scholarship Fund. A speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush, Grossman has written for both national and local publications. She graduated with honors from Harvard College.
Executive Director, New York Civil Rights Coalition
Professor of Public Policy, Hunter College, CUNY
Joseph P. Viteritti is the Thomas Hunter Professor of Public Policy and Chair of the Urban Policy and Planning Department at Hunter. He was the founding faculty chair of the Public Policy Program at Hunter’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, and is a member of the doctoral faculty in education policy at the CUNY Graduate Center.
He is recently the author of The Pragmatist: Bill de Blasio’s Quest to Save the Soul of New York (Oxford University Press, 2017), which chronicles the political career and tenure of the incumbent mayor. Written from a historical perspective, the book traces mayoral leadership through the rise, fall and regeneration of progressivism in New York City since the time of Fiorello La Guardia.
What's so Bad About Selective Disclosure?
Joseph McLaughlin
The chairman of the SEC says that "selective disclosure" is tantamount to "cheating" and represents...
SEC Proposes Prohibitions on "Pay to Play" for Investment Advisors
Joanne Medero
In August the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new Rule under the Investment Advisors...
It's a Matter of Principle
Mitch McConnell
On June 14, it was my pleasure to address the Federalist Society's Free Speech Practice...
Bringing Law to New Frontiers: Cyberspace
David G. Post, Andrew Shapiro, Mark F. Schultz
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1998 PROCEEDINGS Following are excerpts from one of the Intellectual Property Practice...
House Hearing on the Constitutionality of Campaign Finance Reform
Susan Chamberlain
The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on the First Amendment...
Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Association, Inc. v. United States
Erik S. Jaffe
The final month of the recent Supreme Court term brought the latest installment in a...
The Internet, The First Amendment, and Campaign Finance Regulation
David M. Mason, John K. Abegg
One of the major challenges for the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today is determining how...
Top Ten Federal Government Efforts to Suppress Free Speech 1998-99
Francis J. Menton
It's been another year of tireless struggle by the Government to suppress the free speech...
Supreme Court Preview: Compelled Financing of Expressive Activities
Anthony (Tom) Caso
Since the Court's decision in Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Educ., 431 U.S. 209 (1977),...
Panel Three: School Choice: The Next Civil Rights Crusade? [Archive Collection]
1999 Stranahan National Issues Forum
Toldeo, OH