Vice President of Law & Policy, Property and Environment Research Center
Jonathan Wood is vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). An attorney, Jonathan has litigated environmental and property-rights cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, federal and state appellate courts, and trial courts across the country. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, Reason, and other outlets. And his research has been published in journals such as Environmental Law Reporter, Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Pace Environmental Law Review, and California Western Law Review.
Prior to coming to PERC, Jonathan was a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he litigated cases concerning the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal environmental laws. He was co-counsel for forest landowners in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that private land could not be arbitrarily regulated as critical habitat under the ESA. He also led a successful effort to reform regulation of threatened species to better align the incentives of private landowners with the interests of rare species.
Jonathan has testified before several congressional committees on wildlife conservation and endangered species topics. He has also appeared on national television and radio, including NPR’s All Things Considered, C-Span’s Washington Journal, Stossel, Fox News, and Hill.TV.
Jonathan has a law degree from the New York University School of Law, a masters degree in economic policy from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Texas. He is on the executive committee for the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group and a steering committee member for the Environmental Law Institute’s Emerging Leaders Initiative.
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.
Partner, Clement & Murphy
A seasoned trial and appellate advocate, Danielle Sassoon represents individuals and corporations in high-stakes white-collar, appellate, and commercial matters. Danielle joined the firm after serving as interim United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, following over eight years as an Assistant United States Attorney. During her time at the SDNY, Danielle handled some of the Office’s most sensitive and consequential cases. As Chief of Appeals for the Criminal Division, Danielle supervised and argued dozens of appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As a leader in the SDNY, Danielle oversaw hundreds of cases, advised on complex legal and strategic issues, and managed over 200 lawyers across the SDNY’s civil and criminal divisions.
As a prosecutor, Danielle handled high-profile investigations and criminal trials, including against Samuel Bankman-Fried, for perpetrating a multi-billion-dollar cryptocurrency fraud, and against Lawrence Ray, for racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and other offenses related to his abuse and exploitation of his daughter’s college roommates. As a prosecutor, Danielle was awarded the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Criminal Investigation and the Women in Federal Law Enforcement Top Prosecutor Award.
Following law school, Danielle clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Danielle serves as a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Christie v. NCAA: Anti-Commandeering or Bust
Jonathan Wood, Ilya Shapiro
Note from the Editor: This article argues that the Supreme Court should find unconstitutional the...
The Decades of Our Discontent: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III Reflects on the Sixties and Today
Danielle Sassoon
A Review of: All Falling Faiths: Reflections on the Promise & Failure of the 1960s,...