Senior Strategic and Global Intelligence Advisor, Lexpat Global Services
Darrell M. Blocker is the Senior Strategic and Global Intelligence Advisor at Lexpat Global Services. Among other things, Darrell is a globally-recognized subject matter expert on North Korea, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and counterterrorism, and serves as a strategic advisor to high net worth individuals and businesses operating in the defense, national security and international affairs sectors. He is active in the entertainment and nonprofit industries and as a creative consultant, keynote speaker, and ABC News contributor. He is also the founder of DMB Consulting Services, a strategic crisis management and executive advisory firm.
In his 32-year career in public service, Darrell served across six consecutive Presidential Administrations (from Reagan to Trump), including four years in the U.S. Air Force, followed by 28 years as a Central Intelligence Agency operative within their Clandestine Service. His traditional overseas assignments include the Republic of Korea (with the USAF), and Niger, Senegal, Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda, and Switzerland (with the CIA). His war zone assignments were to Panama (USAF), and then Somalia in the aftermath of Blackhawk Down, Burundi after the Hutu-Tutsi massacres, and Pakistan after 9/11 (CIA).
During his storied career, Darrell rose to the civilian rank equivalent to a 3-Star general (Lieutenant General/Vice Admiral). Along the way, his contributions to national security earned him several awards, including the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism, the Iraqi Campaign Citation for contributions to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the USAF Commendation Medal for Korea and the Expeditionary Campaign Medal for Panama. It has been widely reported that he later was on President Biden’s shortlist to become the Director of the CIA.
Darrell is a prolific speaker and contributor to public discourse on international security and effective operations. His speaking engagements include the Jewish Federation of Toronto, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, the International Spy Museum in Washington DC., the CIA’s CulperCon 2022, and numerous international conferences on intelligence and security matters. His TEDx talk delivered in April 2022 entitled “LISTEN MORE, SPEAK LESS: LESSONS IN KINDNESS FROM A CIA OPERATIVE can be found here. Stories about Darrell have been featured in press and news articles by ABC News, the Wall Street Journal, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and the DailyMail.
Darrell volunteers with and serves on the board of Peace4Kids.org, a non-profit advocacy group for youth in foster care, and cofounded SME/Creatives, a creative and collaborative storytelling consulting firm operating in the entertainment space. He is also the Vice Chairman of the GreenMet Board of Directors, a nonresident fellow at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs Center for International Trade and Security and a 2024 Council of Advisors Leadership Council member for Black Professionals in International Affairs.
Darrell is an avid crossword puzzle enthusiast and music was his first true love. He sang in the UGA’s Men’s Glee Club for four years and in bands in Senegal and Uganda. He spent his formative years in Okinawa, Japan, but his dream of becoming a ninja never materialized. Even so, being an intelligence officer brought all his passions into a singular and meaningful career that took him to 27 addresses and homes in eleven foreign countries over the past 60 years.
Former Chief Counsel to the DCI Counterterrorist Center, Central Intelligence Agency
Jonathan Fredman is a Non-Resident Fellow at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He held numerous leadership positions at the Central Intelligence Agency during a 36-year career, including Chief Counsel, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Counterterrorist Center; Chief Counsel, DCI Counterintelligence Center; Counsel for Operations, CIA Directorate of Science and Technology; and Chief Counsel for several additional CIA divisions and mission centers. He also served as Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Special Programs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, and taught national security and foreign intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Adjunct Professor of History and Strategic Intelligence, Patrick Henry College
Mary Habeck is a strategic planner and an expert on military matters, Russia, Great Power
Competition, and extremism. She teaches on these issues at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies (SAIS), Georgetown, American University, and Patrick Henry College, and
is a consultant for various parts of the federal government. From 2005-2013 she was an
Associate Professor in Strategic Studies at SAIS, teaching courses on extremism, military history,
and strategic thought. Before moving to SAIS, Dr. Habeck taught American and European
military history in Yale’s history department, 1994-2005. She received her PhD in history from
Yale in 1996, an MA in international relations from Yale in 1989, and a BA in international
studies, Russian, and Spanish from Ohio State in 1987.
Dr Habeck was appointed by President Bush to the Council on the Humanities at the National
Endowment for the Humanities (2006-2013), and in 2008-2009 she was the Special Advisor for
Strategic Planning on the National Security Council staff, where she worked on extremism.
Founder and CEO, Lexpat Global Services
Adam Pearlman is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Lexpat Global Services. He is a National Security Law expert and a proven senior leader with experience across the U.S. Departments of Justice, Defense, and State, in the White House, and with the U.S. Federal Judiciary.
Before founding Lexpat, Mr. Pearlman served as the Senior Advisor for Legal Policy in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism. There, he counseled senior officials on matters covering the entire spectrum of programs and operations to counter terrorism and violent extremism. While participating in sensitive diplomatic engagements and helping to coordinate military operations, he also advised in the development of sanctions policy and initiatives to build legal and operational capacity in partner nations. Mr. Pearlman also managed the Bureau’s participation in federal litigation and led U.S. delegations in multilateral forums concerning criminal justice and rule of law. Separately, Mr. Pearlman supported the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) as the contracted Senior Justice and Rule of Law Advisor in Cabo Verde, Africa. There he was the chief implementer of a Foreign Assistance program that grew eight-fold during his tenure, building host nation capacity across the law enforcement, justice sector, rule of law, anti-money laundering, and corrections disciplines.
A former Associate Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Mr. Pearlman was agency counsel for complex civil and criminal national security matters in federal and military courts. He also led the Supreme Court and appellate unit of the team dedicated to litigating classified counterterrorism cases. His earlier service in the Department of Justice spanned four litigating divisions and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. His diverse experience included reviewing complex international transactions and mergers, and advising on immigration removal proceedings, human rights abuses, and terrorist financing investigations. Mr. Pearlman also served with distinction in Iraq as an early advisor to the Iraqi High Tribunal’s prosecution of Saddam Hussein. He was a law clerk for The Honorable Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and during law school interned in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Mr. Pearlman is a Senior Fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, a member of the American Bar Association’s Advisory Committee on Law and National Security, and the Editor-in-Chief of the U.S. Intelligence Community Law Sourcebook. Previously, he has been a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, member of the ABA’s Africa Law Initiative Council and of the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ (CSIS) Project on Nuclear Issues, vice chairman of the ABA Section of International Law’s committees on national security, and aerospace and defense, and a liaison to the Board of Directors of the ABA’s Rule of Law Initiative. He has published articles in the Harvard National Security Journal, Stanford Law & Policy Review, Intelligence & National Security, The Foreign Service Journal, Lawfare, and many other outlets.
Mr. Pearlman earned his B.A., with honors, from UCLA, and his J.D., with honors, from The George Washington University Law School, where he was a member of the International Law Review. He also earned a Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence degree from the National Intelligence University, where he was the inaugural recipient of the Kornblum Award for national security law and ethics. Mr. Pearlman is a Certified Financial Crime Specialist and holds certificates in international human rights law from the University of Oxford and in anti-corruption law from American University’s Washington College of Law. He is admitted to the State Bars of California and Virginia, as well as to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. He speaks and reads Portuguese at the intermediate level.
Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
President and Co-Founder, America First Legal Foundation
Gene Hamilton is the President of America First Legal, which he co-founded, and where he was previously the Executive Director, Executive Vice President, and General Counsel. He most recently served as Deputy White House Counsel to President Donald Trump. Earlier in his career, Gene served as Counselor to Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security. He also served as General Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and held several roles at the Department of Homeland Security, including with U.S. Immigration Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Office of the General Counsel. He holds a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a J.D. from Washington and Lee University School of Law.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Menashi was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on November 14, 2019. Previously, he served as special assistant and associate counsel to the President in the White House and as acting general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. He was assistant professor of law at Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he taught administrative law and civil procedure, and a research fellow at New York University School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center. He was also a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in New York, where he practiced appellate and commercial litigation, and served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as senior articles editor of the Stanford Law Review, and from Dartmouth College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
On March 20, 2018, Judge Elizabeth L. Branch (Lisa) was sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge Branch attended and graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina (B.A., cum laude, 1990), and Emory University School of Law (J.D., with distinction, 1994).
After graduating from law school, Judge Branch served as a federal law clerk to The Honorable J. Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia from 1994 to 1996. Following her clerkship, Judge Branch joined the litigation department of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta as an associate and then a partner.
From 2004 to 2008, Judge Branch was a senior official in the Administration of President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. She served first as the Associate General Counsel for Rules and Legislation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then as the Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U. S. Office of Management and Budget.
She returned to Smith Gambrell in 2008 as a litigation partner. Judge Branch then was appointed to the Court of Appeals of Georgia by Governor Nathan Deal, taking office on September 4, 2012, where she served until March 19, 2018.
Judge Branch is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Senior Editor, National Review
Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and the author of several books, including Founders’ Son, Right Time, Right Place, George Washington on Leadership, What Would the Founders Do?, Gentleman Revolutionary, Rules of Civility, America’s First Dynasty, Alexander Hamilton, American, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, Way of the WASP, and The Outside Story.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School; CEO Emeritus, National Constitution Center
Jeffrey Rosen is the CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. Host of "The Blessings of Liberty" podcast, he was previously the legal affairs editor of The New Republic and a staff writer for the New Yorker.
Rosen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Pursuit of Happiness and Conversations with RBG. His new book is The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America.
Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Law Institute. In 2024, the French government recognized him as a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Goldwater Institute
Executive Director, Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, The Ohio State University
Professor Lee J. Strang serves as the inaugural executive director of the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at The Ohio State University.
Initiated in 2023 by the state of Ohio, the Chase Center will be an academic home at Ohio State for teaching, research, and programing on the foundations of the American constitutional order and its impact on society. As executive director, Professor Strang is responsible for organizing the center, overseeing the hiring and appointment of the center’s faculty, developing curriculum, and delivering student and academic programming. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State.
Professor Strang is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has published dozens of articles in leading journals in the fields of constitutional law and interpretation, property law, and religion and the First Amendment. He co-edits the textbook Federal Constitutional Law, and his most recent book, Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution is the first book-length, natural law justification for originalism. He currently is writing on civic thought and leadership, and he is finalizing a book on the history of American Catholic legal education (with John M. Breen).
Before joining Ohio State, Professor Strang served as the inaugural director of the University of Toledo’s Institute of American Constitutional Thought & Leadership. He joined the Toledo College of Law faculty in 2008, was granted tenure in 2010, and was named John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values in 2015. The University of Toledo awarded Professor Strang its Outstanding Faculty Research and Scholarship Award in 2017. Before that, he was a visiting professor at Michigan State University College of Law. A graduate of the University of Iowa, where he was articles editor of the Iowa Law Review and Order of the Coif, Professor Strang holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School.
Professor Strang has been a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. In 2016, he was appointed to the Ohio Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and reappointed as chair in 2023.
Prior to teaching, Professor Strang served as a judicial clerk for Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was also an associate for Jenner & Block LLP in Chicago, where he practiced in general and appellate litigation.
Professor Strang is a frequent presenter at scholarly conferences. He is the president of the Board of Trustees of Northwest Ohio Classical Academy, Ohio’s first classical charter school. He is also a regular participant in debates at law schools across the country, a contributor to the media, and a speaker to political, civic, and religious groups.
Senior Legal Fellow, Pacific Legal Foundation
Ethan Blevins is a senior legal fellow working primarily on equality and opportunity issues and property rights on PLF’s Constitutional Scholarship team. He previously worked as a staff attorney with PLF, mostly suing his favorite defendant, the City of Seattle. He earned a nickname from The Seattle Times as “the sharpest pin around to the council’s liberal bubble.” He’s had a lifelong dream to earn a superhero name, so he proudly accepts the teasing title of “The Pin” from his coworkers.
In addition to his legal work, Ethan has spoken and written on a variety of legal and policy issues. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, and his writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Seattle Times, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Hill, and other major publications.
Ethan’s introduction to liberty began as a teenager when he read Arthur Koestler’s chilling account of communism in Darkness at Noon. He was living in China at the time, and he saw firsthand the corruption and poverty wrought by dictatorship.
He felt inspired to dedicate his legal career to fighting for liberty after clerking for then-Justice Don Willett on the Texas Supreme Court, a judge known for his fierce commitment to constitutional rights (and his Twitter presence).
Ethan earned his law degree cum laude from Duke School of Law, as well as a master’s degree in international and comparative law. He writes poetry and fiction and has completed two fantasy novels, with several other books always in the works. He also enjoys mnemonics, comic books, gaming, and playing the ukulele. He lives in Bountiful, Utah, with his wife and four kids.
Ethan is a member of the bar only in the states of Montana, Utah and Washington.
Partner, Briscoe Prows Kao Ivester & Bazel LLP
Tony Francois is experienced in Water and Real Property Law, Land Use and Zoning, Environmental Regulation, Natural Resources Development, Agricultural Law, and Constitutional Law. He has represented homeowners, builders, farmers and ranchers, trade associations, and water districts in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies and state and federal trial and appellate courts. He is a member of the California State Bar and the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California and the Districts of New Mexico and North Dakota, and has litigated cases in federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has appeared before the Supreme Courts of California, Idaho, Nevada, and the United States.
Prior to attending law school, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in the former West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tony was an Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation from 2012 to 2021. He was a lobbyist for 10 years, first with California Farm Bureau Federation from 2003 to 2007, and then with KP Public Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was an attorney at McQuaid, Bedford & Van Zandt in San Francisco from 1999 – 2003.
U.S. Court of Federal Claims and Jurist-In-Residence Professor of Law, The University of Akron School of Law
Judge Ryan T. Holte was sworn in as a judge on the United States Court of Federal Claims in July 2019. Prior to confirmation he served as the David L. Brennan Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Technology at The University of Akron School of Law (2017-2019) and an assistant professor of law at Southern Illinois University School of Law (2013-2017). Judge Holte has written and presented widely on patent law subjects and empirical legal studies of Federal Circuit and district court patent law cases. His most recent articles were published in the Iowa Law Review (2019), George Mason Law Review (2018), and Washington Law Review (2017).
In practice, Judge Holte served for six years as general counsel and partner of an electrical engineering technology company and is co-inventor of multiple patents related to Systems and Methods for Countering Satellite-Navigated Munitions. Prior to entering academia, Judge Holte practiced as a litigation attorney at the Federal Trade Commission and an associate in the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Jones Day. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk to Judge Stanley F. Birch, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and as a law clerk to Judge Loren A. Smith on the United States Court of Federal Claims.
Judge Holte received his JD from the University of California Davis School of Law and his BS, magna cum laude, in engineering from the California Maritime Academy where he was a First Class graduate of the Corps of Cadets Third Engineering Division and sailed as a U.S. Merchant Marine oiler.
Associate Professor of Government, Hillsdale College, Washington, D.C. Campus
Richard Samuelson is an Associate Professor of Government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C., campus. Dr. Samuelson is an historian of the American founding and of American politics and constitutional thought. He graduated from Bates College and received his MA and PhD in American history from the University of Virginia. Dr. Samuelson taught at California State University San Bernardino from 2007 to 2022. He was the 2009-2010 Garwood Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s James Madison Program.
Dr. Samuelson has written extensively on John Adams and on the Adams family of Massachusetts, and on the constitutional politics of the founding more largely. His work also connects the founding with more contemporary issues, with a particular focus on religious liberty, and the challenge the modern American state, and contemporary civil rights laws present to religious liberty.
His essays and reviews have appeared in The Review of Politics, The William and Mary Quarterly, Commentary, The Claremont Review of Books, The Public Interest, National Review, and other publications. He has also contributed many essays and reviews to such online publications as Mosaic, Law and Liberty, Realclearpolitics, and other platforms.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Menashi was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on November 14, 2019. Previously, he served as special assistant and associate counsel to the President in the White House and as acting general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. He was assistant professor of law at Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he taught administrative law and civil procedure, and a research fellow at New York University School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center. He was also a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in New York, where he practiced appellate and commercial litigation, and served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as senior articles editor of the Stanford Law Review, and from Dartmouth College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Editor-in-Chief, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy
Sean Pigeon is a third-year law student from Texas, who graduated with honors from Yale in 2021. Before law school, he worked for the Manhattan Institute and National Review. He spent his last two summers at Vartabedian, Hester & Haynes, where he will return after clerking for the Texas Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Julius E. Davis Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of the new book The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction (Cambridge 2026). His previous books include A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). He is also the author of the casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 3d ed. 2025).
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Kurt D. Engelhardt was nominated for a seat on the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by President Donald J. Trump, confirmed by the Senate on May 9, 2018, and officially sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge on May 15, 2018. Judge Engelhardt is based in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the John Minor Wisdom U.S. Court of Appeals Building.
Judge Engelhardt was previously nominated for a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana by President George W. Bush, and upon confirmation, was officially sworn in as a United States District Judge on December 14, 2001. While a District Judge, Judge Engelhardt served by designation on nine different panels of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On October 1, 2015, he became Chief United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, a position he held until joining the United States Fifth Circuit on May 15, 2018.
Judge Engelhardt attended Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, where he graduated with honors in 1978. He attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1982. In the Fall of 1982, Judge Engelhardt commenced his legal education at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University, graduating in May of 1985.
Judge Engelhardt served a two-year clerkship with Judge Charles Grisbaum, Jr. of the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, located in Gretna, Louisiana. From there, he became associated with the Metairie law firm of Little, Metzger and Lamz (APLC), and worked in the downtown New Orleans office of that firm in 1988-89. He then joined the law firm of Hailey, McNamara, Hall, Larmann & Papale, became a partner in July 1998, and practiced there until his confirmation to the federal bench in December 2001.
In 1995, Judge Engelhardt was nominated for a spot on the nine-member Louisiana Judiciary Commission, and was appointed by the Governor to serve a four-year term on that body. In 1998, he was elected by his fellow commission members to serve as Chairman, in which capacity he presided over the Commission’s trials of formal charges lodged against sitting state judges. His work on the Judiciary Commission has been cited for its excellence by the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Judge Engelhardt is a member of the Advisory Board of the New Orleans Chapter of The Federalist Society; a past member of the United States Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction; a member of the Board of Directors (and past president) of the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association; a member of the American Judicature Society; and a member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association. He has served on the Fifth Circuit's Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee, charged with updating and/or drafting pattern jury instructions for district judges within the jurisdiction of the United States Fifth Circuit. Recently, he was appointed by Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Carl Stewart to chair the Circuit's Judicial Impairment Protocol Committee, established to create a framework for the judiciary to internally address disabilities of all types which may impact a judge's ability to handle his/her docket.
Judge Engelhardt is also a member of the American Bar Association, Jefferson Bar Association, Louisiana State Bar Association, New Orleans Bar Association, and the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Judge Engelhardt serves on the Board of Directors of the Cancer Association of Greater New Orleans.
Professor, Associate Dean for Faculty Research, Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law
José Joel Alicea is the inaugural St. Robert Bellarmine Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty Research, and Director of the Law School’s Center for the Constitution and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. He has also served as a Visiting Professor at Duke Law School and Notre Dame Law School. Prior to joining the Catholic Law faculty, Professor Alicea practiced law for several years at the law firm of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, where he specialized in constitutional litigation. He previously served as a law clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., on the United States Supreme Court and for Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Professor Alicea’s scholarship has focused on constitutional theory. His scholarship has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Yale Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and the Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He has also been active in public debates about constitutional law, testifying before Congress and publishing essays in places like The New York Times, City Journal, and National Affairs.
Professor Alicea is a Fellow at the Columbus School of Law's Center for Religious Liberty and a Nonresident Fellow at The American Enterprise Institute. He is the recipient of several research and teaching awards, including the student-selected Professor of the Year teaching award.
David Lurton Massee, Jr., Professor of Law, Director, Immigration, Migration and Human Rights Program, The University of Virginia School of Law
Amanda Frost is the David Lurton Massee, Jr., Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Immigration, Migration and Human Rights Program at the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Frost specializes in immigration and citizenship law, federal courts and jurisdiction, and judicial ethics. Professor Frost is the author of the book You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott and the Dreamers, which was shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize and was named a "New & Noteworthy" book by the NY Times Book Review. Her scholarship has been cited by state and federal courts, and she has been invited to testify before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. She has published essays and op-eds in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Slate, USA Today, and The American Prospect.
E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in Law, University of Richmond School of Law
Professor Kurt Lash teaches and writes about constitutional law. Founder and director of the Richmond Program on the American Constitution, Professor Lash has published widely on the subjects of constitutional law and constitutional history, including The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges or Immunities of American Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Lost History of the Ninth Amendment (Oxford University Press, 2009), and The American First Amendment in the Twenty-first Century: Cases and Materials(with William W. Van Alstyne) (5th ed., Foundation Press, 2014). An elected member of the American Law Institute, Professor Lash’s work has appeared in numerous legal journals including the Stanford Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, andNotre Dame Law Review. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University School of Law and is the former director of the University of Illinois College of Law Program in Constitutional Theory, History, and Law.
David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Julius E. Davis Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of the new book The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction (Cambridge 2026). His previous books include A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). He is also the author of the casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 3d ed. 2025).
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
25 of 250 - The Echoes of 9/11 in Law, Policy, and Security Today
Darrell Blocker, Jonathan Fredman, Mary Habeck, Adam R. Pearlman
As America celebrates its 250th birthday, it also remembers the 25th anniversary of the September...
The Future of Birthright Citizenship: What’s Next After Trump v. Barbara (Part One)
Tiago de Almeida Graff, Gene P. Hamilton, Steven J. Menashi
On June 30, the Supreme Court held in Trump v. Barbara that nearly all children...
Remembering Gordon Wood: The Revolution, the Constitution, and the Work of History
Lisa Branch, Richard Brookhiser, Steven G. Calabresi, Jeffrey Rosen
Gordon S. Wood, who passed away in June, was one of the nation’s most influential...
Proclaiming Liberty with Tim Sandefur
Timothy Sandefur, Lee J. Strang
As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Proclaiming Liberty by Timothy...
Public Lands at the Founding
Ethan Blevins, Tony Francois, Ryan T. Holte, Richard Samuelson
In this Federalist Society America 250 series, experts analyze modern legal and policy debates through...
Plenary Session 1: Congressional Primacy at the Founding and Today
Featuring: Dr. Nicholas P. Cole, Senior Research Fellow, University of Oxford Mr. Yuval Levin, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute...
Panel 4: Going Nuclear: European Decline and American Revival?
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. The contrast between American and European...
Birthright Citizenship in Context: Law, History, and Contemporary Debate
Steven J. Menashi, Sean-Michael Pigeon, Keith E. Whittington, Ilan Wurman
As debates over birthright citizenship intensify in legal and public spheres, this webinar will explore...
SOC! SIDEBAR: Mardi Gras
Kurt Damian Engelhardt
The Federalist Society's Student Division & Tulane Law School Chapterpresent SOC! SIDEBAR:Mardi Gras featuring Hon....
Panel: Originalism, Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment
J. Joel Alicea, Amanda Frost, Kurt T. Lash, Keith E. Whittington, Ilan Wurman
Prof. Amanda Frost, David Lurton Massee, Jr., Professor of Law, Director, Immigration, Migration and Human Rights...