Executive in Residence, Wake Forest University School of Business
John Allison is an Executive in Residence at the Wake Forest School of Business. He is a member of the Cato Institute’s Board of Directors and Chairman of the Executive Advisory Council of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. Allison was president and CEO of the Cato Institute from October 2012 to April 2015. Prior to joining Cato, Allison was chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th-largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. During his tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets. He was recognized by theHarvard Business Reviewas one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over the last decade.
Allison has received the Corning Award for Distinguished Leadership, been inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from theAmerican Banker. He is the author of The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy’s Only Hope and The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In addition, he is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University School of Business, and serves on the Board of Visitors at the business schools at Wake Forest, Duke, and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Allison is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He received his master’s degree in management from Duke University and is also a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking. Allison is the recipient of six honorary doctorate degrees.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
Assistant Professor, Johnson & Wales University
Adam Smith earned his Ph.D. from George Mason University, where he specialized in experimental economics and political economy. His academic work involves experimental applications in political economy, regulation involving behavioral economics, the economics of decision-making when no external enforcement is readily available, and the recent economic crisis of 2008-2010 with a focus on the development of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Smith is also a visiting scholar with the Rgulatory Studies Center at George Washington University. He is published in Regulation magazine, and the peer-reviewed journals Public Choice and Social Choice & Welfare. Smith joined the faculty of Johnson & Wales University in the fall of 2010.
Author, Journalist, and Broadcaster
Author, journalist and broadcaster Nicholas Wapshott is an online content consultant whose clients have included Oprah Winfrey's hugely successful website Oprah.com. Previously, he was senior editor at The Daily Beast and a widely experienced reporting and editing hard copy journalist. He was the New York bureau chief of The Times of London, editor of the Saturday edition of The Times of London, business columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, and founding editor of The Times Magazine.
As political editor of The Observer, Wapshott covered Margaret Thatcher’s final years in office. In 1983, he wrote one of the first biographies of Thatcher and has written widely about conservative and libertarian ideology. He has broadcast regularly on CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and FOX News. He and his wife, Louise Nicholson, live in New York City with their two sons.
John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
Professor Allen is the John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law at Northwestern University, in Chicago, IL. He did his undergraduate work in mathematics at Marshall University and studied law at the University of Michigan. He is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of evidence, procedure, and constitutional law. He has published five books and approximately eighty articles in major law reviews. The New York Times referred to him as one of nation's leading experts on evidence and procedure. He has been quoted in national news outlets hundreds of times, and appears regularly on national broadcast media on matters ranging from complex litigation to constitutional law to criminal justice.
Professor Allen began his career at the State University of New York, and has held professorships at the University of Iowa and Duke University prior to coming to Northwestern. He has lectured on his research at distinguished universities across the world, among them Columbia University, Cornell University, University of Chicago, University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Duke University, Oxford University, University of London, Leiden University, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, University of Edinburgh, University of British Columbia, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), Parma University, Turin University, Pavia University, University of Adelaide, Australia, and Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and UNAM, Mexico City. In 1991, he was the University Distinguished Visiting Scholar, at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. One of his books has been translated into Chinese by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, and he has been invited to China for a series of lectures in the summer of 2004 and the spring of 2005. He has also been invited to lecture by the governments of Mexico and Trinidad/Tobago. For the last ten years, his research has focused on the nature of juridical proof. He has been involved as a consultant on numerous cases involving complex litigation in the United States and abroad.
He is a member of the American Law Institute, has chaired the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and was Vice-chair of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence Committee of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section. He has served as a Commissioner of the Illinois Supreme Court, assigned to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. He is presently on the Boards of the Constitutional Rights Foundation-Chicago, and the Yeager Society of Scholars of Marshall University. He is, or has served, on various boards and committees of civic and cultural institutions in Chicago.
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
Staff Attorney, National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation
Glenn Taubman is a Staff Attorney for the National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation (1982 to the present). He was a Law Clerk for Senior Circuit Judge Warren L. Jones, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits, Jacksonville, Florida, from 1981-82, and a Staff Attorney for the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, from 1980-81. His Bar Admissions include: Georgia, 1980; New York, 1981; U.S. Supreme Court, 1983; District of Columbia, 1985. He regularly appears before the National Labor Relations Board and various federal courts, representing individual employees only.
He is the author of "'Neutrality Agreements' and the Destruction of Employees' Section 7 Rights" (2005) and co-author of "Union Discipline and Employee Rights," a monograph published by the National Right to Work Foundation.
A partial listing of his reported cases includes: Lucas v. NLRB, 333 F.3d 927 (9th Cir. 2003);Penrod v. NLRB, 203 F.3d 41 (D.C. Cir. 2000);Production Workers v. NLRB, 161 F.3d 1047 (7th Cir. 1998);Food & Commercial Workers Local 951 v. Mulder, 31 F.3d 365 (6th Cir. 1994);NLRB v. Office Employees Local 2, 902 F.2d 1164 (4th Cir. 1990);Tierney v. City of Toledo, 917 F.2d 927 (6th Cir. 1990);Lowary v. Lexington Local Board of Education, 902 F.2d 422 (6th Cir. 1990);Lowary v. Lexington Local Board of Education, 854 F.2d 131 (6th Cir. 1988);Tierney v. City of Toledo, 824 F.2d 1497 (6th Cir. 1987);Masiello v. US Airways, Inc., 113 F. Supp. 2d 870 (W.D.N.C. 2000);Jordan v. City of Bucyrus, 739 F. Supp. 1124 (1990),further proceedings, 754 F. Supp. 554 (N.D. Ohio 1991);Dana Corp., 341 N.L.R.B. No. 150, 2004 WL 1329345 (June 7, 2004);California Saw & Knife Works, 320 N.L.R.B. 224 (1995),enforced, 133 F.3d 1012 (7th Cir. 1998).
Deputy General Counsel, Local 32 BJ, Service Employees International Union
Brent Garren is a Deputy General Counsel of SEIU Local 32 BJ, the 145,000 member property services local in New York and the eastern seaboard. He worked for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, then UNITE, UNITE HERE and Workers United prior to Local 32 BJ, including serving as General Counsel for UNITE HERE and later Workers United.
Mr. Garren’s career has focused on the National Labor Relations Act. He is an Editor-In-Chief of How to Take a Case Before the NLRB, the leading text on NLRB procedure. He is a member of and past union co-chair of the ABA’s subcommittee on Practice and Procedure under the NLRA, part of the Labor and Employment Law Section. He has spoken about and written on the NLRA, including on remedies, voluntary recognition and NLRB jurisdiction.
He has been involved in international labor solidarity activities, including representing U.S. labor to the International Labor Organization, dealing with protection of home workers and protection of contracted labor.
He was graduated by Wayne State School of Law, summa cum laude.
The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: A Conversation with John A. Allison
John A. Allison, Wayne A. Abernathy
Note from the Editor: The following is a transcript of a Federalist Society Practice Group...
(Mis)Applications of Behavioral Economics to Regulation: The Importance of Public Choice Architecture
Adam C. Smith
I. Introduction Friedrich Hayek once said, “Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has...
Keynes vs. Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics
Nicholas Wapshott
Nicholas Wapshott's book examines the vastly divergent economic philosophies of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich...
How to Think About Errors, Costs, and Their Allocation
Ronald J. Allen
Note from the Editor: In December 2010, the Federalist Society heard from a number of...
A La Carte Regulation of Pay TV: Good Intentions vs. Good Economics
Adam Thierer
In his insightful works on political economy, Professor Thomas Sowell warns of the dangers of...
Employee Free Choice Act Debate
Glenn Taubman, Brent Garren
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed, the U.S. Senate will consider, and the Bush...
“A Cloud Of Condemnation:” Expanding The Definition Of A Compensable Taking Under The Minnesota Constitution
Matthew R. Salzwedel
Friedrich Hayek, the renowned Austrian economist, opined in his epic Road to Serfdom that “[t]he...
Book Review: Money Meltdown: Restoring Order to the Global Currency System by Judy Shelton
Aaron A. Goach
Money Meltdown: Restoring Order to the Global Currency Systemby Judy SheltonFree Press/Macmillan 1994 (399 pages) If...