The William J. and Dorothy K. O'Neill Chair in Law Emeritus, Notre Dame Law School
Professor G. Robert Blakey, the nation's foremost authority on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), has served on the Notre Dame Law School faculty for more than 30 years. He teaches in the areas of criminal law and procedure, federal criminal law and procedure, terrorism, and jurisprudence. Blakey's extensive legislative drafting experience resulted in the passage of the Crime Control Act of 1973, the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1970 and the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Title IX of which is known as RICO. He has been personally involved in drafting and implementing RICO-type legislation in 22 of the more than 30 states that have enacted racketeering laws. He frequently argues in or consults on cases involving RICO statutes at both the federal and state levels, including several cases before the United States Supreme Court. Blakey has considerable expertise in federal and state wiretapping statutes as well. He helped draft and secure passage of Title III on wiretapping of the federal 1968 Crime Control Act, and has been personally involved in drafting and implementing wiretapping legislation in 39 of the 43 states that have enacted such laws. Blakey has extensively investigated the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He served as chief counsel and staff director to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, and helped to draft the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Blakey gave remarks at the 2012 Law School Hooding/Diploma Commencement Ceremony on May 19, 2012. Blakey received Emeritus status in December 2012.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (ret.) and former U.S. Senator
James L. Buckley was born in New York City in 1923, grew up in rural Connecticut, and received his B.A. degree from Yale. Following service as a naval officer in World War II, he returned to New Haven to secure his law degree. After several years in private practice, he joined a group of small companies engaged in oil exploration abroad. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1970 as the candidate of New York's Conservative Party. He failed of re-election; but he has since served as an under secretary of state in the Reagan administration, as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany, and, most recently, as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He retired in 2000 and now resides in Bethesda, Maryland.
Founding Partner, diGenova & Toensing LLP
Joseph E. diGenova, founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm of diGenova & Toensing, LLP represents individuals, corporations and other entities before the Federal courts, Congress, and U.S. cabinet departments and agencies on criminal, civil, administrative and investigative matters. In December 1992, he was appointed Independent Counsel in the Clinton Passport File Search matter. He was appointed Chairman of the Grievance Committee of the D.C. District Court in 1995 by the judges of that court. In 1997, he was named Special Counsel by the U.S. House of Representatives to probe the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. As a result of that assignment, he was appointed by the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, to sit on the Independent Review Board, which oversees the Teamsters pursuant to a 1989 Consent Decree. He is on that Board with former FBI and CIA Director William Webster and former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. In 2007, Mr. diGenova was retained by the New York State Senate to investigate then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer in the Troopergate matter.
His practice emphasizes representation to resolve disputes with various branches of the Federal government through negotiation, litigation, and/or legislation. He does white collar criminal defense work for individuals (such as the former CEO of BCCI) and corporations, conducting internal investigations as well. He represents individuals and organizations in Congressional investigations.
For four years, diGenova was United States Attorney, District of Columbia, which is the largest such office, having more than 400 attorneys. He supervised complex Federal criminal and civil matters including international drug smuggling, public corruption, espionage, insider trading, tax fraud, extradition, fraud, RICO, export control and international terrorism. Many of these prosecutions involved negotiations with foreign governments. He conducted a wide-ranging probe of corruption in the D.C. government, which led to the conviction of two deputy mayors. He led the prosecution of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. He was the Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney during the prosecution of attempted Presidential assassin, John W. Hinckley.
DiGenova has extensive experience on Capitol Hill. He was Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Rules Committee and Counsel to the Senate Judiciary, Governmental Affairs and Select Intelligence Committees. He has conducted confirmation, investigative, legislative and oversight hearings, drafted legislation and testified before both Houses of Congress. He also served as Administrative Assistant and Legislative Director to U.S. Senator Charles Mathias.
Mr. diGenova has published articles on criminal law, terrorism, and Congressional oversight and has spoken on those and other issues to various organizations throughout the United States. As part of his advocacy approach, he has appeared on Court TV, Lehrer News Hour, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Nightline, 60 Minutes, Crossfire, This Week With David Brinkley, John McLaughlin’s One On One, Today Show, Good Morning America, and other national television programs. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati and his law degree from Georgetown University.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Sentelle was appointed United States Circuit Judge in October 1987, served as Chief Judge from February 11, 2008 until February 11, 2013, and took senior status on February 12, 2013. He is a 1968 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School. Following law school, he practiced with the firm of Uzzell & DuMont until he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Charlotte, N.C. in 1970. From 1974 to 1977, he served as a North Carolina State District Judge but left the bench in 1977 to become a partner with the firm of Tucker, Hicks, Sentelle, Moon & Hodge. In 1985, Judge Sentelle joined the U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina, in Asheville, where he served until his appointment to the D.C. Circuit. Judge Sentelle was the Presiding Judge of the Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels (1992-2006). He also served as the Chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference's Executive Committee (2010-2013). Judge Sentelle served for over 20 years as President of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of the American Inns of Court.
Professor of Law, Emeritus, Marshall-Wythe Law School at the College of William and Mary
William W. Van Alstyne, one of the nation's foremost constitutional law scholars, and William & Mary’s Lee Professor of Law from 2004 to 2012, died on January 29, 2019, in Southern California.
Professor Van Alstyne was appointed Lee Professor of Law at the Marshall-Wythe Law School at the College of William and Mary in 2004. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California (B.A. in philosophy, magna cum laude) and Stanford University Law School (J.D., Articles and Book Review Editor of The Stanford Law Review). Following his admission to the California Bar and brief service as Deputy Attorney General of California, he joined the Civil Rights Division of the U. S. Department of Justice handling voting rights cases in the South. After active duty with the U. S. Air Force, he was appointed to the law faculty of the Ohio State University, advancing to full professor in three years. Appointed to the Duke law faculty shortly thereafter, he was named to the William R. & Thomas S. Perkins Chair of Law in 1974.
Professor Van Alstyne’s professional writings have appeared during four decades in the principal law journals in the United States, with frequent republication in foreign journals. They address virtually every major subject in the field of constitutional law. His work has been cited in a large number of judicial opinions including those of the Supreme Court. The Journal of Legal Studies for January, 2000, named Professor Van Alstyne in the top forty most frequently cited legal scholars in the United States of the preceding half-century.
Professor Van Alstyne has also taught and given professional papers internationally, in Germany, Austria, and Denmark, in Chile, the former Soviet Union, China, Japan, Canada, and Australia. He has been a visiting faculty member on the law faculties of the University of Chicago, Stanford, California (Berkeley and UCLA), Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois, a Fulbright Lecturer in Chile, a Senior Fellow at the Yale Law School, and a faculty fellow at the Hague International Court of Justice. He has appeared as counsel and as amicus curiae in constitutional litigation in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. He has also appeared in numerous hearings before Senate and House Committees, on legislation affecting the separation of powers, war powers, constitutional amendments, impeachments, legislation affecting civil rights and civil liberties, and nominations to the Supreme Court.
In 1987, Professor Van Alstyne was selected in a poll of federal judges, lawyers, and academics by the New York Law Journal as one of three academics among "the ten most qualified" persons in the country for appointment to the Supreme Court, a distinction repeated in a similar poll by The American Lawyer, in 1991. Past National President of the American Association of University Professors, and former member of the National Board of Directors of the A.C.L.U., he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.
The William J. and Dorothy K. O'Neill Chair in Law Emeritus, Notre Dame Law School
Professor G. Robert Blakey, the nation's foremost authority on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), has served on the Notre Dame Law School faculty for more than 30 years. He teaches in the areas of criminal law and procedure, federal criminal law and procedure, terrorism, and jurisprudence. Blakey's extensive legislative drafting experience resulted in the passage of the Crime Control Act of 1973, the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1970 and the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Title IX of which is known as RICO. He has been personally involved in drafting and implementing RICO-type legislation in 22 of the more than 30 states that have enacted racketeering laws. He frequently argues in or consults on cases involving RICO statutes at both the federal and state levels, including several cases before the United States Supreme Court. Blakey has considerable expertise in federal and state wiretapping statutes as well. He helped draft and secure passage of Title III on wiretapping of the federal 1968 Crime Control Act, and has been personally involved in drafting and implementing wiretapping legislation in 39 of the 43 states that have enacted such laws. Blakey has extensively investigated the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He served as chief counsel and staff director to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, and helped to draft the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Blakey gave remarks at the 2012 Law School Hooding/Diploma Commencement Ceremony on May 19, 2012. Blakey received Emeritus status in December 2012.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (ret.) and former U.S. Senator
James L. Buckley was born in New York City in 1923, grew up in rural Connecticut, and received his B.A. degree from Yale. Following service as a naval officer in World War II, he returned to New Haven to secure his law degree. After several years in private practice, he joined a group of small companies engaged in oil exploration abroad. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1970 as the candidate of New York's Conservative Party. He failed of re-election; but he has since served as an under secretary of state in the Reagan administration, as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany, and, most recently, as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He retired in 2000 and now resides in Bethesda, Maryland.
Founding Partner, diGenova & Toensing LLP
Joseph E. diGenova, founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm of diGenova & Toensing, LLP represents individuals, corporations and other entities before the Federal courts, Congress, and U.S. cabinet departments and agencies on criminal, civil, administrative and investigative matters. In December 1992, he was appointed Independent Counsel in the Clinton Passport File Search matter. He was appointed Chairman of the Grievance Committee of the D.C. District Court in 1995 by the judges of that court. In 1997, he was named Special Counsel by the U.S. House of Representatives to probe the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. As a result of that assignment, he was appointed by the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, to sit on the Independent Review Board, which oversees the Teamsters pursuant to a 1989 Consent Decree. He is on that Board with former FBI and CIA Director William Webster and former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. In 2007, Mr. diGenova was retained by the New York State Senate to investigate then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer in the Troopergate matter.
His practice emphasizes representation to resolve disputes with various branches of the Federal government through negotiation, litigation, and/or legislation. He does white collar criminal defense work for individuals (such as the former CEO of BCCI) and corporations, conducting internal investigations as well. He represents individuals and organizations in Congressional investigations.
For four years, diGenova was United States Attorney, District of Columbia, which is the largest such office, having more than 400 attorneys. He supervised complex Federal criminal and civil matters including international drug smuggling, public corruption, espionage, insider trading, tax fraud, extradition, fraud, RICO, export control and international terrorism. Many of these prosecutions involved negotiations with foreign governments. He conducted a wide-ranging probe of corruption in the D.C. government, which led to the conviction of two deputy mayors. He led the prosecution of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. He was the Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney during the prosecution of attempted Presidential assassin, John W. Hinckley.
DiGenova has extensive experience on Capitol Hill. He was Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Rules Committee and Counsel to the Senate Judiciary, Governmental Affairs and Select Intelligence Committees. He has conducted confirmation, investigative, legislative and oversight hearings, drafted legislation and testified before both Houses of Congress. He also served as Administrative Assistant and Legislative Director to U.S. Senator Charles Mathias.
Mr. diGenova has published articles on criminal law, terrorism, and Congressional oversight and has spoken on those and other issues to various organizations throughout the United States. As part of his advocacy approach, he has appeared on Court TV, Lehrer News Hour, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Nightline, 60 Minutes, Crossfire, This Week With David Brinkley, John McLaughlin’s One On One, Today Show, Good Morning America, and other national television programs. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati and his law degree from Georgetown University.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Sentelle was appointed United States Circuit Judge in October 1987, served as Chief Judge from February 11, 2008 until February 11, 2013, and took senior status on February 12, 2013. He is a 1968 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School. Following law school, he practiced with the firm of Uzzell & DuMont until he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Charlotte, N.C. in 1970. From 1974 to 1977, he served as a North Carolina State District Judge but left the bench in 1977 to become a partner with the firm of Tucker, Hicks, Sentelle, Moon & Hodge. In 1985, Judge Sentelle joined the U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina, in Asheville, where he served until his appointment to the D.C. Circuit. Judge Sentelle was the Presiding Judge of the Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels (1992-2006). He also served as the Chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference's Executive Committee (2010-2013). Judge Sentelle served for over 20 years as President of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of the American Inns of Court.
Professor of Law, Emeritus, Marshall-Wythe Law School at the College of William and Mary
William W. Van Alstyne, one of the nation's foremost constitutional law scholars, and William & Mary’s Lee Professor of Law from 2004 to 2012, died on January 29, 2019, in Southern California.
Professor Van Alstyne was appointed Lee Professor of Law at the Marshall-Wythe Law School at the College of William and Mary in 2004. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California (B.A. in philosophy, magna cum laude) and Stanford University Law School (J.D., Articles and Book Review Editor of The Stanford Law Review). Following his admission to the California Bar and brief service as Deputy Attorney General of California, he joined the Civil Rights Division of the U. S. Department of Justice handling voting rights cases in the South. After active duty with the U. S. Air Force, he was appointed to the law faculty of the Ohio State University, advancing to full professor in three years. Appointed to the Duke law faculty shortly thereafter, he was named to the William R. & Thomas S. Perkins Chair of Law in 1974.
Professor Van Alstyne’s professional writings have appeared during four decades in the principal law journals in the United States, with frequent republication in foreign journals. They address virtually every major subject in the field of constitutional law. His work has been cited in a large number of judicial opinions including those of the Supreme Court. The Journal of Legal Studies for January, 2000, named Professor Van Alstyne in the top forty most frequently cited legal scholars in the United States of the preceding half-century.
Professor Van Alstyne has also taught and given professional papers internationally, in Germany, Austria, and Denmark, in Chile, the former Soviet Union, China, Japan, Canada, and Australia. He has been a visiting faculty member on the law faculties of the University of Chicago, Stanford, California (Berkeley and UCLA), Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois, a Fulbright Lecturer in Chile, a Senior Fellow at the Yale Law School, and a faculty fellow at the Hague International Court of Justice. He has appeared as counsel and as amicus curiae in constitutional litigation in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. He has also appeared in numerous hearings before Senate and House Committees, on legislation affecting the separation of powers, war powers, constitutional amendments, impeachments, legislation affecting civil rights and civil liberties, and nominations to the Supreme Court.
In 1987, Professor Van Alstyne was selected in a poll of federal judges, lawyers, and academics by the New York Law Journal as one of three academics among "the ten most qualified" persons in the country for appointment to the Supreme Court, a distinction repeated in a similar poll by The American Lawyer, in 1991. Past National President of the American Association of University Professors, and former member of the National Board of Directors of the A.C.L.U., he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.
Founder and Principal, Fillmore Global Strategies LLC
Ambassador Nathan A. Sales is the founder and principal of Fillmore Global Strategies LLC, a consultancy that provides legal and strategic advisory services on matters at the intersection of law, policy, and diplomacy.
From 2017 to 2021, Ambassador Sales served at the U.S. Department of State as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (acting). He oversaw nine bureaus and offices led by Senate-confirmed principals, with 1,300 employees and a combined foreign assistance budget of more than $5 billion annually, and the mission of preventing and countering threats to civilian security, including terrorism, mass atrocities, and violations of human rights and the rule of law.
Concurrently, Ambassador Sales was Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism. After being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he was sworn in on August 10, 2017. He served as the principal adviser to the Secretary of State on international counterterrorism matters, and led the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, a 200-person team with an annual foreign assistance budget of $400 million. He was also the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, leading U.S. relations with the 83-member Coalition and efforts to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS in the Middle East and around the world.
While at the State Department, Ambassador Sales led the elements of the U.S. government’s China strategy promoting democratic values and human rights, including with respect to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. He oversaw the development and implementation of a wide range of U.S. government sanctions, including Global Magnitsky actions and Executive Order 13,936, targeting those responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy. Ambassador Sales was the architect of the landmark 2017 UN Security Council Resolution 2396 on terrorist travel, and successfully pressed NATO to make counterterrorism a core Alliance mission. He led diplomatic engagements to persuade a dozen key partners in Europe and the Americas to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization in its entirety. He launched the Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial, in which heads of state and minister-level officials meet bianually to coordinate efforts against terrorist threats in the region. He led the U.S. government’s international efforts to combat white supremacist terrorism. Under his leadership, the State Department imposed terrorism sanctions on the Russian Imperial Movement – the first-ever U.S. designation of white supremacist terrorists.
Before joining the State Department, Ambassador Sales was Of Counsel at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP (formerly Bancroft PLLC). He was also a tenured law professor, teaching and writing in the fields of administrative law, constitutional law, and national security law. His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times.
Ambassador Sales previously was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He led DHS’s efforts to draft and implement legislation that strengthened the security of and expanded the Visa Waiver Program (which allows citizens of certain countries to travel to the United States without a visa). He headed the U.S. delegation in talks with seven countries to implement the new security measures and was the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Special Envoy to South Korea.
Ambassador Sales also served at the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on regulatory initiatives, counterterrorism, and judicial confirmations. In 2005, he managed DOJ’s “war room” for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. He received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the Justice Department’s highest honor – for his role in drafting the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his work on judicial confirmations.
In addition to his work at Fillmore Global Strategies, Ambassador Sales is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior advisor at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy. He serves on a number of advisory boards, including for the Counter-Extremism Project (a nonprofit and nonpartisan international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies), the Secure Community Network (the official safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community), and the Sue J. Henry Center for Pre-Law Education at Miami University.
An Ohio native, Ambassador Sales received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke Law School, where he was Research Editor of the Duke Law Journal and joined the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
The William J. and Dorothy K. O'Neill Chair in Law Emeritus, Notre Dame Law School
Professor G. Robert Blakey, the nation's foremost authority on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), has served on the Notre Dame Law School faculty for more than 30 years. He teaches in the areas of criminal law and procedure, federal criminal law and procedure, terrorism, and jurisprudence. Blakey's extensive legislative drafting experience resulted in the passage of the Crime Control Act of 1973, the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1970 and the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Title IX of which is known as RICO. He has been personally involved in drafting and implementing RICO-type legislation in 22 of the more than 30 states that have enacted racketeering laws. He frequently argues in or consults on cases involving RICO statutes at both the federal and state levels, including several cases before the United States Supreme Court. Blakey has considerable expertise in federal and state wiretapping statutes as well. He helped draft and secure passage of Title III on wiretapping of the federal 1968 Crime Control Act, and has been personally involved in drafting and implementing wiretapping legislation in 39 of the 43 states that have enacted such laws. Blakey has extensively investigated the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He served as chief counsel and staff director to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, and helped to draft the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Blakey gave remarks at the 2012 Law School Hooding/Diploma Commencement Ceremony on May 19, 2012. Blakey received Emeritus status in December 2012.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (ret.) and former U.S. Senator
James L. Buckley was born in New York City in 1923, grew up in rural Connecticut, and received his B.A. degree from Yale. Following service as a naval officer in World War II, he returned to New Haven to secure his law degree. After several years in private practice, he joined a group of small companies engaged in oil exploration abroad. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1970 as the candidate of New York's Conservative Party. He failed of re-election; but he has since served as an under secretary of state in the Reagan administration, as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany, and, most recently, as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He retired in 2000 and now resides in Bethesda, Maryland.
Founding Partner, diGenova & Toensing LLP
Joseph E. diGenova, founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm of diGenova & Toensing, LLP represents individuals, corporations and other entities before the Federal courts, Congress, and U.S. cabinet departments and agencies on criminal, civil, administrative and investigative matters. In December 1992, he was appointed Independent Counsel in the Clinton Passport File Search matter. He was appointed Chairman of the Grievance Committee of the D.C. District Court in 1995 by the judges of that court. In 1997, he was named Special Counsel by the U.S. House of Representatives to probe the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. As a result of that assignment, he was appointed by the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, to sit on the Independent Review Board, which oversees the Teamsters pursuant to a 1989 Consent Decree. He is on that Board with former FBI and CIA Director William Webster and former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. In 2007, Mr. diGenova was retained by the New York State Senate to investigate then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer in the Troopergate matter.
His practice emphasizes representation to resolve disputes with various branches of the Federal government through negotiation, litigation, and/or legislation. He does white collar criminal defense work for individuals (such as the former CEO of BCCI) and corporations, conducting internal investigations as well. He represents individuals and organizations in Congressional investigations.
For four years, diGenova was United States Attorney, District of Columbia, which is the largest such office, having more than 400 attorneys. He supervised complex Federal criminal and civil matters including international drug smuggling, public corruption, espionage, insider trading, tax fraud, extradition, fraud, RICO, export control and international terrorism. Many of these prosecutions involved negotiations with foreign governments. He conducted a wide-ranging probe of corruption in the D.C. government, which led to the conviction of two deputy mayors. He led the prosecution of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. He was the Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney during the prosecution of attempted Presidential assassin, John W. Hinckley.
DiGenova has extensive experience on Capitol Hill. He was Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Rules Committee and Counsel to the Senate Judiciary, Governmental Affairs and Select Intelligence Committees. He has conducted confirmation, investigative, legislative and oversight hearings, drafted legislation and testified before both Houses of Congress. He also served as Administrative Assistant and Legislative Director to U.S. Senator Charles Mathias.
Mr. diGenova has published articles on criminal law, terrorism, and Congressional oversight and has spoken on those and other issues to various organizations throughout the United States. As part of his advocacy approach, he has appeared on Court TV, Lehrer News Hour, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Nightline, 60 Minutes, Crossfire, This Week With David Brinkley, John McLaughlin’s One On One, Today Show, Good Morning America, and other national television programs. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati and his law degree from Georgetown University.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Sentelle was appointed United States Circuit Judge in October 1987, served as Chief Judge from February 11, 2008 until February 11, 2013, and took senior status on February 12, 2013. He is a 1968 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School. Following law school, he practiced with the firm of Uzzell & DuMont until he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Charlotte, N.C. in 1970. From 1974 to 1977, he served as a North Carolina State District Judge but left the bench in 1977 to become a partner with the firm of Tucker, Hicks, Sentelle, Moon & Hodge. In 1985, Judge Sentelle joined the U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina, in Asheville, where he served until his appointment to the D.C. Circuit. Judge Sentelle was the Presiding Judge of the Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels (1992-2006). He also served as the Chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference's Executive Committee (2010-2013). Judge Sentelle served for over 20 years as President of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of the American Inns of Court.
Professor of Law, Emeritus, Marshall-Wythe Law School at the College of William and Mary
William W. Van Alstyne, one of the nation's foremost constitutional law scholars, and William & Mary’s Lee Professor of Law from 2004 to 2012, died on January 29, 2019, in Southern California.
Professor Van Alstyne was appointed Lee Professor of Law at the Marshall-Wythe Law School at the College of William and Mary in 2004. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California (B.A. in philosophy, magna cum laude) and Stanford University Law School (J.D., Articles and Book Review Editor of The Stanford Law Review). Following his admission to the California Bar and brief service as Deputy Attorney General of California, he joined the Civil Rights Division of the U. S. Department of Justice handling voting rights cases in the South. After active duty with the U. S. Air Force, he was appointed to the law faculty of the Ohio State University, advancing to full professor in three years. Appointed to the Duke law faculty shortly thereafter, he was named to the William R. & Thomas S. Perkins Chair of Law in 1974.
Professor Van Alstyne’s professional writings have appeared during four decades in the principal law journals in the United States, with frequent republication in foreign journals. They address virtually every major subject in the field of constitutional law. His work has been cited in a large number of judicial opinions including those of the Supreme Court. The Journal of Legal Studies for January, 2000, named Professor Van Alstyne in the top forty most frequently cited legal scholars in the United States of the preceding half-century.
Professor Van Alstyne has also taught and given professional papers internationally, in Germany, Austria, and Denmark, in Chile, the former Soviet Union, China, Japan, Canada, and Australia. He has been a visiting faculty member on the law faculties of the University of Chicago, Stanford, California (Berkeley and UCLA), Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois, a Fulbright Lecturer in Chile, a Senior Fellow at the Yale Law School, and a faculty fellow at the Hague International Court of Justice. He has appeared as counsel and as amicus curiae in constitutional litigation in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. He has also appeared in numerous hearings before Senate and House Committees, on legislation affecting the separation of powers, war powers, constitutional amendments, impeachments, legislation affecting civil rights and civil liberties, and nominations to the Supreme Court.
In 1987, Professor Van Alstyne was selected in a poll of federal judges, lawyers, and academics by the New York Law Journal as one of three academics among "the ten most qualified" persons in the country for appointment to the Supreme Court, a distinction repeated in a similar poll by The American Lawyer, in 1991. Past National President of the American Association of University Professors, and former member of the National Board of Directors of the A.C.L.U., he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.
Federalism and the Scope of Federal Criminal Law [Archive Collection]
G. Robert Blakey, James L. Buckley, Joseph E. diGenova, David B. Sentelle, William Van Alstyne
On September 9-10, 1988, The Federalist Society hosted its second annual National Lawyers Convention at...
Federalism and the Scope of Federal Criminal Law [Archive Collection]
G. Robert Blakey, James L. Buckley, Joseph E. diGenova, David B. Sentelle, William Van Alstyne
On September 9-10, 1988, The Federalist Society hosted its second annual National Lawyers Convention at...
Topics
The Climate Change Inquisition, Part II—The Scandal Unfolds
The concerted investigation against ExxonMobil (Exxon) and organizations deemed “climate change deniers” currently being conducted by...
Interrogation and Torture
Federalism and the Scope of Federal Criminal Law [Archive Collection]
Second Annual National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC