Associate Counsel to the President, White House Counsel's Office
Samuel Adkisson serves as Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Mr. Adkisson previously practiced law at Cooper & Kirk PLLC, where he focused on high-stakes civil-rights, political, and constitutional disputes. His matters included class actions challenging the FAA’s race-based air traffic controller hiring practices and the University of Oklahoma’s financial aid policies; appellate work on behalf of X Corp.; and the successful defense of Florida’s actions during a 2024 abortion referendum. Before joining Cooper & Kirk, he worked on the landmark case challenging Harvard’s affirmative action policies and helped launch a successful challenge to the State Bar of Texas’s membership policies.
Mr. Adkisson clerked for Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr., Judge Amul R. Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Judge Gregory G. Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. During Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, he worked for Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Charles E. Grassley.
Mr. Adkisson received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was President of the Yale Law School Federalist Society and an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University. Prior to joining the Trump Administration in January 2025, he lived on Signal Mountain, TN, with his wife and three children.
Partner, BakerHostetler, Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
Andrew Grossman leads BakerHostetler’s Appellate and Major Motion team. He has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly all the federal courts of appeals, as well as some state appellate courts, litigating high-profile and complex commercial, administrative and constitutional issues.
Andrew works with practice groups across BakerHostetler to identify and tackle complex issues, advise on administrative law and strategy, tee up issues for appeal and tackle appeals. He has developed and implemented litigation and administrative strategies for clients in several fields and industries.
In addition to his practice, Andrew advises members of Congress on matters of constitutional and administrative law, having testified more than a dozen times before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. He has been a frequent legal commentator on radio and television, having appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and its affiliates, CBN and elsewhere. His legal commentary has also appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and many others.
Andrew is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Buckeye Institute, an Adjunct Fellow the Manhattan Institute and a member of the leadership of the Federalist Society. He previously served as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Vice President for Legal Strategy, Stand Together
Casey Mattox is Vice President for Legal Strategy at Stand Together and Senior Advisor at
Americans for Prosperity. In these roles he advocates for and creates strategies and
partnerships to ensure a constitutionally limited government that protects the civil liberties of all
Americans. Prior to joining Stand Together and AFP Casey’s legal career focused on defending
the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, healthcare workers and religious organizations.
Casey has a J.D. from Boston College School of Law and an undergraduate degree from the
University of Virginia. You can find him on Twitter at @CaseyMattox_ and on LinkedIn at
@Casey-Mattox-ST.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Legal Policy Director, Pacific Legal Foundation
Daniel Dew directs Pacific Legal Foundation’s legal policy efforts. The legal policy team fights for individual liberty in the other two branches of government by finding principled solutions to complex problems.
Daniel has led numerous successful public policy campaigns, including home equity theft reform, judicial bias reform, emergency powers reform, and prior to his time at PLF, civil asset forfeiture reform, sentencing reform, and removing government-imposed barriers to employment.
Before joining PLF, Daniel was a legal fellow at The Buckeye Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and a visiting legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
Daniel served on the Ohio Supreme Court’s Task Force to Examine Ohio’s Bail System, and Ohio’s Justice Reinvestment 2.0 Ad Hoc Committee. He has also served as president of the Columbus, Ohio lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society, and chaired the Ohio State Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Committee.
He earned his law degree from Cleveland Marshall College of Law and his undergraduate degree from Utah State University.
When he’s not battling bureaucrats, Daniel coaches baseball, trains for marathons (very slowly), is constantly disappointed by Cleveland sports teams, and keeps busy with his wife, Amanda, and their four children.
Senior Director, Liberty & National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein is senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.
Goitein is a nationally-recognized expert on presidential emergency powers, government surveillance, and government secrecy. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Magazine, and The New Republic, and she has appeared frequently on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. She has testified on several occasions before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
Before coming to the Brennan Center, Goitein served as counsel to Senator Russ Feingold, chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Goitein graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2021–22, she was a member of the inaugural class of Senior Practitioner Fellows at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.
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.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Legal Policy Director, Pacific Legal Foundation
Daniel Dew directs Pacific Legal Foundation’s legal policy efforts. The legal policy team fights for individual liberty in the other two branches of government by finding principled solutions to complex problems.
Daniel has led numerous successful public policy campaigns, including home equity theft reform, judicial bias reform, emergency powers reform, and prior to his time at PLF, civil asset forfeiture reform, sentencing reform, and removing government-imposed barriers to employment.
Before joining PLF, Daniel was a legal fellow at The Buckeye Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and a visiting legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
Daniel served on the Ohio Supreme Court’s Task Force to Examine Ohio’s Bail System, and Ohio’s Justice Reinvestment 2.0 Ad Hoc Committee. He has also served as president of the Columbus, Ohio lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society, and chaired the Ohio State Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Committee.
He earned his law degree from Cleveland Marshall College of Law and his undergraduate degree from Utah State University.
When he’s not battling bureaucrats, Daniel coaches baseball, trains for marathons (very slowly), is constantly disappointed by Cleveland sports teams, and keeps busy with his wife, Amanda, and their four children.
Senior Director, Liberty & National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein is senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.
Goitein is a nationally-recognized expert on presidential emergency powers, government surveillance, and government secrecy. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Magazine, and The New Republic, and she has appeared frequently on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. She has testified on several occasions before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
Before coming to the Brennan Center, Goitein served as counsel to Senator Russ Feingold, chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Goitein graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2021–22, she was a member of the inaugural class of Senior Practitioner Fellows at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.
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.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Head of U.S. Policy and Strategic Advocacy, Electric Coin Company
Paul Brigner is the Head of U.S. Policy and Strategic Advocacy at the Electric Coin Company. He has served in senior level technology policy and government relations roles for the last eighteen years with another ten years of hands-on technical experience at the beginning his career after serving in the United States Army.
He holds an MBA from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. He received a Bachelors degree from Stephen F. Austin State University where he was named the Outstanding Computer Science Graduate.
General Counsel, Espresso Systems
Michael Mosier is General Counsel at Espresso Systems, which is developing configurable privacy for digital assets with decentralized private computation. He served as Acting Director, Deputy Director, and the first Digital Innovation Officer of the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). He also was Counselor (for Cybersecurity & Emerging Technology) to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
Previously, Michael was Chief Technical Counsel at Chainalysis; an Associate Director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control; a Deputy Chief at the Department of Justice’s Money Laundering Section; and White House National Security Council Director for Transnational Organized Crime. He began his public service with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Kevin Werbach is a professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and formerly Counsel for New Technology Policy at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, Werbach has spent the past two decades exploring major trends at the intersection of the Internet, digital media, and communications. He served on the Obama Administration's Presidential Transition Team and founded the Supernova Group, a technology consulting firm, which organized the CEO-level Supernova technology conference. He also created one of the most successful massive open online courses, with nearly half a million enrollments. He was named Wharton's first-ever Iron Prof in 2010.
Werbach has published four books, including The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust, For the Win: The Power of Gamification and Game Thinking in Business, Education, Government, and Social Impact, and After the Digital Tornado: Networks, Algorithms, Humanity.
Earlier in his career, he edited the influential technology newsletter Release 1.0, and helped develop the U.S. Government's Internet and e-commerce policies in the Clinton Administration
Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law J.W. Verret joined the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University faculty in 2008. In 2013, he took leave for two years to serve as the Chief Economist and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. He received his JD and MA in Public Policy from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, respectively, in 2006. While in law school, Professor Verret served an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance under the guidance of Prof. Lucian Bebchuk.
Professor Verret then served as a law clerk for Vice-Chancellor John W. Noble of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Prior to joining the faculty at Scalia Law, Professor Verret was an associate in the SEC Enforcement Defense Practice Group at Skadden, Arps in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on corporate law topics, including Delaware's Guidance, co-written with Chief Justice Myron T. Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court. His academic work has been featured in the Yale Journal on Regulation, The Business Lawyer, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and the Virginia Law and Business Review. Professor Verret was selected by the Northwestern Law School Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth for a 2009-2010 Searle-Kaufmann Research Fellowship.
Professor Verret is also a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Working Group on Financial Markets, where he regularly briefs Congressional staff, members of Congress, SEC Commissioners and other financial regulatory agencies on financial regulation topics. He also directs the Corporate Federalism Initiative, where he obtains research grants for a network of students and faculty scholars who study the division between states and the federal government as sources of corporate law. Professor Verret has been invited to testify before various House and Senate Committees four times during the financial crisis of 2009 regarding all of the central provisions of the Obama Administration's 2009 financial regulatory reform proposals. For a full list of Professor Verret's C-Span appearances, including testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jwverret.
Professor Verret has been an invited panelist for various television appearances, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Professor Verret has been quoted in various media on financial regulation and corporate law topics, including the New York Times, CNN Money, the CNN Political Ticker, CNBC, ABC News, Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, The American Banker, The American Lawyer, The Huffington Post, CBS.com, and AP News. Professor Verret's op-eds have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Orange County Register, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Verret is also a regular guest contributor to three of the most noted corporate law and financial regulation law blogs: the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation Forum, Deallawyers.com, and The Conglomerate.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has published extensively on why patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights have been—and should be—legally secured to innovators and creators as property rights. His scholarship has been relied on by the United States Supreme Court, by lower federal courts, and by U.S. federal agencies. He has been invited to testify numerous times before the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on intellectual property legislation. His writings on intellectual property policy have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Investors Business Daily, and in other media outlets. His journal articles can be downloaded here.
Professor Mossoff is a longstanding member of the Executive Committee of the Intellectual Property Practice Group of the Federalist Society, on which he served as Chairperson from 2016-2018, and he is Chair of the Intellectual Property Working Group of the Regulatory Transparency Project of the Federalist Society. He is a Senior Fellow and Chair of the Forum for Intellectual Property at the Hudson Institute, a Visiting Intellectual Property Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding. He is a member of the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of ANSI and he has served as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the IEEE-USA, on which he remains a member in good standing.
Associate Counsel to the President, White House Counsel's Office
Samuel Adkisson serves as Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Mr. Adkisson previously practiced law at Cooper & Kirk PLLC, where he focused on high-stakes civil-rights, political, and constitutional disputes. His matters included class actions challenging the FAA’s race-based air traffic controller hiring practices and the University of Oklahoma’s financial aid policies; appellate work on behalf of X Corp.; and the successful defense of Florida’s actions during a 2024 abortion referendum. Before joining Cooper & Kirk, he worked on the landmark case challenging Harvard’s affirmative action policies and helped launch a successful challenge to the State Bar of Texas’s membership policies.
Mr. Adkisson clerked for Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr., Judge Amul R. Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Judge Gregory G. Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. During Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, he worked for Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Charles E. Grassley.
Mr. Adkisson received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was President of the Yale Law School Federalist Society and an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University. Prior to joining the Trump Administration in January 2025, he lived on Signal Mountain, TN, with his wife and three children.
Partner, BakerHostetler, Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
Andrew Grossman leads BakerHostetler’s Appellate and Major Motion team. He has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly all the federal courts of appeals, as well as some state appellate courts, litigating high-profile and complex commercial, administrative and constitutional issues.
Andrew works with practice groups across BakerHostetler to identify and tackle complex issues, advise on administrative law and strategy, tee up issues for appeal and tackle appeals. He has developed and implemented litigation and administrative strategies for clients in several fields and industries.
In addition to his practice, Andrew advises members of Congress on matters of constitutional and administrative law, having testified more than a dozen times before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. He has been a frequent legal commentator on radio and television, having appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and its affiliates, CBN and elsewhere. His legal commentary has also appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and many others.
Andrew is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Buckeye Institute, an Adjunct Fellow the Manhattan Institute and a member of the leadership of the Federalist Society. He previously served as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Vice President for Legal Strategy, Stand Together
Casey Mattox is Vice President for Legal Strategy at Stand Together and Senior Advisor at
Americans for Prosperity. In these roles he advocates for and creates strategies and
partnerships to ensure a constitutionally limited government that protects the civil liberties of all
Americans. Prior to joining Stand Together and AFP Casey’s legal career focused on defending
the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, healthcare workers and religious organizations.
Casey has a J.D. from Boston College School of Law and an undergraduate degree from the
University of Virginia. You can find him on Twitter at @CaseyMattox_ and on LinkedIn at
@Casey-Mattox-ST.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
University Professor of Law and Executive Director, Liberty & Law Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
David Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Turin, and Hebrew University. Professor Bernstein teaches Constitutional Law, Evidence, and Products Liability.
A prolific author, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. He is the author of five books, and coauthor of two more. Professor Bernstein’s book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as “intellectual history in its highest form,” a “fresh perspective and a cogent analysis,” “delightful and informative,” “sharp and iconoclastic,” and “a terrific work of historical revisionism.” Columnist George Will praised Bernstein’s most recent book, Classified, The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, as “perhaps the most consequential American book of 2022.”
Professor Bernstein has also written dozens of articles and essays published in major law reviews, including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. An article he coauthored, Defending Daubert: It’s Time to Amend Federal Rule of Evidence 702, directly inspired a pending amendment to Rule 702.
Professor Bernstein blogs at the Instapundit.com, the Times of Israel, and the Volokh Conspiracy. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy.
Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Josh Blackman is a national thought leader on constitutional law and the United States Supreme Court. Josh’s work was quoted during two presidential impeachment trials. He has testified before Congress and advises federal and state lawmakers. Josh regularly appears on TV, including NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the BBC. Josh is also a frequent guest on NPR and other syndicated radio programs. He has published commentaries in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and leading national publications.
Since 2012, Josh has served as a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. He holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law. Josh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Josh has written more than seven dozen law review articles that have been cited more than a thousand times. Josh was selected as the Jurist of the Year by the Texas Journal of Law & Public Policy, received the inaugural Meese III Originalism Award, and was awarded the Inaugural Joseph Story Award. Josh was selected by Forbes Magazine for the “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy. Josh is the President of the Harlan Institute, and founded FantasySCOTUS, the Internet’s Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracyand posts@JoshMBlackman.
Partner and Chair, Appellate & Supreme Court Practice, Jenner & Block LLP
Ian Gershengorn is chair of Jenner & Block’s Appellate and Supreme Court Practice and is one of the nation’s premier Supreme Court and appellate advocates, having argued before the U.S. Supreme Court 16 times. Before rejoining the firm in 2017, he served in the Office of the Solicitor General during the Obama Administration, first as Principal Deputy Solicitor General and then as Acting Solicitor General of the United States. While there, Ian supervised the federal government’s briefing in a range of high-profile cases, including those involving the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, election law and redistricting, immigration reform, Title VII, and same-sex marriage.
Since leaving the federal government and returning to Jenner & Block, Ian has advised clients on a range of complex litigation and strategy problems, and he has appeared regularly in the state and federal appellate courts, representing arguing on behalf of corporate clients such as the Recording Industry Association of America, FirstTrust Bank, General Dynamics, Tsubaki, and Charter Communications.
Ian currently teaches a seminar on The Roberts Court at Harvard Law School.
Ian graduated Harvard College, magna cum laude, and Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk for Judge Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Associate Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Hon. Jennifer Mascott served as Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Separation of Powers Institute at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law before her appointment to the federal bench. On July 16, 2025, President Donald J. Trump nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Delaware), and she was confirmed on October 9, 2025.
Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mascott wrote extensively in administrative and constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and the separation of powers. Her scholarship—published in leading journals including the Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Supreme Court Review—was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal courts. She also contributed Supreme Court commentary for NBC Universal.
Before joining Catholic Law, she was an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of The C. Boyden Gray Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. In 2022 she became co-author of Beermann, Cass & Diver’s Administrative Law: Cases and Materials (9th ed.). In 2023 she received the Justice Joseph Story Award for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and advancing the rule of law.
Judge Mascott also served as a Council Member of the ABA’s Administrative Law Section and as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. She frequently testified before Congress on executive power, regulatory reform, and judicial jurisdiction, and participated in multiple Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
From 2019 to 2021, she took leave from academia to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and later as Associate Deputy Attorney General, where she argued federal cases and assisted with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation. Earlier in her career, she clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and for then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit.
Judge Mascott earned her J.D. summa cum laude from the George Washington University Law School and her B.A. from the same institution.
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School. He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun). From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jones Day, Partner
Yaakov Roth's goal is to strategically develop and effectively present the key legal arguments that will secure victory for clients through appellate advocacy and dispositive motions. He has represented clients in high-profile Supreme Court cases, argued appeals in the federal Courts of Appeals, and prepared motions to dismiss and for summary judgment across a range of substantive areas.
Yaakov's most recent Supreme Court experience includes vindicating former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell from political corruption charges, narrowing the geographic scope of private civil RICO lawsuits, and pursuing a major challenge to the Affordable Care Act from inception through high court review. At the appellate level, Yaakov's oral advocacy has included pressing a First Amendment challenge to an Ohio law prohibiting "false" campaign statements, seeking disclosure of a Justice Department policy manual concerning criminal discovery, and protecting the religious freedom rights of Death Row inmates. He has successfully defended his clients against defamation, antitrust, Title VII, and ERISA claims — including nationwide class actions — and pursued a host of challenges to federal, state, and local regulations. His ERISA experience also includes a series of withdrawal liability arbitrations and related litigation.
Yaakov speaks and writes about the Supreme Court and First Amendment issues and maintains an active pro bono practice centered around religious freedom and criminal justice.
A Seat at the Sitting - December 2022
Samuel D. Adkisson, Andrew Grossman, Casey Mattox, Ilya Somin
Each month, a panel of constitutional experts convenes to discuss the Court’s upcoming docket sitting...
A Seat at the Sitting - December 2022
The December Docket in 90 minutes or less.
TeleforumBook Signings
2022 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCThe Major Questions Doctrine: West Virginia v. EPA
National Lawyers Conference 2022
Washington, DC2022 National Lawyers Convention (closed, do not touch)
The Current State of the Legal Profession
Washington, DCDelaware v. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - Post-Argument SCOTUScast
Donald J. Kochan
Millions of dollars are at stake in a dispute over whether uncashed MoneyGrams qualify as “a...
What Are the Limits of Emergency Executive Powers?
Daniel J. Dew, Elizabeth Goitein, Ilya Shapiro, Ilya Somin
The use of presidential emergency powers has raised controversy under administrations of both parties. President...
What Are the Limits of Emergency Executive Powers?
Daniel J. Dew, Elizabeth Goitein, Ilya Shapiro, Ilya Somin
The use of presidential emergency powers has raised controversy under administrations of both parties. President...
Deep Dive Episode 243 - Is the Office of Foreign Assets Control's Sanctioning of Tornado Cash a Threat to the Future of Financial Privacy?
Paul Brigner, Michael Mosier, Kevin Werbach, J.W. Verret
Tornado Cash is an open source, decentralized cryptocurrency tumbler that was introduced in 2019. The...
Should the Government Limit Copyright Protection for E-books?
Adam Mossoff
In addition to offering physical copies of books, public libraries now offer e-books which can...