General Counsel, xAI and X
Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jonathan Kanter was confirmed on November 16, 2021, as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. Throughout his career, Mr. Kanter has been a leading advocate for strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy.
Mr. Kanter has been a partner in the Washington, D.C. offices of two national law firms and was the founder of a boutique antitrust law firm dedicated to promoting antitrust enforcement. Mr. Kanter began his career as an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition. He earned his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and his B.A. from State University of New York at Albany.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice
On January 14, 2022, Doha Mekki was appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. As Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Mekki supervises more than 350 attorneys who investigate and prosecute civil and criminal violations of federal antitrust and other competition laws. She is responsible for overseeing the Division’s civil enforcement, criminal enforcement, litigation, domestic and international policy, advocacy, and economic analysis programs, as well as the Division’s operations.
Ms. Mekki joined the Antitrust Division in 2015 as a Trial Attorney. In that capacity, she led investigations and litigated merger challenges in the rail, commercial vehicle, aviation, and healthcare industries, among others. She later served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. In that role, she focused on civil antitrust enforcement in healthcare, sports, and digital markets, as well as criminal enforcement in labor markets. From 2020 until 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief in the Antitrust Division’s Defense, Industrials, and Aerospace Section, where she provided legal and policy guidance to attorneys and paralegals working on the section’s merger and anticompetitive conduct investigations and enforcement. Beginning in 2021, she served concurrently as the Antitrust Division’s Special Counsel for Labor. In that capacity, she helped advance the Division’s civil and criminal enforcement in labor markets. She is a two-time recipient of the Assistant Attorney General’s Award of Distinction and she has testified before Congress about competition in labor markets.
She was previously an associate in the antitrust and financial services groups of an international law firm in New York, NY, where her antitrust practice focused on federal antitrust litigation, government investigations, and counseling.
Ms. Mekki holds a B.A. from Duke University, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an M.B.E. in Bioethics from the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Berlau is a senior fellow and Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work focuses on how public policy affects access to capital, entrepreneurship, and investments made by the public and business community alike. In recent years, he has studied the consequences of financial reform efforts passed by Congress like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis including the Dodd-Frank Act, the placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, and the rise of cryptocurrency.
He is also the author of the book George Washington: Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World. The book received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other forums, and was endorsed by eminent historians and scholars such as Richard Brookhiser, Amity Shlaes, and Craig Shirley.
Berlau is a contributing writer for Forbes. His work has been published and cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, National Journal, National Review, American Spectator, Reason Magazine, and more. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including CNBC’s “The Call,” “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell,” Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and Fox Business’ “Cavuto.”
He has testified on the impact of financial regulation before the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A recognized expert on the phenomenon of crowdfunding, Berlau has spoken at prominent conferences such as South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the FinTech Global Expo in San Diego, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit in San Francisco and the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) Summit in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the widely cited paper “Declaration of Crowdfunding Independence: Finance of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
Berlau is an award-winning financial and political journalist. He served as Washington correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily and as a staff writer for Insight magazine, published by The Washington Times. In 2002, he received the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism from Washington’s National Press Club. He was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2003. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1994 with degrees in journalism and economics.
Managing Partner, Deaton Law Firm
John Deaton, Managing Partner of the Deaton Law Firm, founded his law practice in 2006. Prior to establishing DLF, John worked for a national plaintiffs’ firm, specializing in asbestos litigation, products liability, toxic torts, and personal injury. John also served as one of the firm’s principal trial attorneys in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. John tried cases against national defense lawyers, litigation firms, and high profile corporations. He earned a reputation as an aggressive but fair trial advocate.
Prior to his work as a plaintiffs’ attorney, John joined the United States Marine Corp while in law school. In 1994, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. John served as a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney for seven years of active duty. He tried dozens of jury trials to verdict throughout his career. As a direct result of his efforts, John was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and was selected to the rank of Major.
John attended law school at the New England School of Law and graduated Cum Laude in 1995. At New England School of Law, John received the American Jurisprudence Award for Clinical Evidence and was selected for the law school’s National Mock Trial Team, an honor awarded to few. John graduated Magna Cum Laude from Eastern Michigan University in 1989.
University Professor and Clayton N. Little Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law
Professor Goforth specializes in business associations and securities regulation, and she has become a leading expert on the regulation of cryptoassets and transactions. West Academic published her new textbook, Regulation of Cryptotransactions, in March 2020. To the best of her knowledge, this was the first comprehensive textbook on the subject. She writes and comments frequently on crypto, including serving as an expert commentator for CoinTelegraph, with her posts regularly receiving thousands of views. She is also on the board of advisors to Honeycomb Digital Investments.
In 1999, she was elected to the prestigious American Law Institute, which welcomes distinguished federal and state judges, lawyers, and law professors. She has also been an official observer to a Uniform Law Commission drafting committee, and serves as the Arkansas Liaison to the Corporate Laws Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. She is also a member of the Academic Faculty Network at the Sam M. Walton College of Business Blockchain Center of Excellence.
Prof. Goforth is a University Professor and the Clayton N. Little Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She is a former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a former Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor of Law.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
President, Committee for Justice
Curt Levey is President of the Committee For Justice, an organization devoted to advancing constitutionally limited government and individual liberty. He is a veteran of Supreme Court and other judicial confirmation battles and serves on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Civil Rights Practice Group.
After graduating Harvard Law School with honors and clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Mr. Levey served as Director of Legal & Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR). There he worked on landmark Supreme Court cases, including the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and the successful constitutional challenge to the Violence Against Women Act. After CIR, Mr. Levey headed the Title IX policy group at the U.S. Department of Education.
Before attending law school, Mr. Levey earned an M.S. and B.A. in computer science from Brown University and worked in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He invented a new type of AI technology, for which he wrote a successful patent application.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
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