Chief Counsel, Legal Policy, Koch Capabilities, LLC
Sarah Field is Chief Counsel, Legal Policy at Koch Capabilities, LLC, where she develops and scales Koch-wide strategic policy initiatives on a variety of legal, judicial, and regulatory topics.
Sarah specializes in leading initiatives that require rapid vision development, start-up, and scaling expertise. This has included leading criminal justice reform and constitutionally limited government initiatives for the Stand Together community, overseeing the comprehensive portfolio of the Stand Together community’s issue areas, driving Americans for Prosperity’s long-term vision and strategy for addressing the country’s political environment, and leading judicial engagement strategy at Americans for Prosperity.
Before that, Sarah served as Executive Director of the Center for Shared Services, which provided compliance, talent development, and operational support for the Stand Together community. Previously, Sarah held roles at the Charles Koch Foundation, the Federalist Society, and a variety of other nonprofit organizations.
Sarah serves on the board of Americans for Public Safety, an organization dedicated to public safety, justice, and the rule of law.
Sarah received her B.A. from Grove City College, her law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and is an alumna of the Koch Associate Program.
Legal Fellow, Cato Institute
Mike Fox is a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. His areas of interest include overcriminalization, police accountability, and coercive plea bargaining. Before joining Cato, Fox served as a Colorado public defender and worked for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and the Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management. He received his BS in political science from Northeastern University and his JD from Suffolk University Law School.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Edward Rood Eminent Scholar Chair, Professor of Law, and Senior Fellow, Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Stinneford researches, teaches, and consults about legal ethics, criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. His work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court, several state supreme courts and federal courts of appeal, and numerous scholars. It has been published in numerous scholarly journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the William & Mary Law Review. The Stanford-Yale Junior faculty forum selected one of his articles as the best paper in the category of Constitutional History, and the AALS Criminal Justice Section named another article as the best paper in its Junior Scholars Paper Competition. In the fall of 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Georgetown Law Center, Center for the Constitution.
John Stinneford was the inaugural Director and serves as a Senior Fellow of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. The Hamilton Center is a new academic unit whose mission is to promote civic education and civic discourse and to foster intellectual diversity. Its core purpose is to help students develop the knowledge, habits of thought, analytical skills, and character to be citizens and leaders in a free society. It will do so through curriculum, public programming, and (in conjunction with the Florida Department of Education) teacher training. Its curriculum will focus primarily on the Western intellectual tradition and the American founding.
Before joining the Florida faculty in 2009, Stinneford clerked for the Hon. James Moran of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, served as an Assistant United States Attorney, and practiced law with Winston & Strawn in Chicago. Stinneford teaches first-year courses in Criminal Law and Constitutional Law, and upper-level courses in Professional Responsibility, Criminal Procedure, Federal Criminal Law, Law & Literature, and White Collar Crime.
Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law
Robert J. Cottrol joined the law school faculty in 1995 as a visiting professor of law of legal history. Previously, he taught at Rutgers University and Boston College, and had visited at the University of Virginia. As well as specializing in American legal history, Professor Cottrol has also taught torts and criminal law. His writings on law and history have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, American Journal of Legal History, Law and Society Review, Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies and American Quarterly, among others.
He is the author of The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Antebellum Era (selected by Choice as an outstanding academic book for 1983), editor of Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment (Book of the Month selection by the History Book Club), and From African to Yankee: Narratives of Slavery and Freedom in Antebellum New England (1998). Professor Cottrol’s book Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture and the Constitution (2003) won the Langum Project Prize for Historical Literature in 2003 and was a “Book-of-the-Month” selection of the History Book Club. Most recently, he has authored The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere (2013).
He is currently doing research contrasting the role of law in the development of systems of slavery and racial hierarchy in the United States and Latin America. He has lectured on American law at the Federal Universities of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and the University of Buenos Aires and La Universidad del Museo Social in Argentina.
Jonathan Goldstein brings decades of experience as an entrepreneur and business owner to his law practice. Mr. Goldstein’s practice focuses on firearms law and election law as well as entrepreneurial business advising.
Mr. Goldstein is an NRA certified pistol instructor and a volunteer attorney for several firearms organizations including the National Rifle Association. He actively lectures on firearms law and firearms safety across Pennsylvania and is a frequent presenter for continuing legal education providers such as CAPE, NACLE and the Pennsylvania Bar Institute.
In May 2011, Mr. Goldstein was awarded the Defender of Justice Award by the National Rifle Association’s Institute of Legislative Action for his “tireless service to the Constitution and with particular emphasis on the protection and furtherance of the Second Amendment.”
Mr. Goldstein served for several years as a non-director member of the NRA board’s Legal Affairs Committee and was a member of the NRA’s 2016 Nominating Committee. In April 2025, he was elected to the NRA’s board and to the board’s Audit Committee. He currently chairs the NRA’s Finance Committee and serves as a member of the NRA’s Legal Affairs Committee as well as a trustee of the NRA’s Civil Rights Defense Fund.
A brief prepared by Mr. Goldstein on behalf of Black Guns Matter was cited favorably by Justice Alito in his Bruen concurrence.
Mr. Goldstein received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. He returned to the University of Pennsylvania for law school, earning his J.D. in 2005.
Mr. Goldstein is admitted to practice law in state and federal courts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as well as Washington, D.C., several Circuit courts and the United States Supreme Court, where his firm argued a case in the 2023–2024 term.
In September 2025, Mr. Goldstein began teaching a course on Second Amendment law as an adjunct at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He regularly publishes scholarship on the 2nd Amendment:
https://hq.ssrn.com/
In addition to nearly a dozen scholarly articles on 2nd Amendment topics, he is the author of several books:
Essential Questions in Firearms Law: Why the Firearms Laws Are What They Are
https://www.amazon.com/
Pennsylvania Firearms Law: A Complete Overview
https://www.amazon.com/
Pennsylvania Hunting Law: A Complete Overview
https://www.amazon.com/dp/
In addition to practicing law, Mr. Goldstein is an active private equity investor purchasing and turning around small American manufacturing companies. Mr. Goldstein is also a licensed commercial pilot.
Francis Pileggi is the managing partner of the Wilmington office of Lewis Brisbois and is chair of the Directors & Officers Litigation Practice and a member of the Complex Business & Commercial Litigation Practice. His litigation practice emphasizes representation in high-stakes disputes of corporations, stockholders, members of boards of directors, members and managers of LLCs, and those with managerial or ownership interests in other forms of entities. He has extensive experience in matters involving fiduciary duties and corporate governance as well as summary proceedings under the Delaware General Corporation Law in the Delaware Court of Chancery. Francis has also been certified as a mediator.
He has been asked to testify as an expert witness on Delaware Corporate Law and Delaware LLC Law.
One of his law review articles on corporate law has been cited by both the Delaware Supreme Court and the Delaware Court of Chancery. The Delaware Superior Court also cited one of his articles. He has published over 1,000 articles in multiple publications on topics including corporate and commercial law as well as legal ethics and constitutional law. He also often speaks at seminars on those topics.
Francis created and maintains the Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog at www.delawarelitigation.com, which was named one of LexisNexis’ Top 25 Business Law Blogs and was selected for inclusion in the ABA Journal’s Blog 100 in 2011 and 2012. In turn, he has been described as “a brand name in Delaware corporate litigation.”
He also has enjoyed success in litigating, in both federal and state appellate courts, groundbreaking Second Amendment cases and related constitutional issues on behalf of civil rights organizations. In 2015 and 2019, he was honored with The Chief Justice William Killen Award for Distinguished Second Amendment Appellate Advocacy.
Francis published a book entitled, American Legal Ethics: A Retrospective from 1997 to 2018 (Outskirts Press, 2018), available on Amazon.com.
Francis has represented townships in Delaware County and Chester County, Pennsylvania, as special counsel on litigation matters. He has also represented a school district in Delaware County and educational and nonprofit institutions in Pennsylvania and elsewhere on corporate governance, litigation, and related issues. He has represented governmental entities and private parties in connection with the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law, and he is the coeditor of a blog that provides commentary and insights on that law.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Rob Johnson is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, where he litigates to protect private property, free speech, and other individual rights. Rob is a nationally-recognized expert on civil forfeiture. He previously represented a series of small business owners who had their entire bank accounts seized by the IRS, and he launched an initiative that resulted in the IRS reopening hundreds of closed forfeiture cases and returning millions of dollars. He has also litigated cases challenging the constitutionality of civil forfeiture procedures, and he scored a victory striking down a forfeiture program as a violation of due process.
Beyond civil forfeiture, Rob has litigated cases defending a range of constitutional rights. He was part of teams that successfully challenged occupational licensing requirements for tour guides in Savannah and Charleston. He also developed a class action lawsuit fighting the NYPD’s use of a draconian “no-fault eviction” statute to coerce residents to waive their constitutional rights, which led New York City to reform the challenged law.
Rob’s writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and Reason, among other venues. Rob has testified about occupational licensing before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and has twice testified about civil forfeiture before the House Ways & Means Oversight Subcommittee. He has also testified before state legislatures across the country.
From 2014-2017, Rob served as IJ’s first Elfie Gallun Fellow for Freedom and the Constitution. In that role, Rob wrote and spoke about the vital role the U.S. Constitution plays in protecting our most precious freedoms. He is currently at work on a book about the Fourteenth Amendment.
Rob studied literature and anthropology at Columbia University, and he studied law at Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, he clerked for Chief Judge Alex Kozinski on the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
Rob lives in Cleveland with his wife and two daughters—all named after characters in Shakespeare plays—and is an amateur large format photographer.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Rob Johnson is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, where he litigates to protect private property, free speech, and other individual rights. Rob is a nationally-recognized expert on civil forfeiture. He previously represented a series of small business owners who had their entire bank accounts seized by the IRS, and he launched an initiative that resulted in the IRS reopening hundreds of closed forfeiture cases and returning millions of dollars. He has also litigated cases challenging the constitutionality of civil forfeiture procedures, and he scored a victory striking down a forfeiture program as a violation of due process.
Beyond civil forfeiture, Rob has litigated cases defending a range of constitutional rights. He was part of teams that successfully challenged occupational licensing requirements for tour guides in Savannah and Charleston. He also developed a class action lawsuit fighting the NYPD’s use of a draconian “no-fault eviction” statute to coerce residents to waive their constitutional rights, which led New York City to reform the challenged law.
Rob’s writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and Reason, among other venues. Rob has testified about occupational licensing before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and has twice testified about civil forfeiture before the House Ways & Means Oversight Subcommittee. He has also testified before state legislatures across the country.
From 2014-2017, Rob served as IJ’s first Elfie Gallun Fellow for Freedom and the Constitution. In that role, Rob wrote and spoke about the vital role the U.S. Constitution plays in protecting our most precious freedoms. He is currently at work on a book about the Fourteenth Amendment.
Rob studied literature and anthropology at Columbia University, and he studied law at Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, he clerked for Chief Judge Alex Kozinski on the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
Rob lives in Cleveland with his wife and two daughters—all named after characters in Shakespeare plays—and is an amateur large format photographer.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Rob Johnson is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, where he litigates to protect private property, free speech, and other individual rights. Rob is a nationally-recognized expert on civil forfeiture. He previously represented a series of small business owners who had their entire bank accounts seized by the IRS, and he launched an initiative that resulted in the IRS reopening hundreds of closed forfeiture cases and returning millions of dollars. He has also litigated cases challenging the constitutionality of civil forfeiture procedures, and he scored a victory striking down a forfeiture program as a violation of due process.
Beyond civil forfeiture, Rob has litigated cases defending a range of constitutional rights. He was part of teams that successfully challenged occupational licensing requirements for tour guides in Savannah and Charleston. He also developed a class action lawsuit fighting the NYPD’s use of a draconian “no-fault eviction” statute to coerce residents to waive their constitutional rights, which led New York City to reform the challenged law.
Rob’s writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and Reason, among other venues. Rob has testified about occupational licensing before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and has twice testified about civil forfeiture before the House Ways & Means Oversight Subcommittee. He has also testified before state legislatures across the country.
From 2014-2017, Rob served as IJ’s first Elfie Gallun Fellow for Freedom and the Constitution. In that role, Rob wrote and spoke about the vital role the U.S. Constitution plays in protecting our most precious freedoms. He is currently at work on a book about the Fourteenth Amendment.
Rob studied literature and anthropology at Columbia University, and he studied law at Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, he clerked for Chief Judge Alex Kozinski on the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
Rob lives in Cleveland with his wife and two daughters—all named after characters in Shakespeare plays—and is an amateur large format photographer.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Partner, Baker & Hostetler LLP
Prior to joining BakerHostetler, Allen spent 15 years at the center of the national debate over political regulation. At the FEC, he worked across party lines to restore a key regulatory player to functioning order after years of neglect and partisan gridlock. Those efforts led to the first adoption of a new regulation in over a decade, reform of the commission’s investigations and interagency practices, and more than 150 Statements of Reasons interpreting the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). Substantively, Allen prioritized developments at the edges of the FEC’s jurisdiction, particularly those cases where federal election rules conflict with broader principles of corporate, administrative, and constitutional law.
Previously, Allen spent nearly a decade representing organizations across the political spectrum in First Amendment challenges to state and federal laws governing civil society. His practice emphasized motions and appeals, including a dozen arguments before federal appellate and state supreme courts, and appearances before regulatory agencies. In addition to purely campaign finance matters, Allen's cases included the first federal lawsuit in decades addressing the constitutional scope of lobbying laws, litigation establishing the standard for constitutional challenges to FECA under that statute’s specialized review procedures and the successful defense of a state attorney general leading to the invalidation of an FEC regulation.
Solicitor General, West Virginia
Michael Williams is the Solicitor General for the State of West Virginia. In that role, Michael represents the State in appeals before state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Michael also coordinates strategic affirmative litigation on the State’s behalf, including litigation against the federal government.
Before joining the Attorney General’s Office, Michael co-led the complex briefing and appeals group at a Michigan boutique firm, representing Fortune 50 companies and others in actions across the country. He also practiced in the litigation groups of two Washington, D.C. firms and clerked with the Appellate Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine.
Michael’s work has been honored with a Best Brief Award from the National Associationof Attorneys General and a Leader in the Law Award from Michigan Lawyers Weekly. He often speaks and writes on appellate-related issues.
Michael clerked twice in the Fourth Circuit: once with then-Chief Judge Deborah Chasanow of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and later with Judge G. Steven Agee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He attended George Washington University Law School and Bates College.
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.
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law
Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus is an internationally recognized expert in civil and human rights, as well as a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism on and off university campuses. He is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the leading civil rights legal organization fighting against anti-Semitism. The New York Times has called him “The Man Who Helped Redefine Campus Anti-Semitism.” He been described, in that paper, as “the single most effective and respected force” to combat anti-Semitism.
During his public service career, Marcus served as Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights; Staff Director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and General Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
In academia, he serves as Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University. He formerly held the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the City University of New York’s Bernard M. Baruch College, served as Visiting Research Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University, and was a Board of Visitors member George Mason University and Distinguished Senior Fellow at that university’s law school. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism and previously served as Associate Editor of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism.
Marcus is also author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford University Press) and Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press). He has published widely in academic journals as well as in more popular venues such as The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, USA Today, and Politico. He is a graduate of Williams College and the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
Earlier in his career, he was a litigation partner in two major law firms, where he conducted complex commercial and constitutional litigation. He also serves as Chairman emeritus of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Civil Rights Practice Group.
Associate Professor of Government; Pre-Law Advisor, Patrick Henry College
Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP
Gregory Garre is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins and Global Chair of the firm's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Group. He recently served as the 44th Solicitor General of the United States. As Solicitor General, he was the federal government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court and was responsible for overseeing the government's litigation in the federal appellate courts. Prior to his nomination by the President and unanimous confirmation as Solicitor General by the Senate, he served as Principal Deputy Solicitor General from 2005 to 2008, and then as Acting Solicitor General. In addition, he served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General from 2000 to 2004. He is the only person to have held all of those positions within the Office of the Solicitor General.
Mr. Garre has argued 29 cases before the Supreme Court, including two cases during the current term, and has served as counsel of record in hundreds of cases before the Court. During the past term, he won each of the cases he argued as Solicitor General, including the landmark case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which clarified the gateway requirements for civil litigation in the federal courts, as well as FCC v. Fox Television Stations, and Winter v. NRDC. He has also argued and briefed cases involving a wide array of other nationally important matters, including in the areas of administrative law, alien tort statute, antitrust, business and employment law, education, environmental law, First Amendment, intellectual property, international law, media and telecommunications, separation of powers and voting rights.
Mr. Garre has also successfully argued numerous cases before the federal courts of appeals, including some of the most significant cases heard by the appellate courts in recent years. And, as Acting Solicitor General, he successfully argued on behalf of the government in the first adversarial appeal heard by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in its 30-year history.
Mr. Garre has received numerous awards for his public service, including the Attorney General's Medallion for his service as Solicitor General and the Navy's Distinguished Public Service Award-the Navy's highest civilian honor-for his successful argument in Winter v. NRDC, which secured a path-marking Supreme Court ruling overturning an order that restrained critically important naval exercises. He has also received the Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award, the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in Furthering Interests of US National Security, and additional honors from the Department of Justice for his work on nationally important litigation matters.
In November 2009, Mr. Garre was named to Washingtonian Magazine's list of top Supreme Court lawyers. In 2006, he was named to The American Lawyer's "Fab 50" list of top litigators under the age of 45 expected to be "leading the field for years to come." And in 2005, he was named to Chambers USA's list of leading appellate litigators in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Garre received his JD degree with high honors from the George Washington University Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the law review and was selected to Order of the Coif, and his BA degree cum laude from Dartmouth College, where he was a Rufus Choate Scholar. Following his graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and to Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Mr. Garre is a member of the advisory board of the Georgetown University Law School Supreme Court Institute and of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court. He has taught constitutional law and Supreme Court practice for many years at the George Washington University Law School. He has testified before Congress and speaks frequently on issues related to the Supreme Court and appellate practice.
Litigation Associate, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
Jill Jacobson is an Appeals and Strategic Counseling and Complex Commercial Litigation associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. She is a former law clerk to Judge Aileen M. Cannon on the District Court for the Southern District of Florida and a future law clerk to Judge Elizabeth L. Branch on the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Jill a fellow emeritus at the Independent Women's Law Center and a Senior Contributor at Young Voices. She has also been a Litigation Contractor at the Institute for Justice. She holds a J.D. from Boston College Law School and a Masters from Northeastern University.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Peggy Little, Senior Counsel at New Civil Liberties Alliance, a new public interest law firm challenging the administrative state founded in 2017 by Professor Philip Hamburger, has over three decades of experience as a trial and appellate litigator in complex, high-stakes regulatory, mass-tort, class-action, products liability, securities, commercial and civil rights litigation representing individuals and high-profile litigants including Fortune 50 companies, financial institutions, public companies, and universities in state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
Peggy is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where she was awarded the Potter Stewart Prize. She was a law clerk to the Hon. Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Prior to starting her own trial and appellate law firm in 1997, where she was appellate consulting counsel to the New Haven firefighters in Ricci v.DeStefano, a landmark 2009 United States Supreme Court decision, Peggy was a partner at Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn in New Haven, Connecticut. From 2004 to early 2018, Peggy directed, part-time, the Federalist Society Pro Bono Center.
Peggy has participated in many national conferences and symposia addressing issues of current importance in constitutional law – specifically state and federal constitutional questions regarding the separation of powers and the first amendment – and regularly speaks, blogs and publishes on the topic of the unconstitutional exercise of governmental power. In May of 2017, she presented her paper, Pirates at the Parchment Gates, to a conference of state and federal judges at the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School. Her work has been published by law reviews, legal publications, the Federalist Society, the Wall Street Journal, Law and Liberty and the Manhattan Institute.
Recent publications include: How the SEC silences its critics, The SEC should listen to Sen. Cotton, Lucia v. SEC, Opening Salvos in the Opioid Litigation Wars, Straight Dope on the Opioid Crisis
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Managing Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Michael Buschbacher is the managing partner of Boyden Gray PLLC. He represents public and private companies, trade associations, non-profits, and individuals in high-stakes litigation and administrative proceedings, with a particular focus on environmental and energy matters.
In addition to trial-level work, Mr. Buschbacher maintains an active appellate practice, both as merits counsel and as counsel for amici curiae. He has written amicus briefs quoted by the Seventh and Ninth Circuits. And his Supreme Court advocacy has been cited by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and E&E News. Mr. Buschbacher’s commentary on legal issues has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The American Conservative.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Buschbacher served at the U.S. Department of Justice as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. There, he advised senior Department leadership, served as the lead attorney on several lawsuits, and helped draft policy memoranda for the Department on the proper scope and procedure for environmental enforcement. Prior to serving in the government, Mr. Buschbacher was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Buschbacher is a former clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Magistrate Judge Paul R. Cherry of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
Mr. Buschbacher holds a B.A. in Music and Germanic Studies from Indiana University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Laura Stanley is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and is a member of the Environmental Litigation and Mass Tort Practice Group. Laura previously served as an economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where she developed regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.
Laura graduated with high honors from The George Washington University Law School and was awarded Order of the Coif. Laura served as an Articles Editor of the George Washington Law Review, and she was awarded the ABA Gellhorn-Sargentich Award for the best student essay in administrative law. Laura received a Master of Arts degree in Economics from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from James Madison University.
She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ryan D. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Stephen S. Schwartz of the United States Court of Federal Claims.
She is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Managing Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Michael Buschbacher is the managing partner of Boyden Gray PLLC. He represents public and private companies, trade associations, non-profits, and individuals in high-stakes litigation and administrative proceedings, with a particular focus on environmental and energy matters.
In addition to trial-level work, Mr. Buschbacher maintains an active appellate practice, both as merits counsel and as counsel for amici curiae. He has written amicus briefs quoted by the Seventh and Ninth Circuits. And his Supreme Court advocacy has been cited by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and E&E News. Mr. Buschbacher’s commentary on legal issues has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The American Conservative.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Buschbacher served at the U.S. Department of Justice as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. There, he advised senior Department leadership, served as the lead attorney on several lawsuits, and helped draft policy memoranda for the Department on the proper scope and procedure for environmental enforcement. Prior to serving in the government, Mr. Buschbacher was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Buschbacher is a former clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Magistrate Judge Paul R. Cherry of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
Mr. Buschbacher holds a B.A. in Music and Germanic Studies from Indiana University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Laura Stanley is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and is a member of the Environmental Litigation and Mass Tort Practice Group. Laura previously served as an economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where she developed regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.
Laura graduated with high honors from The George Washington University Law School and was awarded Order of the Coif. Laura served as an Articles Editor of the George Washington Law Review, and she was awarded the ABA Gellhorn-Sargentich Award for the best student essay in administrative law. Laura received a Master of Arts degree in Economics from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from James Madison University.
She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ryan D. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Stephen S. Schwartz of the United States Court of Federal Claims.
She is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The Founders’ Indictment: Evaluating Our Criminal Justice System Through the Lens of the Declaration
The Founders Gave Us the Tools Series
Thirteenth Annual Delaware Firearms Law Seminar
Delaware Lawyer Chapter
WIlmington, DETrial by Jury or Administrative Adjudication: What Would the Founders Say?
Jennifer Walker Elrod, Robert E. Johnson, Renée Lettow Lerner, Christopher J. Walker
In this Federalist Society America 250 series, experts analyze modern legal and policy debates through...
Trial by Jury or Administrative Adjudication: What Would the Founders Say?
Jennifer Walker Elrod, Robert E. Johnson, Renée Lettow Lerner, Christopher J. Walker
In this Federalist Society America 250 series, experts analyze modern legal and policy debates through...
Trial by Jury or Administrative Adjudication: What Would the Founders Say?
The Founders Gave Us the Tools Series
The National Popular Vote Compact: An End Run Around the Electoral College?
Allen J. Dickerson, Chad Ennis, Michael R. Williams
This spring, Virginia joined eighteen other states and DC in the National Popular Vote Interstate...
No Enemies to the Right? Antisemitism and the Big Tent
Josh Blackman, Kenneth L. Marcus, Jesse Merriam
Following the October 2023 terrorist attacks in Israel, reports of antisemitism have risen across America....
Litigation Update: Powell v. SEC
Gregory G. Garre, Jill Jacobson, Margaret A. Little
The SEC’s “Gag Rule” long conditioned settlement of enforcement actions on the defendant's agreeing never...
Emerging Applications of the Congressional Review Act
Jonathan H. Adler, Michael Buschbacher, Alan B. Morrison, Laura Stanley
This panel will explore the evolving use of the Congressional Review Act, with particular attention...
Emerging Applications of the Congressional Review Act
Jonathan H. Adler, Michael Buschbacher, Alan B. Morrison, Laura Stanley
This panel will explore the evolving use of the Congressional Review Act, with particular attention...