District Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida
Judge Ed Artau is a United States District Judge for the Southern District of
Florida. He was nominated by President Donald Trump for appointment to
the United States District Court in May of 2025, and confirmed by the United
States Senate in September of 2025. Prior to his confirmation, Judge Artau
was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis to the Fourth District Court of
Appeal of Florida, where he served as an appellate judge from 2020 until
2025. Prior to being an appellate judge, Judge Artau was appointed by
Governor Rick Scott to the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in Palm Beach County,
Florida, where he served as a trial judge from 2014 until 2020.
Judge Artau is also an Adjunct Professor at St. Thomas University College of
Law and has served as the Dean of the Advanced Judicial Studies College
and on the faculty of both the Florida Judicial College and the Advanced
Judicial Studies College.
Judge Artau has previously served as the Chair of the Fifteenth Circuit
Judicial Nominating Commission, Vice Chair of the Fourth District Court of
Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission, Parliamentarian of the Appellate
Court Rules Committee, Vice Chair of the Judicial Nominating Procedures
Committee, and as a representative on the Florida Court Education Council.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Artau served as General Counsel
to the South Florida Water Management District, where he commenced his
public service as a senior litigation attorney. Prior to this role, Judge Artau
managed his own law firm after having served in the litigation departments of
the law firms of Proskauer Rose, L.L.P. and Hodgson Russ, L.L.P.
Judge Artau is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center where he
served as a law review editor and Vice-President of the Georgetown Student
Chapter of the Federalist Society. Judge Artau completed his undergraduate
studies at Nova Southeastern University, where he graduated cum laude and
was later awarded a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, for his commitment to
public service, academia, and the law.
Judge Artau is a founder of the first Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist
Society in Florida and is the 2025 recipient of the Good Shepherd Award,
presented by the Florida Chapters of the Federalist Society in recognition of his “Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Ideals of the Federalist Society.”
Senior Legal Counsel, Pacific Legal Foundation
Before becoming an attorney, James had been a productive member of society working as an exploration geologist in the late 1970s throughout the southwestern United States. However, after several years of dealing with irrational government bureaucrats and environmental policies untethered from reality, James decided that what the world needs is more lawyers — if they are willing to fight for rationality in regulatory regimes, property rights, and liberty.
James attended the University of Arizona College of Law in Tucson, where he served as an editor for the Law Review and received a J.D. degree in 1983. He had previously received a Masters degree in geological sciences from Brown University and an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in New York. James received the Professional Achievement Award from the University of Arizona Alumni Association in 2018.
James has worked with Pacific Legal Foundation since 1983, litigating cases from Alaska to Florida. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group’s Executive Committee, a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and an honorary member of Owners Counsel of America, an organization comprised of eminent domain attorneys who represent property owners. The Owners Counsel awarded James its Crystal Eagle award in 2013. In 2022, James was awarded the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize at the William & Mary College of Law. The prize is awarded annually to an individual whose work has advanced the cause of property rights and has contributed to the overall awareness of the important role property rights occupy in the broader scheme of individual liberty.
In 2001, James successfully argued a major property rights case, Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, before the United States Supreme Court, a case which affirmed that rights in regulated property do not disappear when land is bought and sold. He has written extensively on all aspects of property rights and environmental law and frequently speaks on these subjects throughout the nation.
When James is not suing the government he enjoys skiing faster than he should, bicycling, hiking, swimming, and spending quality time with his wife, family, and grandchild.
Mr. Burling’s book Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis is available now on Amazon.
James is a member of the bar only in the states of Alaska and California.
John Hampton Baumgartner, Jr. Professor of Real Property Law; Faculty Director, Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Program; Faculty Director, Georgetown Climate Resource Center, Georgetown Law Center
Professor Byrne joined the Law Center faculty in 1985. After graduation from the University of Virginia law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Frank Coffin and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and then worked as an associate with the D.C. firm of Covington & Burling. He teaches and writes in the areas of Property, Land Use, Constitutional Law, and Higher Education Law and Policy. He served as Associate Dean for the JD Program from 1997 to 2000. He was John Carroll Research Professor in 1996-97.
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.
Freda H. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law; Founder, National Zoning Atlas
Sara C. Bronin is a Mexican-American architect, attorney, George Washington University professor, and changemaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. She wrote Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World, and she founded and leads the National Zoning Atlas and National Preservation Atlas, which illuminate land use rules influencing our economy, society, health, and happiness. She also served in a Presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed role chairing the federal historic preservation agency.
Supreme Court Director, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection, Georgetown Law
Kelsi Corkran is the Supreme Court Director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection and a Senior Lecturer at Georgetown Law. Kelsi has served as lead counsel in numerous civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including Trump v. CASA, Grants Pass v. Johnson, Acheson Hotels v. Laufer, Torres v. Madrid, and City of Hays v. Vogt. She has also argued over 30 cases in the courts of appeals, including 12 of the 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals and the en banc Sixth and Ninth Circuits.
Immediately prior to joining ICAP, Kelsi was the Head of the Supreme Court Practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. She previously served as a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court and Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Among other positions, she was as an attorney with the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Communications Office of the White House’s Executive Office of the President, where she assisted with judicial nominations, including the confirmation hearings of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Before law school, she was a social worker in Philadelphia’s foster care system.
Kelsi is a member of the American Law Institute, the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and the D.C. Circuit Advisory Committee on Procedures. She previously served on the Supreme Court Practitioners’ Committee for the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States and on the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees for the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia. She received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. and M.P.P. from the University of Chicago.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Michael B. Brennan was confirmed and sworn in as a Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in May 2018.
He previously worked as a partner in the Milwaukee law firm of Gass Weber Mullins LLC, where he tried cases and handled appeals in federal and state courts, as a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit, where he presided over a variety of criminal and civil calendars, and as an assistant district attorney in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office.
Brennan’s undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame, and his law degree from Northwestern University School of Law, where he was an editor on the law review and the moot court champion. He served as a law clerk on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Deputy Counsel, the President
Gary currently is the Deputy Counsel to the President. He was previously a partner at the Dhillon Law Group and worked at the Department of the Interior and Federal Election Commission. He is a native of Virginia, and earned his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Virginia.
Board Member, U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Beth A. Williams is a Board Member of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an agency whose mission is to ensure that the federal government's efforts to prevent terrorism are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.
Prior to her Board service, Ms. Williams was the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice from August 2017 to December 2020. In that role, she served as the primary policy advisor to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, and as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department. Ms. Williams also led the judicial nomination process for the Department, assisting in the selection and confirmation of more than 230 Article III judges to the bench.
Prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Williams was a litigation and appellate partner at a national law firm, where her practice focused on complex commercial, securities, appellate, and First Amendment litigation. From 2005-2006, Ms. Williams served as Special Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she assisted with the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Ms. Williams clerked for the Hon. Richard C. Wesley on the United State Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude, with a degree in History and Literature, and she earned her law degree from Harvard Law School, where she served as Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of a casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2024). He is also the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). His next book, The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction, is also forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.
Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, Georgetown University Law Center
Stephanie Barclay is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School, and the Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Her research focuses on the role our different democratic institutions play in protecting minority rights, particularly at the intersection of free speech and religious exercise. Barclay‘s work is published or is forthcoming in leading journals such as the Harvard Law Review, the Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. One of her articles was also selected for the 2020 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Her work has been featured in many media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg BNA, The Hill, and Law 360. And her work has also been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prior to joining Georgetown, Barclay was twice voted Professor of the Year. Barclay has also litigated constitutional cases at both the trial and appellate level, including before the U.S. Supreme Court. Barclay served as a law clerk to Judge N. Randy Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barclay is a Faculty Affiliate at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School; and she is a Nootbaar Fellow at the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at Pepperdine University. She currently serves as the Chair for the AALS Law and Religion Section and as a Member of the Executive Committee for the AALS Constitutional Law Section. She graduated summa cum laude from BYU Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. She is completing a Ph.D. in Law at Oxford University as a Clarendon Scholar and a Tang Scholar.
Deputy General Counsel, Office of Texas Governor Greg Abbott
Trevor serves as General Counsel to Governor Greg Abbott. In that role he provides strategic counseling to the State’s Chief Executive Officer on a range of issues under both state and federal law, including litigation involving the Governor, appointments to state courts, clemency applications and executive orders, and draft legislation and administrative rules.
Before joining the Governor’s Office, Trevor litigated complex cases at every level of the state and federal judiciaries, both in private practice at Clement & Murphy in Washington, D.C., and in government service as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Texas. He twice clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court of the United States. He also clerked for Judge Andrew Oldham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and now-Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. For several years, Trevor taught as an adjunct professor a course on the writ of habeas corpus, with material covering the Suspension Clause, wartime detention, immigration, and post-conviction review.
He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Kenyon College. He and his wife Khina live in Austin, Texas, with their son Ransom.
President, America First Legal Foundation
Gene Hamilton is the President of America First Legal, which he co-founded, and where he was previously the Executive Director, Executive Vice President, and General Counsel. He most recently served as Deputy White House Counsel to President Donald Trump. Earlier in his career, Gene served as Counselor to Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security. He also served as General Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and held several roles at the Department of Homeland Security, including with U.S. Immigration Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Office of the General Counsel. He holds a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a J.D. from Washington and Lee University School of Law.
Justice, Texas Supreme Court
James P. Sullivan was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Governor Greg Abbott on January 7, 2025, after serving as his General Counsel. He is the proud husband of Alithea and father of Conan. Growing up in Austin, Judge Sully was an extra in the movie "Dazed & Confused." He was a highly unrecruited walk-on at Rice University, until an injury turned him into a debater. Once in law school, he met his wife, Alithea, on the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit for Judge Thomas B. Griffith. He also worked under then-Attorney General Abbott in the Office of the Solicitor General, in addition to stints as an adjunct professor at George Mason University and an appellate litigator in private practice.
Editor in Chief, Texas Review of Law & Politics, The University of Texas School of Law
Jordan Lamb is a third-year law student at the University of Texas School of Law and the Editor in Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She previously served as President of the Texas Law Federalist Society.
Head of AI Policy, Abundance Institute
Neil Chilson is the Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute. Prior to this position, he served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity. Chilson is a lawyer, computer scientist, and author of the book “Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World.”
Chilson was previously the senior research fellow for Technology and Innovation at Stand Together, where he guided efforts to understand and promote the legal and cultural paradigms that best enable people to discover, innovate, and improve all our lives.
Before Stand Together, Chilson was the Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, where he focused on the economics of privacy and blockchain-related issues. Previously, he was an attorney advisor to Acting FTC Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen. In both roles he advised Chairman Ohlhausen and worked with staff on nearly every major technology-related case, report, workshop, or other FTC proceeding since January 2014. Neil joined the FTC from telecom firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer. Neil is frequently quoted by the press and his work has appeared in numerous news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USAToday, and Newsweek. Neil has a J.D. from The George Washington Law School, a M.S. in computer science from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a B.S. in computer science from Harding University.
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Zack Cooper is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US strategy in Asia, including alliance dynamics and US-China competition. He also teaches at Princeton University, serves as chair of the board of the Open Technology Fund, and co-hosts the Net Assessment podcast.
Before joining AEI, Dr. Cooper was the senior fellow for Asian security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously worked as codirector of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He also served on staff at the National Security Council and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Dr. Cooper is the author of Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries from Yale University Press. He has also co-authored books, reports, and articles on US strategy and alliances in Asia. His writing has appeared in academic journals and popular press, including International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among other outlets. Dr. Cooper graduated from Princeton University with a PhD and an MA in security studies and an MPA in international relations. He received a BA in public policy from Stanford University.
AI Innovation and Law Fellow, University of Texas School of Law
Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow with University of Texas School of Law.
Senior Adviser (Non-resident), CSIS
James Lewis writes on technology and strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Before joining CSIS, he was a diplomat and a member of the Senior Executive Service. Lewis has a track record of being among the first to identify new tech and security issues and devise polices to address them. He developed groundbreaking policies on cybersecurity, remote sensing, encryption, spectrum management, and high-tech exports to China, including 5G, software, and semiconductors. He also helped create the Wassenaar Arrangement. Lewis was a senior adviser for four UN Groups of Governmental Experts on Information Security, and his work on norms to build stability in cyberspace is foundational. He leads a long-running track 2 dialogue with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. His current work looks at how countries innovate and at digitalization and its political, economic, and security effects. Early in his career, Lewis was a political adviser to two combatant commanders. Lewis has authored numerous publications since coming to CSIS (see the full list here). He is frequently quoted in the media, has served on several federal advisory committees, and has testified numerous times before Congress. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago.
Senior Policy Director, Americans for Responsible Innovation
President and Executive Director, Electronic Privacy Information Center
Marc Rotenberg is President and Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. He teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and frequently testifies before Congress on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues. He testified before the 9-11 Commission on "Security and Liberty: Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism." He has served on several national and international advisory panels, including the expert panels on Cryptography Policy and Computer Security for the OECD, the Legal Experts on Cyberspace Law for UNESCO, and the Countering Spam program of the ITU. He chairs the ABA Committee on Privacy and Information Protection. He is a founding board member and former Chair of the Public Interest Registry, which manages the .ORG domain. He is editor of "The Privacy Law Sourcebook," and co-editor of "Information Privacy Law" (Aspen Publishing 2006) and "Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws" (EPIC 2010). He is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School. He served as Counsel to Senator Patrick J. Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee after graduation from law school. He is the recipient of several awards, including the World Technology Award in Law, the American Lawyer Award for Top Lawyers Under 45, the Norbert Weiner Award for Social and Professional Responsibility, and the Vicennial medal from Georgetown University.
District Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida
Judge Ed Artau is a United States District Judge for the Southern District of
Florida. He was nominated by President Donald Trump for appointment to
the United States District Court in May of 2025, and confirmed by the United
States Senate in September of 2025. Prior to his confirmation, Judge Artau
was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis to the Fourth District Court of
Appeal of Florida, where he served as an appellate judge from 2020 until
2025. Prior to being an appellate judge, Judge Artau was appointed by
Governor Rick Scott to the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in Palm Beach County,
Florida, where he served as a trial judge from 2014 until 2020.
Judge Artau is also an Adjunct Professor at St. Thomas University College of
Law and has served as the Dean of the Advanced Judicial Studies College
and on the faculty of both the Florida Judicial College and the Advanced
Judicial Studies College.
Judge Artau has previously served as the Chair of the Fifteenth Circuit
Judicial Nominating Commission, Vice Chair of the Fourth District Court of
Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission, Parliamentarian of the Appellate
Court Rules Committee, Vice Chair of the Judicial Nominating Procedures
Committee, and as a representative on the Florida Court Education Council.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Artau served as General Counsel
to the South Florida Water Management District, where he commenced his
public service as a senior litigation attorney. Prior to this role, Judge Artau
managed his own law firm after having served in the litigation departments of
the law firms of Proskauer Rose, L.L.P. and Hodgson Russ, L.L.P.
Judge Artau is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center where he
served as a law review editor and Vice-President of the Georgetown Student
Chapter of the Federalist Society. Judge Artau completed his undergraduate
studies at Nova Southeastern University, where he graduated cum laude and
was later awarded a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, for his commitment to
public service, academia, and the law.
Judge Artau is a founder of the first Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist
Society in Florida and is the 2025 recipient of the Good Shepherd Award,
presented by the Florida Chapters of the Federalist Society in recognition of his “Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Ideals of the Federalist Society.”
Freda H. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law; Founder, National Zoning Atlas
Sara C. Bronin is a Mexican-American architect, attorney, George Washington University professor, and changemaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. She wrote Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World, and she founded and leads the National Zoning Atlas and National Preservation Atlas, which illuminate land use rules influencing our economy, society, health, and happiness. She also served in a Presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed role chairing the federal historic preservation agency.
Senior Legal Counsel, Pacific Legal Foundation
Before becoming an attorney, James had been a productive member of society working as an exploration geologist in the late 1970s throughout the southwestern United States. However, after several years of dealing with irrational government bureaucrats and environmental policies untethered from reality, James decided that what the world needs is more lawyers — if they are willing to fight for rationality in regulatory regimes, property rights, and liberty.
James attended the University of Arizona College of Law in Tucson, where he served as an editor for the Law Review and received a J.D. degree in 1983. He had previously received a Masters degree in geological sciences from Brown University and an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in New York. James received the Professional Achievement Award from the University of Arizona Alumni Association in 2018.
James has worked with Pacific Legal Foundation since 1983, litigating cases from Alaska to Florida. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group’s Executive Committee, a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and an honorary member of Owners Counsel of America, an organization comprised of eminent domain attorneys who represent property owners. The Owners Counsel awarded James its Crystal Eagle award in 2013. In 2022, James was awarded the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize at the William & Mary College of Law. The prize is awarded annually to an individual whose work has advanced the cause of property rights and has contributed to the overall awareness of the important role property rights occupy in the broader scheme of individual liberty.
In 2001, James successfully argued a major property rights case, Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, before the United States Supreme Court, a case which affirmed that rights in regulated property do not disappear when land is bought and sold. He has written extensively on all aspects of property rights and environmental law and frequently speaks on these subjects throughout the nation.
When James is not suing the government he enjoys skiing faster than he should, bicycling, hiking, swimming, and spending quality time with his wife, family, and grandchild.
Mr. Burling’s book Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis is available now on Amazon.
James is a member of the bar only in the states of Alaska and California.
John Hampton Baumgartner, Jr. Professor of Real Property Law; Faculty Director, Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Program; Faculty Director, Georgetown Climate Resource Center, Georgetown Law Center
Professor Byrne joined the Law Center faculty in 1985. After graduation from the University of Virginia law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Frank Coffin and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and then worked as an associate with the D.C. firm of Covington & Burling. He teaches and writes in the areas of Property, Land Use, Constitutional Law, and Higher Education Law and Policy. He served as Associate Dean for the JD Program from 1997 to 2000. He was John Carroll Research Professor in 1996-97.
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Michael B. Brennan was confirmed and sworn in as a Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in May 2018.
He previously worked as a partner in the Milwaukee law firm of Gass Weber Mullins LLC, where he tried cases and handled appeals in federal and state courts, as a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit, where he presided over a variety of criminal and civil calendars, and as an assistant district attorney in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office.
Brennan’s undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame, and his law degree from Northwestern University School of Law, where he was an editor on the law review and the moot court champion. He served as a law clerk on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Supreme Court Director, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection, Georgetown Law
Kelsi Corkran is the Supreme Court Director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection and a Senior Lecturer at Georgetown Law. Kelsi has served as lead counsel in numerous civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including Trump v. CASA, Grants Pass v. Johnson, Acheson Hotels v. Laufer, Torres v. Madrid, and City of Hays v. Vogt. She has also argued over 30 cases in the courts of appeals, including 12 of the 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals and the en banc Sixth and Ninth Circuits.
Immediately prior to joining ICAP, Kelsi was the Head of the Supreme Court Practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. She previously served as a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court and Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Among other positions, she was as an attorney with the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Communications Office of the White House’s Executive Office of the President, where she assisted with judicial nominations, including the confirmation hearings of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Before law school, she was a social worker in Philadelphia’s foster care system.
Kelsi is a member of the American Law Institute, the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and the D.C. Circuit Advisory Committee on Procedures. She previously served on the Supreme Court Practitioners’ Committee for the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States and on the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees for the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia. She received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. and M.P.P. from the University of Chicago.
Deputy Counsel, the President
Gary currently is the Deputy Counsel to the President. He was previously a partner at the Dhillon Law Group and worked at the Department of the Interior and Federal Election Commission. He is a native of Virginia, and earned his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Virginia.
Board Member, U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Beth A. Williams is a Board Member of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an agency whose mission is to ensure that the federal government's efforts to prevent terrorism are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.
Prior to her Board service, Ms. Williams was the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice from August 2017 to December 2020. In that role, she served as the primary policy advisor to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, and as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department. Ms. Williams also led the judicial nomination process for the Department, assisting in the selection and confirmation of more than 230 Article III judges to the bench.
Prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Williams was a litigation and appellate partner at a national law firm, where her practice focused on complex commercial, securities, appellate, and First Amendment litigation. From 2005-2006, Ms. Williams served as Special Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she assisted with the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Ms. Williams clerked for the Hon. Richard C. Wesley on the United State Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude, with a degree in History and Literature, and she earned her law degree from Harvard Law School, where she served as Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of a casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2024). He is also the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). His next book, The Constitution of 1789: A New Introduction, is also forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.
Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, Georgetown University Law Center
Stephanie Barclay is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School, and the Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Her research focuses on the role our different democratic institutions play in protecting minority rights, particularly at the intersection of free speech and religious exercise. Barclay‘s work is published or is forthcoming in leading journals such as the Harvard Law Review, the Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. One of her articles was also selected for the 2020 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Her work has been featured in many media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg BNA, The Hill, and Law 360. And her work has also been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prior to joining Georgetown, Barclay was twice voted Professor of the Year. Barclay has also litigated constitutional cases at both the trial and appellate level, including before the U.S. Supreme Court. Barclay served as a law clerk to Judge N. Randy Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barclay is a Faculty Affiliate at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School; and she is a Nootbaar Fellow at the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at Pepperdine University. She currently serves as the Chair for the AALS Law and Religion Section and as a Member of the Executive Committee for the AALS Constitutional Law Section. She graduated summa cum laude from BYU Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. She is completing a Ph.D. in Law at Oxford University as a Clarendon Scholar and a Tang Scholar.
Deputy General Counsel, Office of Texas Governor Greg Abbott
Trevor serves as General Counsel to Governor Greg Abbott. In that role he provides strategic counseling to the State’s Chief Executive Officer on a range of issues under both state and federal law, including litigation involving the Governor, appointments to state courts, clemency applications and executive orders, and draft legislation and administrative rules.
Before joining the Governor’s Office, Trevor litigated complex cases at every level of the state and federal judiciaries, both in private practice at Clement & Murphy in Washington, D.C., and in government service as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Texas. He twice clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court of the United States. He also clerked for Judge Andrew Oldham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and now-Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. For several years, Trevor taught as an adjunct professor a course on the writ of habeas corpus, with material covering the Suspension Clause, wartime detention, immigration, and post-conviction review.
He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Kenyon College. He and his wife Khina live in Austin, Texas, with their son Ransom.
President, America First Legal Foundation
Gene Hamilton is the President of America First Legal, which he co-founded, and where he was previously the Executive Director, Executive Vice President, and General Counsel. He most recently served as Deputy White House Counsel to President Donald Trump. Earlier in his career, Gene served as Counselor to Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security. He also served as General Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and held several roles at the Department of Homeland Security, including with U.S. Immigration Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Office of the General Counsel. He holds a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a J.D. from Washington and Lee University School of Law.
Editor in Chief, Texas Review of Law & Politics, The University of Texas School of Law
Jordan Lamb is a third-year law student at the University of Texas School of Law and the Editor in Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She previously served as President of the Texas Law Federalist Society.
Justice, Texas Supreme Court
James P. Sullivan was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Governor Greg Abbott on January 7, 2025, after serving as his General Counsel. He is the proud husband of Alithea and father of Conan. Growing up in Austin, Judge Sully was an extra in the movie "Dazed & Confused." He was a highly unrecruited walk-on at Rice University, until an injury turned him into a debater. Once in law school, he met his wife, Alithea, on the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit for Judge Thomas B. Griffith. He also worked under then-Attorney General Abbott in the Office of the Solicitor General, in addition to stints as an adjunct professor at George Mason University and an appellate litigator in private practice.
Socialism or Sensible Protections? Zoning, Rent Control, and the Roots of the Housing Crisis
Ed Artau, James S. Burling, J. Peter Byrne, Ilya Somin, Sara Bronin
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. From Zohran Mamdani's mayoral campaign promise...
Socialism or Sensible Protections? Zoning, Rent Control, and the Roots of the Housing Crisis
Property Rights Practice Group
Washington, DCThe Forces Shaping Administrative Law: Executive, Courts, and Beyond
Recent Supreme Court decisions—often via the interim, or emergency, docket—are redefining administrative law’s boundaries and...
The Forces Shaping Administrative Law: Executive, Courts, and Beyond
Kelsi Corkran, Michael B. Brennan, Gary Lawkowski, Beth A. Williams, Ilan Wurman
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. Recent Supreme Court decisions—often via the...
The Forces Shaping Administrative Law: Executive, Courts, and Beyond
Administrative Law Practice Group
Washington, DCShowcase Panel 2: Immigration and Originalism
Akhil Reed Amar, Stephanie Barclay, Trevor W. Ezell, Gene P. Hamilton, James P. Sullivan, Jordan J. Lamb
What do the tools of originalism teach us about significant immigration legal issues? For example,...
Showcase Panel 2: Immigration and Originalism
2025 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCChurch Autonomy in the Modern Era
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. The First Amendment’s "church autonomy" doctrine...
Church Autonomy in the Modern Era
Religious Liberties Practice Group
Washington, DCPanel IV: AI, Information Warfare, and the Battle for Truth
Neil Chilson, Zack Cooper, Kevin Frazier, James Andrew Lewis, Morgan C. Plummer, Marc Rotenberg
Featuring: Dr. Zack Cooper, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Prof. Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation & Law...