Clerk, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Member, Swansburg & Smith, PLLC
J. Brooken Smith is a founding member of Swansburg & Smith, PLLC. Licensed to practice in Kentucky, his practice focuses on representing businesses and employers in litigation and employment matters. Mr. Smith previously practiced with a large regional law firm for more than five years, representing businesses in a variety of legal disputes and defending employers in discrimination and other claims. Mr. Smith practices in state and federal courts throughout Kentucky.
Throughout his career, Mr. Smith has gained extensive experience in public service at the state and federal level. Before entering the private practice of law, Mr. Smith served as a law clerk for the Honorable Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He served as the chief of staff for the Kentucky Labor Cabinet and, later, the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet. Mr. Smith also served as the ex officio chair of the Unemployment Insurance Commission, a three-member executive branch agency that hears administrative appeals of unemployment insurance claims.
Mr. Smith graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law and earned a bachelor of arts in government from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
R. B. Price and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Missouri School of Law
Carl H. Esbeck is R.B. Price Professor and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law emeritus at the University of Missouri. After attending Cornell University School of Law where he served as an editor on the Cornell Law Review, he held a judicial clerkship with the Honorable Howard C. Bratton, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in New Mexico.
Professor Esbeck publishes widely in the area of religious liberty and church-state relations. He is recognized as the progenitor of "Charitable Choice," an integral part of the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act, later made a part of the faith-based initiative and equal-treatment regulations under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In addition, he has taken the lead in recognizing that the modern Supreme Court has applied the Establishment Clause not as a personal right, but as a structural limit on the government's authority in disputes involving church governance. While on leave from 1999 to 2002, Professor Esbeck directed the Center for Law & Religious Freedom (CLRF) and later served as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. While directing the CLRF, Professor Esbeck was a central part of the congressional advocacy behind the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). While at the Department of Justice one of his duties was to direct a task force to remove barriers to the equal-treatment of faith-based organizations applying for social service grants. He is the author of Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776 - 1833 (U. of MO Press, 2019).
Trial Attorney, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice (incoming)
Adam Griffin is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law. During law school, he served as a research assistant to Professor Stephen E. Sachs and UNC Law Dean Martin Brinkley. After law school, he spent two years litigating for liberty at the Institute for Justice as an inaugural Law and Liberty Fellow. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Richard E. Myers in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and is now a separation-of-powers attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation.
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County
George R. La Noue is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He has served as a trial expert in twenty cases involving public procurement preferences. For thirty years, he was Director of the Project on Civil Rights and Public Contracts at UMBC which recently contributed 289 public contracting disparity studies to the Library of Congress. He has been a consultant to nine governments and trial expert in thirty cases where the validity of disparity studies was at issue.
Prof. La Noue can be reached by email at glanoue@umbc.edu.
Shareholder & Co-Chair of the Workplace Policy Institute, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Alexander T. MacDonald advises employers on all aspects of the employment and labor landscape, focusing on emerging legislation and regulation. He has extensive experience advising businesses on worker classification, arbitration, the administrative and regulatory process, and the future of work. He frequently writes, publishes, and speaks on these subjects. His work has been cited by scholars and appellate courts. He is a recognized voice for the management perspective.
Alexander is a co-chair of the Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) team. With WPI, he advises employers on legislative, administrative, and regulatory developments at the state and federal level. He advocates for employers in the regulatory and administrative process. He also helps employers protect their businesses by understanding and anticipating cutting-edge legal developments.
Alexander also has extensive experience in traditional labor law. He represents management in all aspects of labor-management relations, including unfair labor practice charges, grievance arbitrations, representation elections, contract negotiations, and related litigation, including litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals.
Before joining Littler, Alexander served as the director, future of work, for a major technology company. He also worked in a national labor and employment law firm and a major public-sector general counsel’s office. He was a law clerk to the senior judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In law school, he graduated first in his class
An Academic Freedom Exception to Government Control of Employee Speech
Nick Cordova
Public employee speech cases often arise as Section 1983 actions in which a public employee...
State Court Docket Watch: Cameron v. Beshear
J. Brooken Smith
As society grapples with the evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, public policy disagreements about...
Topics
The Search for a Workable Free Exercise Framework
Under Employment Division v. Smith, the Free Exercise Clause functions more like an antidiscrimination statute...
An Extended Essay on Church Autonomy
Carl H. Esbeck
The doctrine of church autonomy[1] is distinct from the two more familiar lines of cases...
Topics
The Arrival of the Federal Computer Commission?
Should “Big Tech” be required to contribute to the Universal Service Fund (USF) in order...
Protecting Economic Liberty in the Federal Courts: Theory, Precedent, Practice
Adam F. Griffin
The 14th Amendment meaningfully protects economic liberty. While this protection was originally housed in the...
Topics
Arizona’s Time, Place, and Manner Election Laws Upheld Under Voting Rights Act
On July 1, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion, upheld several Arizona...
The Race Card in ARPA’s Food Supply Deck
George R. La Noue
It is an old aphorism that a prudent person should not watch the making of...
Religious Schools, Collective Bargaining, & the Constitutional Legacy of NLRB v. Catholic Bishop
Alexander T. MacDonald
It would be difficult to find a corner of American labor law more anomalous than...
Topics
Injunctions Highlight Challenge Targeting China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy
This spring, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued two preliminary injunctions...