Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School
Kelly J. Deere is a graduate of Northwestern University School of law and Cornell University. Prof. Deere currently is a full-time faculty member at Rutgers teaching Legal Analysis, Writing, Research and Skills (LAWRS). Prof. Deere taught as a part-time instructor in both the day and evening program teaching both LAWRS and Advanced Legal Writing.
Prof. Deere was an adjunct instructor at Seton Hall University School of Law from 2011-2014. From 2010-2018, Ms. Deere was Of Counsel to the firm Kates, Nussman, Rapone, Ellis & Farhi in Hackensack, N.J. Ms. Deere was brought in as an experienced attorney to assist the firm in its litigation and zoning cases.
Prof. Deere began her legal career at the firm of Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine in New York where she practiced commercial litigation and bankruptcy. Prof. Deere also worked as a trial attorney for the Administration for Children’s services handling hundreds of abuse and neglect cases from inception through trial. Prof. Deere transitioned to GMHC, Inc. – the largest private AIDS organization in the world where she was initially responsible for managing its family law practice and eventually supervised the majority of the legal department including family law, housing rights, social security law, trusts and estates and bankruptcy.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Senior Fellow, Platte Institute
Laura Ebke, Ph.D. is the Platte Institute’s Senior Fellow, assisting policymakers and the public as the Nebraska Legislature implements the new Occupational Board Reform Act. The Act is Nebraska’s first comprehensive review of the state’s job licensing laws, and is a law Laura sponsored as a Nebraska state senator.
Laura is a lifelong Nebraskan, growing up in Fairbury and graduating from the Class of 1980. She has resided in Crete for 26 years.
Laura holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Nebraska. In addition to serving as the chair of the Nebraska Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, she served for 12 years on the Crete Public Schools Board of Education.
As a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts, Laura has volunteered for the organization for over 20 years, including as a board member and Vice President of Homestead Council Girl Scouts. She is also a merit badge counselor for Cornhusker Council Boy Scouts.
She is married to her high school sweetheart, Russ Ebke, a U.S. Navy veteran and family physician in Crete. Laura and Russ have three children, Jennifer, Tasha, and Isaac, and one granddaughter, Tamzin.
The Ebke family pets include cats Molly and Daisy, and Pip the bearded dragon.
Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Research Fellow for the Study of Objectivism
An accomplished scholar on Objectivism and privacy law, Professor Amy Peikoff has served as a faculty member at universities around the country over the past decade, teaching and writing in the areas of Contemporary Moral Problems, Contracts, Ethics, Information Privacy Law, Morality and Business, Philosophy of Law, Political Philosophy and Professional Responsibility. She served as a visiting lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003, a visiting assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004, an assistant and associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy from 2005 to 2008, and as a visiting fellow at Chapman University School of Law from 2008 to 2012.
She joined Southwestern’s adjunct faculty in January 2013, also serving as a research fellow, and was appointed as Visiting Associate Professor and Research Fellow for the Study of Objectivism at Southwestern in July 2014. She is teaching courses in Law and Literature, Education Law and Jurisprudence Seminar. In her role as a Research Fellow, Professor Peikoff will engage in scholarly work related to the philosophy and writings of Ayn Rand. The Fellowship is funded by the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship.
In trying to convey to her students some effective ways to approach their studies, Professor Peikoff shares what she found to be true in her own law school career. “If you care about what the law says about a particular issue, you will remember it and do better on exams,” she says. “Always try to connect what you're learning in school to things and people you value.”
Professor Peikoff’s articles have been published in a variety of scholarly journals such as Brandeis Law Journal, NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, St. John’s Law Review and Virginia Journal of Social Policy & The Law, among others. She has lectured and served as a panelist on privacy issues and individual rights at dozens of Objectivist conferences and scholarly forums around the country, including DePaul College of Law, Keck Graduate Institute, Stanford, UCLA and University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Liberty Conference in Brazil.
Professor Peikoff finds the most exciting aspect of her area of interest to be “seeing a problem and coming up with a solution that can affect something you care about.” For example, after writing about privacy issues for many years, she found her interest waning, until the 2012 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones inspired her to solve the problem of the "third-party doctrine" and, one year later, “Edward Snowden's revelations made that solution more relevant than ever.”
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Philip Wallach is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies America’s separation of powers, with a focus on regulatory policy issues and the relationship between Congress and the administrative state.
In his latest book Why Congress (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dr. Wallach defends the centrality of Congress in America’s constitutional system, traces the roots of current dysfunction, and suggests how the institution might be restored.
Before joining AEI, Dr. Wallach was a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, where he authored To the Edge: Legality, Legitimacy, and the Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2015). He was later affiliated with the R Street Institute and served as a fellow with the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress in 2019.
Dr. Wallach’s scholarly and popular work has been published widely, including in the publications of the Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets, Studies in American Political Development, Fortune, National Affairs, National Review, Law & Liberty, Los Angeles Times, RealClearPolicy, the Bulwark, the Hill, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. A frequent conference participant, he has lectured at William & Mary, the University of Oregon, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, among others.
Dr. Wallach received a master’s and doctorate in politics from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University’s College of Social Studies.
Founder, President, and General Counsel, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty
Rick Esenberg is the founder and current President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a rapidly expanding law and policy organization headquartered in Milwaukee. Under Rick’s leadership, WILL has grown into one of the more active state-based think tanks and litigation centers in the country. Rick is a frequent litigator in state and federal courts and nationally recognized scholar and commentator on constitutional law, particularly the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and religion. He is one of the leading experts on the Wisconsin Constitution and a frequent advocate before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Rick’s work seeks to advance the rule of law and individual liberty, formed by a robust civil society that forms individual and community character, preserving the wisdom of the past and an openness to the future.
Rick’s commentary has been featured in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Weekly Standard, Real Clear Politics, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Washington Examiner. Formerly on the faculty of Marquette University Law School, his scholarship has appeared in such publications as the Harvard Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Wake Forest Law Review and William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. Back when they were a thing, he operated a blog called Shark and Shepherd where he tried to suggest something about the duality of man – “the Jungian thing.”
Rick holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and a B.A., summa cum laude, in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition to service on the Marquette Faculty, he was formerly a litigation partner at Foley & Lardner and General Counsel of an international manufacturing firm headquartered in Wisconsin. He lives in Mequon Wisconsin with his wife Karen, golden retrievers Cooper and Riley and more books than he can find places for.
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