Managing Attorney of the Washington Office, Institute for Justice
William R. Maurer is the Managing Attorney of the Washington state office of the Institute for Justice, which engages in litigation in the areas of economic liberty, private property rights, educational choice, & freedom of speech.
Maurer is an advocate against the criminalization of poverty and the governmental use of the criminal and civil enforcement systems to raise revenue. He was lead counsel in a class action challenging the use of tickets to raise revenue in the city of Pagedale, Missouri. The suit resulted in a federal consent decree that reformed the city’s ticketing and municipal court system. He regularly speaks, teaches, and writes about the abuse of fines and fees in the criminal justice system. He was a participant in summits on taxation by citation put on by the White House and Department of Justice during the Obama Administration. His work on the issue includes serving as an advisory board member of the Fines and Fees Justice Center.
In addition to his work on criminal and civil justice reform, Maurer is a First Amendment litigator. In 2011, he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Arizona’s punitive campaign financing regime was unconstitutional. Before the Washington Supreme Court, he successfully argued against efforts to classify radio commentary as a contribution under the state’s campaign finance law.
His cases and advocacy have been covered in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and other major media outlets.
Maurer was named a “Washington Superlawyer” by Washington Law & Politics Magazine for several years. He is a chapter author in numerous legal reference works and has written several articles for law reviews and legal publications across the country.
Prior to joining IJ-WA, Maurer clerked for Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders and then practiced law at Perkins Coie LLP. Maurer received his law degree in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he was an editor of the Wisconsin Law Review. He received his BA from Bard College in 1989.
Senior Counsel, Uber Technologies, Inc.
Krishna K. Juvvadi is Senior Counsel at Uber Technologies, Inc., where he manages all regulatory matters in the United States. Prior to joining Uber, Mr. Juvvadi was a Partner at the law firm of Sher Leff LLP. While at Sher Leff, Mr. Juvvadi was as senior member of a trial team that won a unianimous jury verdict for $236,000,000 against ExxonMobil on behalf of the State of New Hampshire for statewide groundwater contamination. For his work on that trial, Mr. Juvvadi was awarded the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year and named a Finalist for Public Justice's Trial Lawyer of the Year. Prior to Sher Leff, Mr. Juvvadi was a Trial Attorney with the United States Department of Justice. Mr. Juvvadi received his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and his B.A. from Northwestern University.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Professor of Hospitality Management and Director, Center for Hos, Pennsylvania State University
A member of the Penn State faculty since 2001, his research focuses on strategic management, lodging management and development, real estate valuation, work-life balance in the lodging industry, and hotel branding.
Prior to working at Penn State, O'Neill was an assistant professor, associate professor, and professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, from 1994 to 2001. He was a visiting faculty member at Novgorod State University in Russia in 2000 and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Rhode Island in 1997. He has also worked in industry, notably as a senior associate for Coopers & Lybrand from 1991 to 1994; director of hotel market planning for Holiday Inn Worldwide from 1990 to 1991; manager and senior manager of hotel development planning for Marriott Corporation from 1988 to 1990; consultant and senior consultant for Laventhol & Horwath from 1985 to 1988; and front office manager and housekeeping manager for the Hyatt Corporation from 1984 to 1985.
In addition to his professional and academic roles, O’Neill has been a consultant for dozens of companies, including the Darien Hospitality Group, Hilton Hotels, Marriott International, American Express, Citizens Bank, GMAC Commercial Mortgage, Kaplan Publishing, Prentice Hall, as well as a number of law firms.
O’Neill is the recipient of several awards, including a favorite professor award from Penn State, the Teacher of the Year Award from Johnson & Wales University, and excellence awards from the Marriott and Hyatt Corporations. He has given invited talks throughout the United States and has been quoted or mentioned in numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, USA Today, and Business Week.
He earned a Ph.D. degree in business administration at the University of Rhode Island in 1999, a master’s degree in real estate at New York University in 1994, and a bachelor’s degree in hotel administration at Cornell University in 1984. A licensed real estate appraiser, he holds the Member of the Appraisal Institute (MAI) designation from the Appraisal Institute and the Certified Hospitality Educator (CHE) designation from the American Hotel & Lodging Association. He lives in State College with his wife Alicia and their three children.
Partner, Antitrust and Competition, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Maureen Ohlhausen is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she advises industry-leading clients on complex antitrust and litigation matters, with a focus on high-profile cases. Sought after for her depth of experience on antitrust and Federal Trade Commission (FTC)-related issues, Maureen is known for her relationships with officials in the U.S. and abroad.
After finishing law school and clerking at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Maureen joined the FTC in 1997. She held a series of roles at the agency over the next 12 years, rising to the position of Director of the FTC Office of Policy Planning, where she led the agency’s work on e-commerce and headed the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force, which produced an influential report analyzing competition and consumer protection legal issues in the broadband and internet sectors. She then went into private practice at a leading telecommunications law firm, where she headed the FTC practice group.
In 2012, Maureen was confirmed by the Senate as a Commissioner of the FTC and was appointed Acting Chairman in January 2017, a role she held until May 2018. As Acting Chairman, Maureen directed all aspects of the agency’s antitrust work, including merger review, conduct enforcement, and all consumer protection enforcement, with an emphasis on privacy and technology issues. Under her leadership, the FTC won several influential merger challenges in court and reached a number of key digital privacy settlements.
To date, Maureen is the only FTC Commissioner to have received the Robert Pitofsky Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her contributions to the FTC.
Following the end of her term at the FTC, and immediately prior to joining Wilson Sonsini, Maureen was chair of the global antitrust and competition practice at Baker Botts, based in that firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
A recognized thought leader, Maureen is a frequent author and speaker, and is often quoted by leading print and broadcast media on antitrust, FTC, and privacy and data security matters. She has published dozens of articles on antitrust, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, FTC litigation, telecommunications, and international law issues in prestigious publications. During her tenure at the FTC and in private practice, she testified more than two dozen times before Congress, including before the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Antitrust Sub-Committee. She also testified before the Antitrust Modernization Commission.
Associate General Counsel and Executive Director of Communicatio, Intel Corporation
Peter Pitsch is Associate General Counsel and Executive Director of Communications Policy for Intel Corporation. He manages Intel’s global spectrum and telecom policy team.
Prior to joining Intel, Pitsch was the president of Pitsch Communications from 1989 to 1998 which represented telecommunication’s clients before the FCC and Congress, provided business and regulatory planning, and published and lectured on U.S. regulatory policy.
Pitsch was the Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the FCC from 1987 to 1989 where he advised the Chairman on all issues before the FCC including access reforms, price caps, major tariffs, and broadcasting. Before his move to Chief of Staff. Pitsch was Chief of Office of Plans and Policy. His responsibilities included managing the FCC policy office that provided recommendations on major issues such as access reforms, major tariffs, broadcast regulation, auction and spectrum allocations.
From 1980 to 1981, Pitsch was a staff member of the Reagan Administration Transition Team which developed recommendations for reforming the Federal Trade Comnission with special focus on antitrust issues. He was a senior attorney at Montgomery Ward, Inc. from 1979 to 1981. He provided legal counsel and legislative lobbying of FTC, consumer protection, energy and international trade matters. Prior to that, he worked for three year as an attorney-advisor to Commissioner Calvin Collier at the Federal Trade Commission.
Mr. Pitsch received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1973 and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the Virginia State Bar, and the Federal Communications Bar Association.
Senior Counsel, Uber Technologies, Inc.
Krishna K. Juvvadi is Senior Counsel at Uber Technologies, Inc., where he manages all regulatory matters in the United States. Prior to joining Uber, Mr. Juvvadi was a Partner at the law firm of Sher Leff LLP. While at Sher Leff, Mr. Juvvadi was as senior member of a trial team that won a unianimous jury verdict for $236,000,000 against ExxonMobil on behalf of the State of New Hampshire for statewide groundwater contamination. For his work on that trial, Mr. Juvvadi was awarded the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year and named a Finalist for Public Justice's Trial Lawyer of the Year. Prior to Sher Leff, Mr. Juvvadi was a Trial Attorney with the United States Department of Justice. Mr. Juvvadi received his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and his B.A. from Northwestern University.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Professor of Hospitality Management and Director, Center for Hos, Pennsylvania State University
A member of the Penn State faculty since 2001, his research focuses on strategic management, lodging management and development, real estate valuation, work-life balance in the lodging industry, and hotel branding.
Prior to working at Penn State, O'Neill was an assistant professor, associate professor, and professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, from 1994 to 2001. He was a visiting faculty member at Novgorod State University in Russia in 2000 and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Rhode Island in 1997. He has also worked in industry, notably as a senior associate for Coopers & Lybrand from 1991 to 1994; director of hotel market planning for Holiday Inn Worldwide from 1990 to 1991; manager and senior manager of hotel development planning for Marriott Corporation from 1988 to 1990; consultant and senior consultant for Laventhol & Horwath from 1985 to 1988; and front office manager and housekeeping manager for the Hyatt Corporation from 1984 to 1985.
In addition to his professional and academic roles, O’Neill has been a consultant for dozens of companies, including the Darien Hospitality Group, Hilton Hotels, Marriott International, American Express, Citizens Bank, GMAC Commercial Mortgage, Kaplan Publishing, Prentice Hall, as well as a number of law firms.
O’Neill is the recipient of several awards, including a favorite professor award from Penn State, the Teacher of the Year Award from Johnson & Wales University, and excellence awards from the Marriott and Hyatt Corporations. He has given invited talks throughout the United States and has been quoted or mentioned in numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, USA Today, and Business Week.
He earned a Ph.D. degree in business administration at the University of Rhode Island in 1999, a master’s degree in real estate at New York University in 1994, and a bachelor’s degree in hotel administration at Cornell University in 1984. A licensed real estate appraiser, he holds the Member of the Appraisal Institute (MAI) designation from the Appraisal Institute and the Certified Hospitality Educator (CHE) designation from the American Hotel & Lodging Association. He lives in State College with his wife Alicia and their three children.
Partner, Antitrust and Competition, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Maureen Ohlhausen is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she advises industry-leading clients on complex antitrust and litigation matters, with a focus on high-profile cases. Sought after for her depth of experience on antitrust and Federal Trade Commission (FTC)-related issues, Maureen is known for her relationships with officials in the U.S. and abroad.
After finishing law school and clerking at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Maureen joined the FTC in 1997. She held a series of roles at the agency over the next 12 years, rising to the position of Director of the FTC Office of Policy Planning, where she led the agency’s work on e-commerce and headed the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force, which produced an influential report analyzing competition and consumer protection legal issues in the broadband and internet sectors. She then went into private practice at a leading telecommunications law firm, where she headed the FTC practice group.
In 2012, Maureen was confirmed by the Senate as a Commissioner of the FTC and was appointed Acting Chairman in January 2017, a role she held until May 2018. As Acting Chairman, Maureen directed all aspects of the agency’s antitrust work, including merger review, conduct enforcement, and all consumer protection enforcement, with an emphasis on privacy and technology issues. Under her leadership, the FTC won several influential merger challenges in court and reached a number of key digital privacy settlements.
To date, Maureen is the only FTC Commissioner to have received the Robert Pitofsky Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her contributions to the FTC.
Following the end of her term at the FTC, and immediately prior to joining Wilson Sonsini, Maureen was chair of the global antitrust and competition practice at Baker Botts, based in that firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
A recognized thought leader, Maureen is a frequent author and speaker, and is often quoted by leading print and broadcast media on antitrust, FTC, and privacy and data security matters. She has published dozens of articles on antitrust, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, FTC litigation, telecommunications, and international law issues in prestigious publications. During her tenure at the FTC and in private practice, she testified more than two dozen times before Congress, including before the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Antitrust Sub-Committee. She also testified before the Antitrust Modernization Commission.
Associate General Counsel and Executive Director of Communicatio, Intel Corporation
Peter Pitsch is Associate General Counsel and Executive Director of Communications Policy for Intel Corporation. He manages Intel’s global spectrum and telecom policy team.
Prior to joining Intel, Pitsch was the president of Pitsch Communications from 1989 to 1998 which represented telecommunication’s clients before the FCC and Congress, provided business and regulatory planning, and published and lectured on U.S. regulatory policy.
Pitsch was the Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the FCC from 1987 to 1989 where he advised the Chairman on all issues before the FCC including access reforms, price caps, major tariffs, and broadcasting. Before his move to Chief of Staff. Pitsch was Chief of Office of Plans and Policy. His responsibilities included managing the FCC policy office that provided recommendations on major issues such as access reforms, major tariffs, broadcast regulation, auction and spectrum allocations.
From 1980 to 1981, Pitsch was a staff member of the Reagan Administration Transition Team which developed recommendations for reforming the Federal Trade Comnission with special focus on antitrust issues. He was a senior attorney at Montgomery Ward, Inc. from 1979 to 1981. He provided legal counsel and legislative lobbying of FTC, consumer protection, energy and international trade matters. Prior to that, he worked for three year as an attorney-advisor to Commissioner Calvin Collier at the Federal Trade Commission.
Mr. Pitsch received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1973 and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the Virginia State Bar, and the Federal Communications Bar Association.
Executive Director, Society for the Rule of Law
General Counsel, Center for Individual Rights
Darpana Sheth joined CIR as General Counsel in May 2025. She is a nationally recognized constitutional litigator with over two decades of experience serving in in leadership roles at other nonprofit organizations.
Before joining CIR, Darpana served for four years as Vice President of Litigation for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Prior to that, Darpana was a Senior Attorney with the Institute for Justice, where she also served as Director of the Institute’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse.
Before finding her calling as a public-interest attorney, Darpana served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York and worked in private practice as a litigation associate at the Manhattan law firm of Chadbourne & Parke, LLP. She also served as law clerk to the Honorable Jerome A. Holmes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
A native of Philadelphia, Darpana graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History. She earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
Senior Counsel, Uber Technologies, Inc.
Krishna K. Juvvadi is Senior Counsel at Uber Technologies, Inc., where he manages all regulatory matters in the United States. Prior to joining Uber, Mr. Juvvadi was a Partner at the law firm of Sher Leff LLP. While at Sher Leff, Mr. Juvvadi was as senior member of a trial team that won a unianimous jury verdict for $236,000,000 against ExxonMobil on behalf of the State of New Hampshire for statewide groundwater contamination. For his work on that trial, Mr. Juvvadi was awarded the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year and named a Finalist for Public Justice's Trial Lawyer of the Year. Prior to Sher Leff, Mr. Juvvadi was a Trial Attorney with the United States Department of Justice. Mr. Juvvadi received his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and his B.A. from Northwestern University.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Professor of Hospitality Management and Director, Center for Hos, Pennsylvania State University
A member of the Penn State faculty since 2001, his research focuses on strategic management, lodging management and development, real estate valuation, work-life balance in the lodging industry, and hotel branding.
Prior to working at Penn State, O'Neill was an assistant professor, associate professor, and professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, from 1994 to 2001. He was a visiting faculty member at Novgorod State University in Russia in 2000 and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Rhode Island in 1997. He has also worked in industry, notably as a senior associate for Coopers & Lybrand from 1991 to 1994; director of hotel market planning for Holiday Inn Worldwide from 1990 to 1991; manager and senior manager of hotel development planning for Marriott Corporation from 1988 to 1990; consultant and senior consultant for Laventhol & Horwath from 1985 to 1988; and front office manager and housekeeping manager for the Hyatt Corporation from 1984 to 1985.
In addition to his professional and academic roles, O’Neill has been a consultant for dozens of companies, including the Darien Hospitality Group, Hilton Hotels, Marriott International, American Express, Citizens Bank, GMAC Commercial Mortgage, Kaplan Publishing, Prentice Hall, as well as a number of law firms.
O’Neill is the recipient of several awards, including a favorite professor award from Penn State, the Teacher of the Year Award from Johnson & Wales University, and excellence awards from the Marriott and Hyatt Corporations. He has given invited talks throughout the United States and has been quoted or mentioned in numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, USA Today, and Business Week.
He earned a Ph.D. degree in business administration at the University of Rhode Island in 1999, a master’s degree in real estate at New York University in 1994, and a bachelor’s degree in hotel administration at Cornell University in 1984. A licensed real estate appraiser, he holds the Member of the Appraisal Institute (MAI) designation from the Appraisal Institute and the Certified Hospitality Educator (CHE) designation from the American Hotel & Lodging Association. He lives in State College with his wife Alicia and their three children.
Partner, Antitrust and Competition, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Maureen Ohlhausen is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she advises industry-leading clients on complex antitrust and litigation matters, with a focus on high-profile cases. Sought after for her depth of experience on antitrust and Federal Trade Commission (FTC)-related issues, Maureen is known for her relationships with officials in the U.S. and abroad.
After finishing law school and clerking at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Maureen joined the FTC in 1997. She held a series of roles at the agency over the next 12 years, rising to the position of Director of the FTC Office of Policy Planning, where she led the agency’s work on e-commerce and headed the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force, which produced an influential report analyzing competition and consumer protection legal issues in the broadband and internet sectors. She then went into private practice at a leading telecommunications law firm, where she headed the FTC practice group.
In 2012, Maureen was confirmed by the Senate as a Commissioner of the FTC and was appointed Acting Chairman in January 2017, a role she held until May 2018. As Acting Chairman, Maureen directed all aspects of the agency’s antitrust work, including merger review, conduct enforcement, and all consumer protection enforcement, with an emphasis on privacy and technology issues. Under her leadership, the FTC won several influential merger challenges in court and reached a number of key digital privacy settlements.
To date, Maureen is the only FTC Commissioner to have received the Robert Pitofsky Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her contributions to the FTC.
Following the end of her term at the FTC, and immediately prior to joining Wilson Sonsini, Maureen was chair of the global antitrust and competition practice at Baker Botts, based in that firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
A recognized thought leader, Maureen is a frequent author and speaker, and is often quoted by leading print and broadcast media on antitrust, FTC, and privacy and data security matters. She has published dozens of articles on antitrust, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, FTC litigation, telecommunications, and international law issues in prestigious publications. During her tenure at the FTC and in private practice, she testified more than two dozen times before Congress, including before the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Antitrust Sub-Committee. She also testified before the Antitrust Modernization Commission.
Associate General Counsel and Executive Director of Communicatio, Intel Corporation
Peter Pitsch is Associate General Counsel and Executive Director of Communications Policy for Intel Corporation. He manages Intel’s global spectrum and telecom policy team.
Prior to joining Intel, Pitsch was the president of Pitsch Communications from 1989 to 1998 which represented telecommunication’s clients before the FCC and Congress, provided business and regulatory planning, and published and lectured on U.S. regulatory policy.
Pitsch was the Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the FCC from 1987 to 1989 where he advised the Chairman on all issues before the FCC including access reforms, price caps, major tariffs, and broadcasting. Before his move to Chief of Staff. Pitsch was Chief of Office of Plans and Policy. His responsibilities included managing the FCC policy office that provided recommendations on major issues such as access reforms, major tariffs, broadcast regulation, auction and spectrum allocations.
From 1980 to 1981, Pitsch was a staff member of the Reagan Administration Transition Team which developed recommendations for reforming the Federal Trade Comnission with special focus on antitrust issues. He was a senior attorney at Montgomery Ward, Inc. from 1979 to 1981. He provided legal counsel and legislative lobbying of FTC, consumer protection, energy and international trade matters. Prior to that, he worked for three year as an attorney-advisor to Commissioner Calvin Collier at the Federal Trade Commission.
Mr. Pitsch received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1973 and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the Virginia State Bar, and the Federal Communications Bar Association.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Associate Professor, Northern Illinois University
Evan Bernick joined the NIU Law faculty in 2021. He teaches courses in constitutional law, criminal law, criminal procedure, administrative law and legislation.
From 2020 to 2021, Professor Bernick was a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Before that, he served as a clerk to Judge Diane S. Sykes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. From April 2017 to April 2019, he was a visiting lecturer at Georgetown and a resident fellow of the Center for the Constitution.
His scholarship covers a range of topics, from constitutional law, to philosophy of law, to social movements, to law enforcement. He has published with the Georgetown Law Journal, the Notre Dame Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review and the George Mason Law Review, among other journals. His book, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit (2021), with Randy E. Barnett, was published by Harvard University Press under its Belknap imprint "for books of long-lasting importance, superior in scholarship and physical production, chosen whether or not they might be profitable."
Professor Bernick received his bachelor's degree in 2008 from the University of Chicago, where he studied philosophy and graduated with honors. He received his juris doctorate in 2011 from the University of Chicago Law School.
President and CEO, Goldwater Institute
Darcy Olsen is President of the Goldwater Institute, a research and legal center that Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will heralded as “simply in the liberty business and there’s no institution in the country that performs that business better.”
Ms. Olsen’s leadership has been critical to the Institute’s success, including the development and enactment of hundreds of reforms and the protection of multiple constitutional rights in state and federal courts.
When Ms. Olsen took the helm of the Goldwater Institute in 2001, it was struggling to stay afloat. She revamped the Institute’s organizational structure to parallel a private-sector company focused on results. Shortly after, her colleagues presented her with a life-sized replica of Darth Vader, symbolizing her willingness to terminate non-performers and face down critics.
Ms. Olsen’s vision has made the Goldwater Institute a national leader in the movement to restore America as a compound republic, where states exercise their constitutional authority to check and limit federal power.
Under Ms. Olsen’s direction, the Goldwater Institute developed Save Our Secret Ballot initiative, a successful nationwide effort to protect businesses from labor union card-check. Despite strong-arm tactics from the federal government, the Institute beat back a legal challenge brought by the National Labor Relations Board against Save Our Secret Ballot. “These aren’t merely symbolic victories,” hailed the Wall Street Journal. “States can protect their economies from the NLRB with initiatives like [Save Our Secret Ballot].”
The Goldwater Institute also designed the nation’s first education savings accounts. Parents use the accounts to pay for a range of education expenses, including private school tuition, educational therapies, and even college. The New York Times highlighted the accounts as a national model for states as they reform public education. When the education unions sued over the program, the Goldwater Institute stepped in and won, paving the way for children nationwide to benefit.
The Goldwater Institute is currently spearheading the Right to Try initiative, a state-level measure that will give terminally ill patients access to potentially life-saving medicines. Under the current system, terminally ill patients have to wait to gain access to new treatments, which can take over a decade to make it to market. This lifesaving measure is moving through several states.
An authority on education reform, economic policy, and government reform, Ms. Olsen is a regular guest on national media programs. Her opinions have been widely published in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review.
Ms. Olsen has received numerous awards and recognitions including a 2014 Bradley Prize, which recognizes individuals of extraordinary talent and dedication who seek to preserve and defend the institutions of free government and private enterprise, and the national Roe Award for achievement in public policy. One of her most unexpected awards was when Hockey Magazine named her the “64th most powerful person in hockey” for her leading role in blocking a multi-million-dollar subsidy to an NHL team.
A graduate of Georgetown University and New York University, Olsen unofficially started her public policy career at 11 years old, when she went door-to-door gathering signatures on a homemade petition to stop animal abuse. Born in Vermont, raised in Utah, Olsen resides in Arizona. She is a foster mother and an adoptive mother of three.
Book Review: Dark Money and Plutocrats United
William R. Maurer
Note from the Editor: This book review takes a critical look at two recent books that...
Regulatory Barriers to Innovation
Krishna Juvvadi, Clark Neily, John O'Neill, Maureen K. Ohlhausen, Peter Pitsch
American technological innovation has given birth to entire new segments of economic activity. The sharing...
Regulatory Barriers to Innovation
Krishna Juvvadi, Clark Neily, John O'Neill, Maureen K. Ohlhausen, Peter Pitsch
American technological innovation has given birth to entire new segments of economic activity. The sharing...
Public Interest Careers
Chicago Student Chapter
Chicago, ILRegulatory Barriers to Innovation
Fourth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
Washington, DCTopics
Executive Branch Review Conference Live Streams
The Fourth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference was live streamed on May 17. The theme...
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