President, Harned Strategies LLC
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life, McKnight Presidential Professor in Law, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law, Associate Director, Corporate Institute, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor Kristin E. Hickman is the McKnight Presidential Professor in Law, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She also has taught at Harvard Law School and Northwestern University School of Law. Professor Hickman teaches and writes primarily in the areas of administrative law, tax administration, and statutory interpretation. Her articles on these topics have appeared in the Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and other publications. She also co-authors the Administrative Law Treatise with Richard J. Pierce, Jr., and a casebook on federal administrative law with Pierce and Christopher J. Walker. Her scholarly work has been cited several times in opinions of the United States Supreme Court as well as regularly in lower court judicial opinions and court briefs.
In 2018-19, Professor Hickman served as Special Adviser to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in Washington, D.C. She presently serves as a Senior Fellow, and previously served as a public member and chair of the judicial review committee, for the Administrative Conference of the United States. She also is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.
Professor Hickman received her B.S. degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting and a secondary major in history from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. After practicing for several years as a certified public accountant, Professor Hickman earned her J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Northwestern University School of Law, where she was awarded the Raoul Berger Prize and the Lowden Wigmore Prize for her scholarly writings. Following law school, Professor Hickman clerked for The Honorable David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and practiced law as an associate with the Chicago office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, concentrating on corporate and international tax transactions and matters.
General Counsel, James Madison Center for Free Speech
Managing Director, Alvarez & Marsal Healthcare Industry Group
With prior service as Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Tenet Healthcare, he brings more than 20 years of experience in addressing challenging healthcare issues in government and private industry.
Mr. Urbanowicz regularly advises boards of directors, senior management, investors and lenders of health care organizations facing significant regulatory, compliance, financial or operating challenges. His clients include healthcare providers, payors and suppliers.
Recent engagements include: serving as a federally-appointed hospital restructuring and safety monitor; compliance and operational improvements for publicly-traded and not-for-profit Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare Prescription Drug Plans (PDP) and Medicaid managed care companies; renegotiating of government debt for a major hospital system; restructuring advisory services to the Medicaid program of a large state; numerous internal and government investigations involving healthcare providers including: academic health systems, medical device companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, long term care hospital companies, hospice providers, dental services companies and disease management companies.
Mr. Urbanowicz also serves on the board of directors of Maxim Healthcare Services, one of the nation’s largest home health services companies, and chairs the company’s compliance committee.
As Deputy General Counsel of HHS, from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Urbanowicz served as the senior legal adviser to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on significant federal healthcare policy issues including Medicare and Medicaid provider payment and fraud and abuse enforcement policy. He was part of the team that drafted the historic Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003.
During his tenure at Tenet, Mr. Urbanowicz was responsible for successfully resolving several major federal criminal investigations and civil lawsuits facing Tenet by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the HHS Office of Inspector General. Prior to his government service, he was a partner in the law firm of Locke, Liddell & Sapp.
Mr. Urbanowicz earned a bachelor of arts’ degree and a Juris Doctor degree from Tulane University. He is admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Louisiana Supreme Court, and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
Professor of Law and Public Finance, NSU Florida Shepard Broad College of Law
Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.
Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics. He has been a leading critic of private central banks, including the Federal Reserve. His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy Review, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Brooklyn Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.
Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar. He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.
Featured Article entitled “Central Bank Independence as Agency Capture: A Review of the Empirical Literature, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 30:11 (Nov. 2011).
Principal, Ely & Company, Inc.
Bert Ely has specialized in deposit insurance and banking structure issues since 1981. In 1986, he became an early predictor of the S&L crisis and a taxpayer bailout of the FSLIC. In 1991, he was the first person to correctly predict the non-crisis in commercial banking; in 1992, he predicted an eventual taxpayer bailout of the Japanese banking system.
Bert continuously monitors conditions in the banking and S&L industries, monetary policy, and the growing federalization of credit risk. He has helped to draft legislation to enact the cross-guarantee concept for privatizing banking regulation and its related deposit insurance and systemic risks. He has testified on numerous occasions before congressional committees on banking issues and he often speaks on these matters to bankers and others.
Bert first established his consulting practice in 1972. Before that, he was the chief financial officer of a public company, a consultant with Touche, Ross & Company, and an auditor with Ernst & Ernst. He received his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1968 and his Bachelor's degree in economics in 1964 from Case Western Reserve University.
Founder, Law Office of Eileen J. O'Connor PLLC
After nearly 30 years as a national tax specialist with the IRS and major accounting firms, Eileen J. O’Connor, now an attorney in private practice, was Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division for six years during the administration of President George W. Bush and a member of then-President-elect Trump’s Treasury Department Transition Team. She focuses on federal administrative and tax law.
Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute
Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies. His scholarship spans public health; regulation of clinicians, medical facilities, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices; employer‐sponsored and other private health insurance; Medicare; Medicaid; CHIP; the Veterans Health Administration; medical malpractice litigation; administrative law; international health systems; political philosophy; and more. Cannon is “an influential health‐care wonk” (Washington Post) and “the most famous libertarian health care scholar” (Washington Examiner). Washingtonian magazine named Cannon one of Washington, DC’s “Most Influential People” in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Cannon has appeared on ABC, Al Jazeera, BBC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, C‑SPAN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and other broadcast media. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal; the New York Times; USA Today; the Washington Post; the Los Angeles Times; SCOTUSBlog; Forum for Health Economics and Policy; JAMA Internal Medicine; Health Matrix: Journal of Law‐Medicine; Harvard Health Policy Review; the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics; the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law; and Quinnipiac Health Law Journal. His latest book is Recovery: A Guide to Reforming the U.S. Health Sector.
Cannon was previously a domestic policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare, and the Second Amendment. He is a member of the Board of Advisers of Harvard Health Policy Review and the Federalist Society Regulatory Transparency Project’s FDA & Health Working Group.
Cannon holds an MA in economics and a JM in law and economics from George Mason University and a BA in American government from the University of Virginia.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Counsel to the Firm, Cascadia Cross-Border Law
Margaret Stock focuses her practice on immigration and citizenship law. She is a nationally known expert on immigration and national security laws, and has testified regularly before Congressional committees on immigration, homeland security, and military matters. As a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Military Police, U.S. Army Reserve, Margaret has extensive experience with U.S. military issues. She has also worked as a professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and she has served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Alaska. Margaret served as a member of the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration from 2008-2012. She regularly authors articles on military-related immigration issues, and is well-versed on “parole in place” for military family members and the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (“MAVNI”) Program. Margaret authored the book Immigration Law & the Military, which was published by the American Immigration Lawyers Association in 2012.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
Professor of Law and Public Finance, NSU Florida Shepard Broad College of Law
Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.
Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics. He has been a leading critic of private central banks, including the Federal Reserve. His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy Review, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Brooklyn Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.
Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar. He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.
Featured Article entitled “Central Bank Independence as Agency Capture: A Review of the Empirical Literature, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 30:11 (Nov. 2011).
Principal, Ely & Company, Inc.
Bert Ely has specialized in deposit insurance and banking structure issues since 1981. In 1986, he became an early predictor of the S&L crisis and a taxpayer bailout of the FSLIC. In 1991, he was the first person to correctly predict the non-crisis in commercial banking; in 1992, he predicted an eventual taxpayer bailout of the Japanese banking system.
Bert continuously monitors conditions in the banking and S&L industries, monetary policy, and the growing federalization of credit risk. He has helped to draft legislation to enact the cross-guarantee concept for privatizing banking regulation and its related deposit insurance and systemic risks. He has testified on numerous occasions before congressional committees on banking issues and he often speaks on these matters to bankers and others.
Bert first established his consulting practice in 1972. Before that, he was the chief financial officer of a public company, a consultant with Touche, Ross & Company, and an auditor with Ernst & Ernst. He received his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1968 and his Bachelor's degree in economics in 1964 from Case Western Reserve University.
A Religious Organization's Autonomy in Matters of Self-Governance: Hosanna-Tabor and the First Amendment
In the second week of January, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision...
Florida Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare: It All Comes Down to Broccoli
Karen Harned
Note from the Editor: This paper provides an update on the litigation dealing with the...
Goodbye Tax Exceptionalism
Kristin E. Hickman
In the past few decades, the practices and doctrines governing the interpretation and administration of...
How Congress Uses the Tax Code to Micromanage Our Lives
Columbus, OhioHolding the Service's Feet to the Fire: Applying Citizens United and the First Amendment to the IRC § 501(c)(3) Political Prohibition
Zachary S. Kester, James Bopp
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC will have a lasting and profound...
Constitutional Implications of an “Individual Mandate” in Health Care Reform
Dennis G. Smith, Peter Urbanowicz
The Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy initiatives. Any expressions...
Panel I: How Did We Get into the Mess We Are in Today?
Wayne A. Abernathy, Timothy Canova, James Carr, Bert Ely, Craig L. Hymowitz
Presentation by Bert Ely of a paper titled: "Bad Rules Produce Bad Outcomes: Underlying Public Policy Causes...
Panel I: How Did We Get into the Mess We Are in Today?
The Financial Services Bailout
Washington, DC2008 Federalist Society Tax Policy Conference Panel
Eileen J. O'Connor, Amy Monahan, Robert B. Helms, Michael F. Cannon
MS. O’CONNOR: Good morning everyone. I’m Eileen J. O’Connor. I’m a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop...
Five Questions on Immigration Reform
John C. Eastman, Margaret D. Stock
Below, two Federalist Society members pose and then answer questions about the Immigration Reform measures...