Director, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Thomas Berry is the director in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation and clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His academic work has appeared in NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, Washington and Lee Law Review Online, and Federalist Society Review. His popular writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Law Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, National Review Online, and The Hill Online. He has testified before the U.S. Senate, and his work has been cited by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Berry holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was a senior editor on the Stanford Law and Policy Review and a Bradley Student Fellow in the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He graduated with a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe.
Appellate Counsel, Theodore Cooperstein PLLC
Theodore Cooperstein currently is an appellate attorney in the boutique law firm of Theodore Cooperstein PLLC, available for criminal and civil appeals in both state and federal courts. A former career prosecutor with twenty five years of service in the US Department of Justice, he was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of Mississippi, and has served as a Military Intelligence Officer in the Army Reserves from 1989 to 2011, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. During the Trump Administration, he was appointed and served as the General Counsel of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Prior to joining the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Cooperstein served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland. He previously had served as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, and as Assistant General Counsel in the FBI Office of the General Counsel.
A.B., Dartmouth College; J.D., Stanford University; LL.M., Comparative and International Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Masters of Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College
Regulatory Counsel, Americans for Prosperity Foundation
Mike Pepson is regulatory counsel at Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which frequently files amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and state Supreme Courts, as well as public comments in various federal and state regulatory proceedings. Mike assists AFPF with its efforts involving separation of powers, administrative process, criminal justice reform, tech and innovation, and other issues.
He is also Special Counsel for Administrative Law at Cause of Action Institute, where he has been involved in complex civil and criminal litigation in federal district and appellate courts and administrative litigation before federal agencies in a variety of matters, including agency enforcement actions, statutory and constitutional challenges to federal regulations and agency decisions, and Section 1983 challenges to state statutes.
He received his LL.M. from Columbia Law School, J.D. from The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, and B.A. from Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.
Ashe Family Chair Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law
Eric J. Segall graduated from Emory University, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, and from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was the research editor for the Law Review and member of Order of the Coif. He clerked for the Chief Judge Charles Moye Jr. for the Northern District of Georgia, and Albert J. Henderson of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. After his clerkships, Segall worked for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and the U.S. Department of Justice, before joining the Georgia State faculty in 1991.
Segall teaches federal courts and constitutional law I and II. He is the author of the books Originalism as Faith and Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges. His articles on constitutional law have appeared in, among others, the Harvard Law Review Forum, the Stanford Law Review On Line, the UCLA Law Review, the George Washington Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, and Constitutional Commentary among many others.
Segall’s op-eds and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, The Atlantic, SLATE, Vox, Salon, and the Daily Beast, among others. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and France 24 and all four of Atlanta’s local television stations. He has also appeared on numerous local and national radio shows.
Faculty Associate, Contemporary History Institute, Ohio University
Richard K. Vedder is Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute and Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Economics and Faculty Associate, Contemporary History Institute, Ohio University. Professor Vedder is co-author (with Lowell Gallaway) of The Independent Institute book, Out of Work, the recipient of both the Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award and Mencken Award Finalist for Best Book, and the Institute monograph, Can Teachers Own Their Own Schools?
Professor Vedder received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois, and he has been Senior Economist at the U.S. Joint Economic Committee and Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of American Business, Washington University, and he has taught at the University of Colorado, Claremont Men’s College, and MARA Institute of Technology. His other books include Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much,The American Economy in Historical Perspective; Poverty, Income Distribution, the Family and Public Policy (with L. Gallaway); Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History; Essays in the Economy of the Old Northwest;Economic Impact of Government Spending: A Fifty State Analysis, and Variations in Business and Economic History. His hundreds of articles and reviews have appeared in numerous scholarly journals as well as such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, National Review, Washington Times, andInvestor’s Business Daily.
Can the Federal Government Ban At-Home Distilling?
Thomas Berry, Theodore Cooperstein, Michael D. Pepson, Eric J. Segall
After the U.S. Supreme Court in Morrison v. Olson (1988) and U.S. v. Lopez (1995)...
Topics
Principles and Restatements: Is the American Law Institute Jumping the Shark?
The American Law Institute was formed in 1923 by such legal luminaries as Chief Justice...
Topics
Administrative Law's Assault On Civil Liberty: Lucia Vs. SEC
Justice Kagan's succinct opinion in Lucia v. SEC sent shockwaves through the secretive world of administrative...
Public-Aided Economic Development: A Good Idea or Corporate Welfare?