Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Professor of Law, Vermont Law School
John Echeverria is a Professor of Law at Vermont Law School where he teaches Property, Public Law and a wide range of environmental and natural resource law courses. Prior to joining the Vermont Law School faculty in 2009, he served for 12 years as Executive Director of the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. He also was General Counsel of the National Audubon Society and General Counsel and Conservation Director of American Rivers, Inc., and was an Associate for four years in the Washington, D.C. office of Hughes, Hubbard & Reed. He served for one year as law clerk to the Honorable Gerhard A. Gesell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia immediately after graduating from law school.
Professor Echeverria has written several books and numerous scholarly articles on environmental and natural resource law topics. He has published pieces for more general audiences in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has represented state and local governments, environmental organizations, and planning groups in a variety of legal matters at all levels of the federal and state court systems. In 2007, Professor Echeverria received the Jefferson Fordham Advocacy Award from the American Bar Association to recognize outstanding excellence within the area of state and local government law over a lifetime of achievement. In addition to teaching at Vermont Law School, he has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor Echeverria received a JD degree from the Yale Law School. He received a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as a BA degree from Yale College (summa cum laude).
U.S. Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit
Allison Hartwell Eid is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. She joined the court in 2017 after a nomination from President Donald Trump.
Prior to her service on the Tenth Circuit, Judge Eid was a justice on the Colorado Supreme Court. She was the 95th justice to serve on the court, serving from 2006 to 2017. Before joining the Court, Judge Eid was the Solicitor General of the State of Colorado, serving as the chief legal officer to the Colorado Attorney General and representing Colorado officials and agencies in state and federal court. She was also a tenured Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Constitutional Law, Legislation, and Torts, and writing on the topic of constitutional federalism.
Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Law, Judge Eid practiced commercial and appellate litigation with the Denver office of the national law firm of Arnold & Porter. She clerked for the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Judge Eid earned her bachelor’s degree in American Studies (With Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa) from Stanford University in 1987. She then served as a Special Assistant and Speechwriter to U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. In 1991, she graduated with High Honors from The University of Chicago Law School, where she was Articles Editor of The University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed her to serve on the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise, established by Congress in 1955 to prepare the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a member of the American Law Institute and studied comparative law in London as a Temple Bar Scholar.
Judge Eid grew up in Spokane, Washington. She and her husband Troy, an attorney, have two children.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
William T. Comfort, III Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Roderick Hills teaches and writes in public law areas, including constitutional law, local government law, land-use regulation, administrative law, and statutory interpretation. His focus in each area is on the rules and policies governing division of powers between central and subcentral governments. He holds bachelor’s and law degrees from Yale University. Following law school, he served as a law clerk for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and practiced law in Colorado. Hills previously taught at the University of Michigan Law School from 1994 to 2006. He is a member of the state bar of New York and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Adam Paul Laxalt is a partner at Cooper & Kirk which he joined in March 2019. Mr. Laxalt served as Nevada’s 33rd Attorney General from 2015-2019. Mr. Laxalt graduated Magna Cum Laude from Georgetown University and also graduated from Georgetown University Law Center. He is a former Navy and Iraq War veteran. Mr. Laxalt also served as an Assistant Professor of Law at the U.S. Naval Academy.
As Nevada’s Attorney General and top law-enforcement officer, Mr. Laxalt supervised all criminal and civil matters for Nevada’s largest law office. He provided strategic direction and supervision of almost 400 employees, thousands of legal matters, and nearly 50 trials. Mr. Laxalt served as chief legal counsel for the state of Nevada, as well as to Constitutional Officers, state agencies, boards, and commissions. He managed approximately $1.2 billion in potential civil liabilities for the state.
As a former member of the military, Laxalt’s support of service members culminated in the creation of the Office of Military Legal Assistance, a first-of-its-kind program that provides Nevada’s military members with free legal representation. The program was recently named a “Best Practice Program” by the Department of Defense with a recommendation for duplication in states throughout the country, and to date, has helped military personnel and veterans handle over 210 pro bono matters.
Consistent with his commitment to defending our nation’s constitutional principles and protecting the important role of the States in our federalist system of government, Laxalt created Nevada’s first ever Federalism Unit within the Attorney General’s Office. To protect the interests of Nevadans, the Federalism Unit has challenged multiple occasions of unlawful federal overreach, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s Waters of the United States Rule, the Bureau of Land Management’s Sage Grouse Plan, and other instances of unilateral federal executive orders. The Unit has also filed friend of the court briefs on many important issues including public roads, Environmental Protection Agency overreach, federal interference with Nevada’s criminal justice system and Second Amendment issues.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
G. Edward White joined the Virginia law faculty in 1972 after a clerkship with Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court of the United States and a year as visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation. He was appointed John B. Minor Professor of Law and History in 1987, and held that chair until 2003, when he became David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law. In 1992, he was appointed to a University Professorship, which he held until 2003. From 1990 until 1992 and from 2001-03, he was the Sullivan & Cromwell Research Professor; from 1994-97 the E. James Kelly Research Professor; and from 1999-2001 the Class of 1963 Research Professor. He has held visiting appointments at New York Law School, William & Mary School of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Arizona College of Law, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Harvard Law School. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and twice a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and a member of the American Law Institute.He received the Roger and Madeleine Traynor Faculty Achievement Award in 2008.
White's 14 published books have won numerous honors and awards. These include final listing for the Pulitzer Prize in history, the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, the James Willard Hurst Prize from the Law & Society Association, the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, the Scribes Award and the Association of American Law Schools' Triennial Coif Award. White's books have garnered 15 such honors and awards since 1976.
White was editor of the Studies in Legal History series for the North Carolina Press from 1980-85, and advisor on law manuscripts for Oxford University Press from 1986-96. He was on the editorial board of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 1980-2002. He has served on the Commission for Undergraduate Education in Law and the Humanities, and has taught summer humanities seminars for lawyers and judges under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
White has delivered several endowed lectures, including the inaugural John Marshall Lecture, sponsored by the Boston Bar Association; the inaugural Jerome Hall Lecture at Hastings College of Law; the Swinford Lecture, sponsored by the University of Kentucky School of Law and the Kentucky Bar Association; the Keck Lecture at Amherst College, the Rosenthal Lectures at Northwestern University School of Law; the Neesima Lectures at Doshisha University, Japan; the Fulton Lecture at the University of Chicago School of Law and the Knowlton Distinguished Lecture at the University of South Carolina School of Law. His most recent lecture was the 2010 Hendricks Law and History Lecture at Washington & Lee Law School.
White's 1996 book, Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903-1953, reflects his life-long participation and interest in athletics. He lettered in four sports in college, formerly coached the Charlottesville High School girls soccer team, and has won a number of state- and citywide tournaments in doubles squash.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
James Harvie Wilkinson III is an Article III federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He joined the Court in 1984 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Born in New York City, New York, Wilkinson graduated from Yale University with his Bachelor's degree in 1967. Wilkinson served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1969 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1972.
On the recommendation of Virginia U.S. Senator John Warner, Wilkinson was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan on January 30, 1984 to a seat vacated by John Butzner, Jr.,. Wilkinson was confirmed by the Senate on August 9, 1984 on a Senate vote and received commission on August 13, 1984. Wilkinson served as the Chief Judge of the Court from 1996 to 2003.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
G. Edward White joined the Virginia law faculty in 1972 after a clerkship with Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court of the United States and a year as visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation. He was appointed John B. Minor Professor of Law and History in 1987, and held that chair until 2003, when he became David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law. In 1992, he was appointed to a University Professorship, which he held until 2003. From 1990 until 1992 and from 2001-03, he was the Sullivan & Cromwell Research Professor; from 1994-97 the E. James Kelly Research Professor; and from 1999-2001 the Class of 1963 Research Professor. He has held visiting appointments at New York Law School, William & Mary School of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Arizona College of Law, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Harvard Law School. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and twice a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and a member of the American Law Institute.He received the Roger and Madeleine Traynor Faculty Achievement Award in 2008.
White's 14 published books have won numerous honors and awards. These include final listing for the Pulitzer Prize in history, the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, the James Willard Hurst Prize from the Law & Society Association, the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, the Scribes Award and the Association of American Law Schools' Triennial Coif Award. White's books have garnered 15 such honors and awards since 1976.
White was editor of the Studies in Legal History series for the North Carolina Press from 1980-85, and advisor on law manuscripts for Oxford University Press from 1986-96. He was on the editorial board of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 1980-2002. He has served on the Commission for Undergraduate Education in Law and the Humanities, and has taught summer humanities seminars for lawyers and judges under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
White has delivered several endowed lectures, including the inaugural John Marshall Lecture, sponsored by the Boston Bar Association; the inaugural Jerome Hall Lecture at Hastings College of Law; the Swinford Lecture, sponsored by the University of Kentucky School of Law and the Kentucky Bar Association; the Keck Lecture at Amherst College, the Rosenthal Lectures at Northwestern University School of Law; the Neesima Lectures at Doshisha University, Japan; the Fulton Lecture at the University of Chicago School of Law and the Knowlton Distinguished Lecture at the University of South Carolina School of Law. His most recent lecture was the 2010 Hendricks Law and History Lecture at Washington & Lee Law School.
White's 1996 book, Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903-1953, reflects his life-long participation and interest in athletics. He lettered in four sports in college, formerly coached the Charlottesville High School girls soccer team, and has won a number of state- and citywide tournaments in doubles squash.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
James Harvie Wilkinson III is an Article III federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He joined the Court in 1984 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Born in New York City, New York, Wilkinson graduated from Yale University with his Bachelor's degree in 1967. Wilkinson served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1969 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1972.
On the recommendation of Virginia U.S. Senator John Warner, Wilkinson was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan on January 30, 1984 to a seat vacated by John Butzner, Jr.,. Wilkinson was confirmed by the Senate on August 9, 1984 on a Senate vote and received commission on August 13, 1984. Wilkinson served as the Chief Judge of the Court from 1996 to 2003.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Professor of Law, Vermont Law School
John Echeverria is a Professor of Law at Vermont Law School where he teaches Property, Public Law and a wide range of environmental and natural resource law courses. Prior to joining the Vermont Law School faculty in 2009, he served for 12 years as Executive Director of the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. He also was General Counsel of the National Audubon Society and General Counsel and Conservation Director of American Rivers, Inc., and was an Associate for four years in the Washington, D.C. office of Hughes, Hubbard & Reed. He served for one year as law clerk to the Honorable Gerhard A. Gesell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia immediately after graduating from law school.
Professor Echeverria has written several books and numerous scholarly articles on environmental and natural resource law topics. He has published pieces for more general audiences in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has represented state and local governments, environmental organizations, and planning groups in a variety of legal matters at all levels of the federal and state court systems. In 2007, Professor Echeverria received the Jefferson Fordham Advocacy Award from the American Bar Association to recognize outstanding excellence within the area of state and local government law over a lifetime of achievement. In addition to teaching at Vermont Law School, he has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor Echeverria received a JD degree from the Yale Law School. He received a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as a BA degree from Yale College (summa cum laude).
U.S. Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit
Allison Hartwell Eid is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. She joined the court in 2017 after a nomination from President Donald Trump.
Prior to her service on the Tenth Circuit, Judge Eid was a justice on the Colorado Supreme Court. She was the 95th justice to serve on the court, serving from 2006 to 2017. Before joining the Court, Judge Eid was the Solicitor General of the State of Colorado, serving as the chief legal officer to the Colorado Attorney General and representing Colorado officials and agencies in state and federal court. She was also a tenured Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Constitutional Law, Legislation, and Torts, and writing on the topic of constitutional federalism.
Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Law, Judge Eid practiced commercial and appellate litigation with the Denver office of the national law firm of Arnold & Porter. She clerked for the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Judge Eid earned her bachelor’s degree in American Studies (With Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa) from Stanford University in 1987. She then served as a Special Assistant and Speechwriter to U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. In 1991, she graduated with High Honors from The University of Chicago Law School, where she was Articles Editor of The University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed her to serve on the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise, established by Congress in 1955 to prepare the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a member of the American Law Institute and studied comparative law in London as a Temple Bar Scholar.
Judge Eid grew up in Spokane, Washington. She and her husband Troy, an attorney, have two children.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
William T. Comfort, III Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Roderick Hills teaches and writes in public law areas, including constitutional law, local government law, land-use regulation, administrative law, and statutory interpretation. His focus in each area is on the rules and policies governing division of powers between central and subcentral governments. He holds bachelor’s and law degrees from Yale University. Following law school, he served as a law clerk for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and practiced law in Colorado. Hills previously taught at the University of Michigan Law School from 1994 to 2006. He is a member of the state bar of New York and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Adam Paul Laxalt is a partner at Cooper & Kirk which he joined in March 2019. Mr. Laxalt served as Nevada’s 33rd Attorney General from 2015-2019. Mr. Laxalt graduated Magna Cum Laude from Georgetown University and also graduated from Georgetown University Law Center. He is a former Navy and Iraq War veteran. Mr. Laxalt also served as an Assistant Professor of Law at the U.S. Naval Academy.
As Nevada’s Attorney General and top law-enforcement officer, Mr. Laxalt supervised all criminal and civil matters for Nevada’s largest law office. He provided strategic direction and supervision of almost 400 employees, thousands of legal matters, and nearly 50 trials. Mr. Laxalt served as chief legal counsel for the state of Nevada, as well as to Constitutional Officers, state agencies, boards, and commissions. He managed approximately $1.2 billion in potential civil liabilities for the state.
As a former member of the military, Laxalt’s support of service members culminated in the creation of the Office of Military Legal Assistance, a first-of-its-kind program that provides Nevada’s military members with free legal representation. The program was recently named a “Best Practice Program” by the Department of Defense with a recommendation for duplication in states throughout the country, and to date, has helped military personnel and veterans handle over 210 pro bono matters.
Consistent with his commitment to defending our nation’s constitutional principles and protecting the important role of the States in our federalist system of government, Laxalt created Nevada’s first ever Federalism Unit within the Attorney General’s Office. To protect the interests of Nevadans, the Federalism Unit has challenged multiple occasions of unlawful federal overreach, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s Waters of the United States Rule, the Bureau of Land Management’s Sage Grouse Plan, and other instances of unilateral federal executive orders. The Unit has also filed friend of the court briefs on many important issues including public roads, Environmental Protection Agency overreach, federal interference with Nevada’s criminal justice system and Second Amendment issues.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus, Vanderbilt University
James Ely is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy in which he examines the work of the Supreme Court between 1888 and 1910, Railroads and American Law in which he systematically explores the way that the rise of the railroad shaped American legal culture, and The Contract Clause: A Constitutional History. He also is the author of numerous articles dealing with the rights of property owners. He served as an editor of both the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, and the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions. Professor Ely received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002 for A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Between 1987 and 1999, he served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Legal History. Since Professor Ely joined Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
Forgotten Cases: Worthen v. Thomas and the Contract Clause
David F. Forte
Note from the Editor: This article discusses the history of interpretation of the Contract Clause and...
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In his nearly 30 years on the Court, Justice Scalia left a profound mark on...
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Panel I: Economic Theory, Civic Virtue and the Meaning of the Constitution
James W. Ely, Renée Lettow Lerner, G. Brinton Lucas, Nelson Lund, G. Edward White, J. Harvie Wilkinson
Justice Holmes' dissent in Lochner v. New York is well-known for the statement, "[A] constitution is not...
Panel I: Economic Theory, Civic Virtue and the Meaning of the Constitution
James W. Ely, Renée Lettow Lerner, G. Brinton Lucas, Nelson Lund, G. Edward White, J. Harvie Wilkinson
Justice Holmes' dissent in Lochner v. New York is well-known for the statement, "[A] constitution is not...