Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
William H. Pryor Jr. serves as Chief Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
In 2013–18, he served on the United States Sentencing Commission and, in 2017–18, served as Acting Chair.
He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and previously taught as an adjunct professor at the Cumberland School of Law of Samford University.
He served as the 45th Attorney General of Alabama from 1997 to 2004. When he took office, he was the youngest attorney general in the nation. In his reelection, he received the highest percentage of votes of any statewide candidate.
He graduated magna cum laude from Tulane Law School where he finished first in the common-law curriculum and was editor in chief of the Tulane Law Review. He then served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
He is a member of The American Law Institute and an Adviser for the RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW THIRD, CONFLICT OF LAWS. He is a coauthor with Bryan Garner, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and several other judges of a treatise, THE LAW OF JUDICIAL PRECEDENT. He has published in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Yale Law & Policy Review, George Mason Law Review, Florida Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, and Tulane Law Review. He has published op-eds in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Review, and USA Today. He has debated at National Lawyers’ Conventions of the Federalist Society (including on National Public Radio) and at the Oxford Union in the United Kingdom. And he is listed among several “widely admired judicial writers” in Bryan Garner’s The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style.
He is a member of the Tulane Law School Hall of Fame and has received the Defender of the Constitution Award from the Heritage Foundation, the Jurist of the Year Award from the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and the St. Thomas More Award from the St. Thomas More Society of Atlanta. Judge Pryor is also a proud member of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy, New York University School of Law
Rachel Barkow is the Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy and the Faculty Director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at NYU. In June of 2013, the Senate confirmed her as a Member of the United States Sentencing Commission. Since 2010, she has also been a member of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office Conviction Integrity Policy Advisory Panel.
Professor Barkow teaches courses in criminal law, administrative law, and constitutional law. In 2013, she was the recipient of the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award. The Law School awarded her its Podell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007.
Her scholarship focuses on criminal law, and she is especially interested in applying the lessons and theory of administrative and constitutional law to the administration of criminal justice. She has written more than 20 articles that span a range of topics. She has written several articles on sentencing, including the relationship between modern sentencing laws and the constitutional role of the criminal jury; federalism and the politics of sentencing; the role of cost-benefit and risk tradeoff analysis in sentencing policy; what institutional model works for designing agencies that regulate criminal punishment; the political factors that lead to guideline and commission formation; and the flawed bifurcation between capital and noncapital constitutional sentencing jurisprudence. Professor Barkow has also explored in numerous articles the role of prosecutors in the criminal justice system. For example, she has analyzed how the lessons of institutional design from administrative law could improve the way prosecutors' offices are structured; she has looked to organizational guidelines and compliance programs as a model for prosecutorial oversight; and she has considered the increasing role of prosecutors as regulators through the conditions they place on corporations. Professor Barkow has also explored larger structural questions of how criminal justice is administered in the United States. In a series of major articles, she has explored the relationship between separation of powers and the criminal law and the relationship between federalism and the criminal law. Professor Barkow has also considered the role of mercy and clemency in criminal justice, paying particular attention to the relationship between administrative law's dominance and the increasing reluctance of scholars and experts to accept pockets of unreviewable discretion in criminal law.
Barkow has been invited to present her work in various settings. In the summer of 2009, Barkow testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection regarding the institutional design of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Barkow testified before the United States Sentencing Commission at a 2009 regional hearing on the 25th Anniversary of the Sentencing Reform Act. In the summer of 2004, Barkow testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on the future of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. She has also presented her work on sentencing to the National Association of Sentencing Commissions Conference, the Federal Judicial Center's National Sentencing Policy Institute, and the Judicial Conference of the Courts of Appeals for the First and Seventh Circuits. In addition, Barkow has presented papers at numerous law schools.
After graduating from Northwestern University (B.A. 1993), Barkow attended Harvard Law School (J.D. 1996), where she won the Sears Prize, which is awarded annually to two students with the top overall grade averages in the first-year class. Barkow served as a law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman on the District of Columbia Circuit, and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. Barkow was an associate at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, PLLC, in Washington, D.C., from 1998-2002, where she focused on telecommunications and administrative law issues in proceedings before the FCC, state regulatory agencies, and federal and state courts. She took a leave from the firm in 2001 to serve as the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
The Honorable Amy Coney Barrett is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Donald Trump and was confirmed on October 27, 2020. She is the fifth woman to serve on the Court.
Justice Barrett earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Notre Dame, where she was a Kiley Fellow, earned the Hoynes Prize, the Law School’s highest honor, and served as executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. She clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. As an associate at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C., she litigated constitutional, criminal, and commercial cases in both trial and appellate courts.
In 2002, Justice Barrett joined the faculty of Notre Dame Law School. She continued to teach following her appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in November 2017. Justice Barrett also served by appointment of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure from 2010 to 2016.
Justice Barrett has published widely in the areas of federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation. Her scholarship in these fields has been published in leading journals, including the Columbia, Virginia, and Texas Law Reviews.
Author, Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived
Christopher J. Scalia is the eighth of Justice Scalia's nine children and a former professor of English. He works at a public relations firm near Washington, DC. His book reviews and political commentary have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
Chief Justice, Florida Supreme Court
Justice Charles Canady was born in Lakeland, Florida, in 1954. He is married to Jennifer Houghton, and they have two children. He received his B.A. from Haverford College in 1976 and his J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1979.
Justice Canady practiced law with the firm of Holland and Knight in Lakeland from 1979 through 1982. He practiced with the firm of Lane, Trohn, et al., from 1983 through 1992.
From November 1984 to November 1990, Justice Canady served three terms in the Florida House of Representatives, and from January 1993 to January 2001, he served four terms in the United States House of Representatives. Throughout his service in Congress, Justice Canady was a member of the House Judiciary Committee. For three terms, from January 1995 to January 2001, Justice Canady was the Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Upon leaving Congress, Justice Canady became General Counsel to Governor Jeb Bush. He was appointed by Governor Bush to the Second District Court of Appeal for a term beginning November 20, 2002.
On August 28, 2008, Justice Canady was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Charlie Crist and took office on September 8, 2008. He served as Chief Justice from July 2010 through June 2012. In March 2018, he was elected by his colleagues to serve as Chief Justice for a second time, with his two-year term starting July 1, 2018, and a third time starting July 1, 2020.
Partner, McDermott Will & Emery
Robert (Bob) J. Cordy’s practice includes business litigation, white collar criminal defense, internal investigations, appellate work and major public/private projects.
Bob previously served for 16 years as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He has worked with judges from Mexico, Russia, China, Kosovo, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and other countries on issues relating to judicial ethics, rule of law principles and the American judicial system. Bob also served as chair of the Supreme Judicial Court Rules Committee, co-chair of the Supreme Judicial Court Judiciary-Media Committee and member of the Committee for Capital Planning for the Judicial System.
Bob began his career working for the Massachusetts Public Defenders Office, and subsequently held positions with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission and the United States Attorney’s Office where he became the chief of the Public Corruption prosecution unit. Bob also served as chief legal counsel to Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld, working on a wide range of policy issues including regulatory and criminal justice reform, ethics in government and the appointment of judges. Before his appointment to the Supreme Judicial Court in 2001, Bob was a partner and head of McDermott’s Boston office.
Bob is also a member of our legal cannabis industry group. Our Cannabis Industry group is a multidisciplinary team of lawyers providing clients with regulatory, litigation, intellectual property, trade and tax services with respect to their investments and participation in the cannabis industry, all subject to the Firm’s obligations under federal and state laws and bar licensure rules.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Nathaniel M. Gorton is a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. At the time of appointment, he was a private practice in Massachusetts.
United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts
Patti B. Saris is the Chief United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She is also the former Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Douglas Preston Woodlock is a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He joined the court in 1986 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan. At the time of appointment, Woodlock served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Rya Weickert Zobel is a federal judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She joined the court in 1979 after being nominated by President Jimmy Carter. At the time of her appointment, Zobel was a private practice attorney inMassachusetts.
Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy, New York University School of Law
Rachel Barkow is the Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy and the Faculty Director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at NYU. In June of 2013, the Senate confirmed her as a Member of the United States Sentencing Commission. Since 2010, she has also been a member of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office Conviction Integrity Policy Advisory Panel.
Professor Barkow teaches courses in criminal law, administrative law, and constitutional law. In 2013, she was the recipient of the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award. The Law School awarded her its Podell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007.
Her scholarship focuses on criminal law, and she is especially interested in applying the lessons and theory of administrative and constitutional law to the administration of criminal justice. She has written more than 20 articles that span a range of topics. She has written several articles on sentencing, including the relationship between modern sentencing laws and the constitutional role of the criminal jury; federalism and the politics of sentencing; the role of cost-benefit and risk tradeoff analysis in sentencing policy; what institutional model works for designing agencies that regulate criminal punishment; the political factors that lead to guideline and commission formation; and the flawed bifurcation between capital and noncapital constitutional sentencing jurisprudence. Professor Barkow has also explored in numerous articles the role of prosecutors in the criminal justice system. For example, she has analyzed how the lessons of institutional design from administrative law could improve the way prosecutors' offices are structured; she has looked to organizational guidelines and compliance programs as a model for prosecutorial oversight; and she has considered the increasing role of prosecutors as regulators through the conditions they place on corporations. Professor Barkow has also explored larger structural questions of how criminal justice is administered in the United States. In a series of major articles, she has explored the relationship between separation of powers and the criminal law and the relationship between federalism and the criminal law. Professor Barkow has also considered the role of mercy and clemency in criminal justice, paying particular attention to the relationship between administrative law's dominance and the increasing reluctance of scholars and experts to accept pockets of unreviewable discretion in criminal law.
Barkow has been invited to present her work in various settings. In the summer of 2009, Barkow testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection regarding the institutional design of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Barkow testified before the United States Sentencing Commission at a 2009 regional hearing on the 25th Anniversary of the Sentencing Reform Act. In the summer of 2004, Barkow testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on the future of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. She has also presented her work on sentencing to the National Association of Sentencing Commissions Conference, the Federal Judicial Center's National Sentencing Policy Institute, and the Judicial Conference of the Courts of Appeals for the First and Seventh Circuits. In addition, Barkow has presented papers at numerous law schools.
After graduating from Northwestern University (B.A. 1993), Barkow attended Harvard Law School (J.D. 1996), where she won the Sears Prize, which is awarded annually to two students with the top overall grade averages in the first-year class. Barkow served as a law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman on the District of Columbia Circuit, and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. Barkow was an associate at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, PLLC, in Washington, D.C., from 1998-2002, where she focused on telecommunications and administrative law issues in proceedings before the FCC, state regulatory agencies, and federal and state courts. She took a leave from the firm in 2001 to serve as the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
The Honorable Amy Coney Barrett is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Donald Trump and was confirmed on October 27, 2020. She is the fifth woman to serve on the Court.
Justice Barrett earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Notre Dame, where she was a Kiley Fellow, earned the Hoynes Prize, the Law School’s highest honor, and served as executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. She clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. As an associate at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C., she litigated constitutional, criminal, and commercial cases in both trial and appellate courts.
In 2002, Justice Barrett joined the faculty of Notre Dame Law School. She continued to teach following her appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in November 2017. Justice Barrett also served by appointment of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure from 2010 to 2016.
Justice Barrett has published widely in the areas of federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation. Her scholarship in these fields has been published in leading journals, including the Columbia, Virginia, and Texas Law Reviews.
Author, Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived
Christopher J. Scalia is the eighth of Justice Scalia's nine children and a former professor of English. He works at a public relations firm near Washington, DC. His book reviews and political commentary have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy, New York University School of Law
Rachel Barkow is the Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy and the Faculty Director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at NYU. In June of 2013, the Senate confirmed her as a Member of the United States Sentencing Commission. Since 2010, she has also been a member of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office Conviction Integrity Policy Advisory Panel.
Professor Barkow teaches courses in criminal law, administrative law, and constitutional law. In 2013, she was the recipient of the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award. The Law School awarded her its Podell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007.
Her scholarship focuses on criminal law, and she is especially interested in applying the lessons and theory of administrative and constitutional law to the administration of criminal justice. She has written more than 20 articles that span a range of topics. She has written several articles on sentencing, including the relationship between modern sentencing laws and the constitutional role of the criminal jury; federalism and the politics of sentencing; the role of cost-benefit and risk tradeoff analysis in sentencing policy; what institutional model works for designing agencies that regulate criminal punishment; the political factors that lead to guideline and commission formation; and the flawed bifurcation between capital and noncapital constitutional sentencing jurisprudence. Professor Barkow has also explored in numerous articles the role of prosecutors in the criminal justice system. For example, she has analyzed how the lessons of institutional design from administrative law could improve the way prosecutors' offices are structured; she has looked to organizational guidelines and compliance programs as a model for prosecutorial oversight; and she has considered the increasing role of prosecutors as regulators through the conditions they place on corporations. Professor Barkow has also explored larger structural questions of how criminal justice is administered in the United States. In a series of major articles, she has explored the relationship between separation of powers and the criminal law and the relationship between federalism and the criminal law. Professor Barkow has also considered the role of mercy and clemency in criminal justice, paying particular attention to the relationship between administrative law's dominance and the increasing reluctance of scholars and experts to accept pockets of unreviewable discretion in criminal law.
Barkow has been invited to present her work in various settings. In the summer of 2009, Barkow testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection regarding the institutional design of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Barkow testified before the United States Sentencing Commission at a 2009 regional hearing on the 25th Anniversary of the Sentencing Reform Act. In the summer of 2004, Barkow testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on the future of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. She has also presented her work on sentencing to the National Association of Sentencing Commissions Conference, the Federal Judicial Center's National Sentencing Policy Institute, and the Judicial Conference of the Courts of Appeals for the First and Seventh Circuits. In addition, Barkow has presented papers at numerous law schools.
After graduating from Northwestern University (B.A. 1993), Barkow attended Harvard Law School (J.D. 1996), where she won the Sears Prize, which is awarded annually to two students with the top overall grade averages in the first-year class. Barkow served as a law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman on the District of Columbia Circuit, and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. Barkow was an associate at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, PLLC, in Washington, D.C., from 1998-2002, where she focused on telecommunications and administrative law issues in proceedings before the FCC, state regulatory agencies, and federal and state courts. She took a leave from the firm in 2001 to serve as the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
The Honorable Amy Coney Barrett is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Donald Trump and was confirmed on October 27, 2020. She is the fifth woman to serve on the Court.
Justice Barrett earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Notre Dame, where she was a Kiley Fellow, earned the Hoynes Prize, the Law School’s highest honor, and served as executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. She clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. As an associate at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C., she litigated constitutional, criminal, and commercial cases in both trial and appellate courts.
In 2002, Justice Barrett joined the faculty of Notre Dame Law School. She continued to teach following her appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in November 2017. Justice Barrett also served by appointment of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure from 2010 to 2016.
Justice Barrett has published widely in the areas of federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation. Her scholarship in these fields has been published in leading journals, including the Columbia, Virginia, and Texas Law Reviews.
Author, Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived
Christopher J. Scalia is the eighth of Justice Scalia's nine children and a former professor of English. He works at a public relations firm near Washington, DC. His book reviews and political commentary have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
Chief Justice, Florida Supreme Court
Justice Charles Canady was born in Lakeland, Florida, in 1954. He is married to Jennifer Houghton, and they have two children. He received his B.A. from Haverford College in 1976 and his J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1979.
Justice Canady practiced law with the firm of Holland and Knight in Lakeland from 1979 through 1982. He practiced with the firm of Lane, Trohn, et al., from 1983 through 1992.
From November 1984 to November 1990, Justice Canady served three terms in the Florida House of Representatives, and from January 1993 to January 2001, he served four terms in the United States House of Representatives. Throughout his service in Congress, Justice Canady was a member of the House Judiciary Committee. For three terms, from January 1995 to January 2001, Justice Canady was the Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Upon leaving Congress, Justice Canady became General Counsel to Governor Jeb Bush. He was appointed by Governor Bush to the Second District Court of Appeal for a term beginning November 20, 2002.
On August 28, 2008, Justice Canady was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Charlie Crist and took office on September 8, 2008. He served as Chief Justice from July 2010 through June 2012. In March 2018, he was elected by his colleagues to serve as Chief Justice for a second time, with his two-year term starting July 1, 2018, and a third time starting July 1, 2020.
Partner, McDermott Will & Emery
Robert (Bob) J. Cordy’s practice includes business litigation, white collar criminal defense, internal investigations, appellate work and major public/private projects.
Bob previously served for 16 years as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He has worked with judges from Mexico, Russia, China, Kosovo, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and other countries on issues relating to judicial ethics, rule of law principles and the American judicial system. Bob also served as chair of the Supreme Judicial Court Rules Committee, co-chair of the Supreme Judicial Court Judiciary-Media Committee and member of the Committee for Capital Planning for the Judicial System.
Bob began his career working for the Massachusetts Public Defenders Office, and subsequently held positions with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission and the United States Attorney’s Office where he became the chief of the Public Corruption prosecution unit. Bob also served as chief legal counsel to Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld, working on a wide range of policy issues including regulatory and criminal justice reform, ethics in government and the appointment of judges. Before his appointment to the Supreme Judicial Court in 2001, Bob was a partner and head of McDermott’s Boston office.
Bob is also a member of our legal cannabis industry group. Our Cannabis Industry group is a multidisciplinary team of lawyers providing clients with regulatory, litigation, intellectual property, trade and tax services with respect to their investments and participation in the cannabis industry, all subject to the Firm’s obligations under federal and state laws and bar licensure rules.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Nathaniel M. Gorton is a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. At the time of appointment, he was a private practice in Massachusetts.
United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts
Patti B. Saris is the Chief United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She is also the former Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Douglas Preston Woodlock is a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He joined the court in 1986 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan. At the time of appointment, Woodlock served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Rya Weickert Zobel is a federal judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She joined the court in 1979 after being nominated by President Jimmy Carter. At the time of her appointment, Zobel was a private practice attorney inMassachusetts.
Chief Justice, Florida Supreme Court
Justice Charles Canady was born in Lakeland, Florida, in 1954. He is married to Jennifer Houghton, and they have two children. He received his B.A. from Haverford College in 1976 and his J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1979.
Justice Canady practiced law with the firm of Holland and Knight in Lakeland from 1979 through 1982. He practiced with the firm of Lane, Trohn, et al., from 1983 through 1992.
From November 1984 to November 1990, Justice Canady served three terms in the Florida House of Representatives, and from January 1993 to January 2001, he served four terms in the United States House of Representatives. Throughout his service in Congress, Justice Canady was a member of the House Judiciary Committee. For three terms, from January 1995 to January 2001, Justice Canady was the Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Upon leaving Congress, Justice Canady became General Counsel to Governor Jeb Bush. He was appointed by Governor Bush to the Second District Court of Appeal for a term beginning November 20, 2002.
On August 28, 2008, Justice Canady was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Charlie Crist and took office on September 8, 2008. He served as Chief Justice from July 2010 through June 2012. In March 2018, he was elected by his colleagues to serve as Chief Justice for a second time, with his two-year term starting July 1, 2018, and a third time starting July 1, 2020.
Partner, McDermott Will & Emery
Robert (Bob) J. Cordy’s practice includes business litigation, white collar criminal defense, internal investigations, appellate work and major public/private projects.
Bob previously served for 16 years as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He has worked with judges from Mexico, Russia, China, Kosovo, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and other countries on issues relating to judicial ethics, rule of law principles and the American judicial system. Bob also served as chair of the Supreme Judicial Court Rules Committee, co-chair of the Supreme Judicial Court Judiciary-Media Committee and member of the Committee for Capital Planning for the Judicial System.
Bob began his career working for the Massachusetts Public Defenders Office, and subsequently held positions with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission and the United States Attorney’s Office where he became the chief of the Public Corruption prosecution unit. Bob also served as chief legal counsel to Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld, working on a wide range of policy issues including regulatory and criminal justice reform, ethics in government and the appointment of judges. Before his appointment to the Supreme Judicial Court in 2001, Bob was a partner and head of McDermott’s Boston office.
Bob is also a member of our legal cannabis industry group. Our Cannabis Industry group is a multidisciplinary team of lawyers providing clients with regulatory, litigation, intellectual property, trade and tax services with respect to their investments and participation in the cannabis industry, all subject to the Firm’s obligations under federal and state laws and bar licensure rules.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Nathaniel M. Gorton is a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. At the time of appointment, he was a private practice in Massachusetts.
United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts
Patti B. Saris is the Chief United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She is also the former Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Douglas Preston Woodlock is a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He joined the court in 1986 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan. At the time of appointment, Woodlock served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services.
U.S. District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts
Rya Weickert Zobel is a federal judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She joined the court in 1979 after being nominated by President Jimmy Carter. At the time of her appointment, Zobel was a private practice attorney inMassachusetts.
51 Imperfect Solutions by Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton
Practice Groups Teleforum
TeleforumFifty-One Imperfect Solutions
Atlanta, GASpecial Session: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived
Rachel Barkow, Amy Coney Barrett, Christopher J. Scalia, Jeffrey S. Sutton, Edward Whelan
Christopher J. Scalia and Edward Whelan have published a definitive collection of beloved Supreme Court...
Special Session: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived
Rachel Barkow, Amy Coney Barrett, Christopher J. Scalia, Jeffrey S. Sutton, Edward Whelan
Christopher J. Scalia and Edward Whelan have published a definitive collection of beloved Supreme Court...
Special Session: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived
2017 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC2017 National Lawyers Convention
Administrative Agencies and the Regulatory State
Washington, DCShakespeare and the Law: Measure for Measure
Charles T. Canady, Robert J. Cordy, Nathaniel M. Gorton, William Meade, Patti B. Saris, F Saylor, Jeffrey S. Sutton, Douglas P. Woodlock, Rya W. Zobel
The Federalist Society and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company presentShakespeare’s Measure by Measure and the Art of...
Shakespeare and the Law: Measure for Measure
Charles T. Canady, Robert J. Cordy, Nathaniel M. Gorton, William Meade, Patti B. Saris, F Saylor, Jeffrey S. Sutton, Douglas P. Woodlock, Rya W. Zobel
The Federalist Society and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company presentShakespeare’s Measure by Measure and the Art of...
Shakespeare and the Law: Measure for Measure
Boston Lawyers Chapter
Boston, MATopics
The Rule of Lenity: A five-minute guide to navigating the intersection of administrative and criminal law
It is not often that you think of the terms “criminal defense” and “Chevron deference”...