Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has published extensively on why patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights have been—and should be—legally secured to innovators and creators as property rights. His scholarship has been relied on by the United States Supreme Court, by lower federal courts, and by U.S. federal agencies. He has been invited to testify numerous times before the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on intellectual property legislation. His writings on intellectual property policy have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Investors Business Daily, and in other media outlets. His journal articles can be downloaded here.
Professor Mossoff is a longstanding member of the Executive Committee of the Intellectual Property Practice Group of the Federalist Society, on which he served as Chairperson from 2016-2018, and he is Chair of the Intellectual Property Working Group of the Regulatory Transparency Project of the Federalist Society. He is a Senior Fellow and Chair of the Forum for Intellectual Property at the Hudson Institute, a Visiting Intellectual Property Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding. He is a member of the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of ANSI and he has served as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the IEEE-USA, on which he remains a member in good standing.
Assistant District Attorney, Philadelphia District Attorney
Sarah Hart has worked for over three decades in the criminal justice field at the federal, state and local levels.
From 1979-95, she served as a prosecutor in Philadelphia where (for 9 years) she represented the District Attorney in federal prison litigation involving mass releases of pretrial detainees. During this time, she provided substantial assistance to the U.S. Congress in drafting the Federal Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).
From 1995-2001, Mrs. Hart served as the Chief Counsel for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections where she successfully defended the constitutionality of the PLRA in the federal courts.
From 2001-2005, following unanimous Senate confirmation, she served as the Director of the National Institute of Justice (the research and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Justice) where, among other things, she developed the national $1 billion DNA initiative.
After an appointment as a Visiting Professor teaching graduate school courses at Rutgers University, she returned to Philadelphia to represent Philadelphia District Attorney in class action litigation concerning the Philadelphia Prison System. During this time she represented the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association in crafting comprehensive, bipartisan prison reform legislation in Pennsylvania that enacted sweeping changes in sentencing and parole practices. (Acts 81-84 of 2008).
Mrs. Hart previously served as Vice Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee of the American Corrections Association, a member of the Executive Committee of the Criminal Law Practice Group of the Federalist Society, a member of the Board of Directors of the Crime Victims Law Institute, and as a member of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Appellate Procedural Rules Committee. She has also provided extensive training on the PLRA and corrections issues to the National Institute of Corrections, the National Association of Attorneys General, and the Association of State Correctional Administrators.
Mrs. Hart has published articles relating to corrections, forensics, and domestic violence. A recent publication focuses on the benefits and costs of prisoner class actions.
S. Hart, Evaluating Institutional Prisoners’ Rights Litigation: Costs and Benefits and Federalism Considerations, 11 U. Penn. J. Const. L. 73 (2008).
She is a graduate of Rutgers Law School and the University of Delaware.
Litigation Associate, Winston & Strawn LLP
Jacob R. Loshin is a litigation associate in Winston & Strawn's Washington, D.C. office and a member of the firm’s nationwide appellate and critical motions practice.
Before joining Winston & Strawn, Mr. Loshin served as a law clerk to the Hon. Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He has also worked in business strategy and development for an education technology company.
While at Yale Law School, Mr. Loshin was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal on Regulation.
B.A., magna cum laude, in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Claremont McKenna College
J.D., Yale Law School
Chancellor Professor, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Law
Peltz-Steele received his law degree from Duke University and a bachelor’s in journalism and Spanish from Washington & Lee University. Peltz-Steele has won awards in teaching, research, and public service. He practiced commercial law in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and taught law for more than thirteen years before coming to UMass Law in 2011.
Peltz-Steele is author, co-author, or co-editor of qualitative and quantitative research in law and mass communication in journals and books, of treatises in law and development and access to information, and of textbooks in tort law and freedom of information. He is especially active in international media law and policy, having presented papers on five continents and having published in foreign journals and multinational collaborations. His current research focuses on comparative transparency in the context of development and in the private sector. Peltz-Steele serves in various roles in public service organizations, including the legal education committee of the American Bar Association, International Law Section.
Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation Chair, Lex Politica; Of Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as Chair of Lex Politica's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice overseeing the firm’s strategic appellate litigation and critical motions practice in the trial courts. Erin is an experienced litigator who represents clients in constitutional, regulatory, and appellate matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Erin has represented dozens of clients before the Supreme Court of the United States, served as lead counsel in high-profile cases raising novel constitutional and statutory issues, and authored numerous successful petitions for certiorari and briefs in opposition. She has argued in state and federal appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Erin represents diverse clients in high-stakes litigation from state governments to faith-based nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. She possesses expertise on a wide range of subject matters including administrative law, the First Amendment, religious liberty, federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, equitable jurisdiction, tax law, the Affordable Care Act, and Title IX.
Erin represents clients in cases where public communications strategy is paramount. She is a sought-after speaker and writer, has testified multiple times before Congress, and is a frequent presenter on constitutional and administrative law issues, including at the Oxford Union, the National Federalist Society Convention, and university campuses across the country. She is a frequent commentator to media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, WORLD, USA Today, the Federalist, and the Hill.
Erin previously oversaw Alliance Defending Freedom’s--where she still serves as Of Counsel--litigation strategies to empower women and protect the dignity of life, defend pregnancy centers’ First Amendment rights from government overreach, and safeguard Americans’ freedoms from the ever-encroaching administrative state.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Mr. Mirengoff is a retired attorney in Washington, D.C. and is a blogger at powerlineblog.com.
President, JCN
Carrie Campbell Severino is the president of the JCN, and co-author with Mollie Hemingway of the bestselling book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court. As a go-to expert on the confirmation process, Mrs. Severino has been extensively quoted in the media. She regularly appears on television, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and ABC’s This Week.
Severino writes and speaks on a wide range of judicial issues, including the constitutional limits on government, the federal nomination process, and state judicial selection. She has testified before Congress on constitutional questions and briefed Senators on judicial nominations, and regularly files briefs in high-profile Supreme Court cases. She was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.), Duke University (B.A., Biology), and Michigan State University (M.A., Linguistics).
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Paul J. Schierl Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Professor Richard W. Garnett teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, criminal law, the First Amendment, and law and religion. He is a leading authority on questions and debates regarding religious freedom and church-state relations, and is the founding director of Notre Dame Law School’s Program on Church, State, and Society.
Garnett clerked for the late Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Rehnquist, and also for the late Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Richard S. Arnold. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1995 and his B.A., summa cum laude, from Duke University in 1990. He joined the faculty in 1999 after practicing law in Washington, D.C. with Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin.
Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Professor Friedman is one of the country’s leading authorities on constitutional law and the federal courts. He is a prolific scholar, working at the intersections of law, politics and history. Friedman teaches a wide variety of courses including Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, and Criminal Procedure. He writes extensively about judicial review, constitutional law and theory, federal jurisdiction and judicial behavior. His scholarship appears regularly in the nation’s top law and peer-edited reviews. He is the author of widely-recognized The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2009), which examines the history of the relationship between popular opinion and the Supreme Court, from 1776 to the present. Along with his co-author Stephen Burbank, Friedman co-edited and contributed to Judicial Independence at the Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Approach, which questions common assumptions about the nature of judicial independence and how it can be protected. The book has been cited and relied upon countless times by scholars and policymakers alike. Professor Friedman is a frequent contributor to the nation's leading journals, both on-line and print. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, Politico andThe New Republic, among others.
Professor Friedman is a frequent speaker at events of all sorts. Given the interdisciplinary nature of his work, Professor Friedman regularly appears at conferences in law, political science and history. He is a founder and co-convener of the “roughly biennial” Constitutional Theory Conference. He organizes many multi-disciplinary conferences, including one on Modeling Law, and another – done under the auspices of the American Constitution Society – on Reconstruction: America’s Second Founding. He presents papers regularly at home and abroad. He has been a visiting scholar and lecturer at the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Groupe d’Etudes et de Recherches sur law Justice Constitutionnelle Aix-en-Provence, Sciences-Po in Aix-en-Provence, and Hong Kong University.
Professor Friedman regularly serves as a litigator or litigation consultant in a variety of matters in the federal and state courts. He has represented a wide range of clients, both public and private. Notably, he represents both civil liberties claimants and state and local governments. He has been active in the areas of reproductive rights, the jurisdictional allocation of cases between the federal and state courts, and the proper scope of the federal government’s commerce power. He has filed a number of amicus briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Actively engaged in a range of important service activities, at NYU Professor Friedman created the Academic Careers Program and founded and is now co-director of the Furman Academic Program. Both programs are dedicated to preparing young scholars for academic careers. In the past he was extensively involved with the American Judicature Society, was President of the Tennessee Civil Liberties Union, served on the Board of the State and Local Legal Center, and on the steering committee of New York University’s Institute for Law and Society. He recently completed a term as Vice Dean of New York University School of Law.
Professor Friedman graduated from the University of Chicago and received his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center. He clerked for the Honorable Phyllis A. Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and also worked as a litigation associate at Davis, Polk & Wardwell in Washington D.C. He was a professor at Vanderbilt Law School before joining the NYU faculty in 2000. In 1995 he won the Clarence Darrow Award from the ACLU of Tennessee for his work in defense of civil liberties.
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 1982
B.A., University of Chicago, 1978
Adjunct Professor, Fordham University School of Law
Ms. McAvoy is an attorney, a former federal prosecutor and former in-house counsel for financial institutions. She specializes in Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing issues. She is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and heads Fordham’s Adjunct Faculty Committee. Ms. McAvoy has been politically active as well, including having run for the position of Comptroller of the City of New York as Rudy Giuliani’s running mate. She also was on John McCain’s NY Steering Committee and was Co-Chair of NY Women for McCain during his most recent presidential bid.
She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. John’s University in 1984, where she graduated summa cum laude as valedictorian and was NYS debate champion. Ms. McAvoy received a Juris Doctor degree from Fordham Law School in 1987 where she participated as a member of its National Moot Court team.
Ms. McAvoy began practicing law as a litigation associate at Mudge Rose Guthrie & Ferdon. After that she became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the EDNY’s Civil and Criminal Divisions, where she received awards from both the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She practiced in US District Court, the US Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit, Surrogate’s Court and US Bankruptcy Court. Civil cases she handled included employment discrimination, forfeitures, medical malpractice, suits brought against government employees, Social Security disability, personal injury and tax cases. The criminal matters she handled included money laundering, bank robbery, mail fraud, illegal weapons sales, insurance fraud, credit card fraud, Food Stamp fraud, counterfeiting and narcotics violations.
After leaving the US Attorney’s Office, Ms. McAvoy became Senior Attorney at Morgan Stanley, where she was in charge of anti-money laundering prevention efforts and the reporting of suspicious activity. She also handled insider trading matters, fraud issues, general securities litigation and criminal matters. She received an award from the U.S. Secret Service for her work and as a member of the Securities Industry Ad Hoc Bank Secrecy Act Group she assisted the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board in drafting suspicious activity regulations relating to the securities industry.
Ms. McAvoy thereafter joined Citigroup, where she was Senior Legal Counsel for Citigroup Corporate Security and Investigative Services, providing legal advice on fraud issues, corporate security, investigations and anti-money laundering compliance for Citigroup’s businesses, including Citibank, Travelers Insurance, Salomon Smith Barney and Primerica Financial Services.
Since 2000 Ms. McAvoy has been doing private consulting work for the financial industry. She has conducted extensive training for banks, securities firms, the NASD and law enforcement. She has also participated in internal corporate investigations and look-backs at financial institutions, has helped institutions develop appropriate policies and procedures and has acted as an expert consulting witness for law firms. She also continues to teach at Fordham Law School as an adjunct professor and remains active in politics.
Ms. McAvoy has provided legal, political and business commentary on a variety of television networks and on radio. She is a regular commentator on foxnews.com’s Strategy Room and has appeared on various programs on the Fox Cable News Channel including The O’Reilly Factor. She is a legal contributor for the Grinder Show on NY 970 The Apple, a nationally broadcast radio show which also streams live on the internet.
Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Limited Partnership - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Adam Mossoff
On June 9, 2011, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Microsoft Corp. v. i4i...
Brown v. Plata - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Sarah V. Hart
On May 23, 2011, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Brown v. Plata (formerly...
Sossamon v. Texas - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Jacob R. Loshin
On April 20, 2011, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Sossamon v. Texas. The...
FCC v. AT&T and Milner v. Department of the Navy - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Richard J. Peltz-Steele
On March 1, 2011, the Supreme Court announced its decision in FCC v. AT&T, a...
Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research v. United States - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Erin M. Hawley
On January 11, 2011, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Mayo Foundation for Medical...
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
D Broyles
On June 21, 2010, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law...
Doe v. Reed - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Bradley A. Smith
On June 24, 2010, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Doe v. Reed. In...
Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Steven G. Calabresi
On June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Free Enterprise Fund v....
What’s Right (and Wrong) with the Confirmation Process . . . And Elena Kagan
New York, New YorkSolicitor General Kagan’s Confirmation Hearing
Paul E. Mirengoff, Carrie Campbell Severino, Adam Winkler, Richard W. Garnett
UPDATED: 11 AM, July 8, 2010 On May 10, 2010 President Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena...