Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Partner-in-Charge Washington, Jones Day
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Senior Attorney, Sensient Technologies Corporation
United States Attorney General
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was sworn in as the 86th Attorney General of the United States on March 11, 2021. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Garland leads the Justice Department’s 115,000 employees, who work across the United States and in more than 50 countries worldwide. Under his leadership, the Department of Justice is dedicated to upholding the rule of law, keeping our country safe, and protecting the civil rights of all Americans.
Immediately preceding his confirmation as Attorney General, Attorney General Garland was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was appointed to that position in 1997, served as Chief Judge of the Circuit from 2013-20, and served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 2017-20. In 2016, President Obama nominated him for the position of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Before becoming a federal judge, Attorney General Garland spent a substantial part of his professional life at the Department of Justice. He served in both career and non-career positions under five Attorneys General, including as Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Assistant United States Attorney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division, and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General. In those roles, his responsibilities spanned the work of the Department, including criminal, civil, and national security matters. They also included direct supervision of investigations and prosecutions of national importance, including the Oklahoma City bombing, Unabomber, and Montana Freemen cases.
Earlier in his career, Attorney General Garland was a partner in the law firm of Arnold & Porter, where his practice involved civil and criminal litigation, antitrust, and administrative law. He also taught antitrust at Harvard Law School and published law review articles on both antitrust and administrative law.
Attorney General Garland graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., of the United States Supreme Court.
Sidney Powell, PC
Sidney Powell has been lead counsel in more than 500 federal appeals resulting in more than 180 published decisions. She represents clients in complex federal appeals and consults in complex federal litigation in civil and selective criminal cases. Her representative cases traverse the following areas of substantive law: real estate, employment law, asbestos injuries (the $3 billion class action against Fiberboard), health care and medical malpractice, environmental issues, oil and gas, contract claims, patent, trademark, copyright, and other civil actions. She has also represented judges and lawyers on ethical issues and sanctions. For most of the last decade, she has represented one of the Merrill Lynch executives in the Enron “Nigerian Barge” litigation, in which she uncovered evidence that the Enron Task Force Prosecutors “plainly suppressed” exculpatory evidence that was favorable to the defense.
Ms. Powell is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers for which she served in 2001-2002 as President. She has long been a member of the Board of Governors of the Fifth Circuit Bar Association for which she also served as President and as Editor of the Fifth Circuit Reporter for 20 years.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina, where she also attended law school, Ms. Powell was the youngest Assistant United States Attorney in the country when she began with the United States Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas in 1978. She later chaired its Appellate Section. Thereafter, she began an Appellate Section for the Northern District of Texas. She also served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where she obtained the conviction of a local attorney for bankruptcy fraud.
Ms. Powell has written and taught extensively in the area of federal appellate practice, including for the Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute of the United States Department of Justice. Her most recent publication is the Chapter Evaluating an Appeal–Strategic Thinking Before and During The Appeal in the book Appellate Practice in Federal and State Courts (Law Journal Press, September 2011).
She is currently working on a book entitled Licensed To Lie, which will reveal to the layman and the broader Bar the insidious prosecutorial misconduct infecting the government’s cases against Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and the Merrill Lynch executives in the Enron litigation, including the dramatic distinctions in the responses to the two cases by both the judiciary and the Department of Justice.
Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprude, Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
Ronald D. Rotunda was the Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, at Chapman University, the Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He joined the faculty in 2008. Before that, he was University Professor and Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. From 2002 to 2006, he was the George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law. Before that, he was the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law, at the University of Illinois. He was a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a member of Harvard Law Review. He joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1974 after clerking for Judge Walter R. Mansfield of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, practicing law in Washington, D.C., and serving as assistant majority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee. He has co-authored the most widely used course book on legal ethics, Problems and Materials on Professional Responsibility(Foundation Press, 12th ed. 2014) and was the author of a leading course book on constitutional law, Modern Constitutional Law (West Academic Co., 11th ed. 2015)(Abridged & Unabridged editions). He was the coauthor of, Legal Ethics: The Lawyer's Deskbook on Professional Responsibility (ABA- West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2016-2017 ed.) (Jointly published by the ABA and West/Thompson Reuters Publishing) (with John Dzienkowski). Rotunda also co-authored (with John Nowak) the six-volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, 5th ed. 2012)(with annual updates), and a one volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West Academic, 8th ed. 2010). He was also the author of several other books and more than 500 articles in various law reviews, journals, newspapers, and books in this country and abroad. His works have been translated into French, Portuguese German, Romanian, Czech, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. These books and articles have been cited more than 2000 times by law reviews, by state and federal courts at every level, from trial courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, and by foreign courts in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. He has been interviewed on radio and television on legal issues, both in this country and abroad. In 1993 he was the Constitutional Law Adviser to the Supreme National Council of Cambodia and assisted that country in writing its first democratic constitution. He has consulted with various new democracies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine, on their proposed constitutions and judicial codes. He chaired the subcommittee that drafted the American Bar Association's Model Rules for Lawyer Disciplinary Enforcement; was a member of the Publications Board of the A.B.A. Center for Professional Responsibility from 1994 to 2016; was a member of the A.B.A. Standing Committee on Professional Discipline (1991-1997); and was Liaison to the A.B.A. Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (1994-1997). He was a Fulbright Professor in Venezuela in 1986 and a Fulbright Research Scholar in Italy in 1981. In 1996 he assisted the Czech Republic in drafting the first Rules of Ethics for lawyers in that country. During the Spring, 1999 semester, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, holding the John S. Stone Endowed Chair of Law. During the summer and fall of 2000, he was the Visiting Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, in Washington, DC. In the fall of 2001, he was visiting professor at George Mason University School of Law. During November-December, 2002, he was Visiting Scholar, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Faculty of Law, Leuven, Belgium. In May, 2004, and December, 2005, he was visiting lecturer at the Institute of Law and Economics, Institut für Recht und Ökonomik, at the University of Hamburg. From early June 2004 to May 2005, he was the Special Counsel to the Department of Defense. He was on the Panel of Contributing Editors that produced, Black's Law Dictionary (West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, 8th ed. 2004; Thomson-Reuters, 10th ed. 2014). From 2005-2006, he was a member of the Task Force on Judicial Functions of the Commission on Virginia Courts in the 21st Century: To Benefit All, to Exclude None.
In May, 2000, American Law Media, publisher of The American Lawyer, the National Law Journal, and the Legal Times picked Professor Rotunda as one of the ten most influential Illinois Lawyers. Also in 2000, a lengthy study that the University of Chicago Press published, which sought to determine the influence, productivity, and reputations of law professors over the last several decades, listed Professor Rotunda as the 17th highest in the nation. The 2002-2003 New Educational Quality Ranking of U.S. Law Schools (EQR) [the last year for which such records are available] ranks Professor Rotunda as the eleventh most cited of all law faculty in the United States. Seehttp://www.leiterrankings.com/faculty/2002faculty_impact_cites.shtml.
In July, 2007, he was one of the main speakers at the International Judicial Conference hosted by the United States Embassy, the Supreme Court of Latvia, and the Latvian Ministry of Justice. The other main speakers were Justice Samuel Alito, the President of Latvia, the Prime Minister of Latvia, the Chief Justice of Latvia, and the Minister of Justice of Latvia. On February 27, 2008, President George W. Bush nominated Ronald D. Rotunda to become a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) for an initial four-year term and sent his nomination to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for confirmation hearings on the nominees. He was selected the Best Lawyer in Washington, DC, in 2009 in Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law, as published in November 2008 in the Washington Post in association with the Legal Times. When he moved to California, he was also selected as one of the Best Lawyers in Southern California, in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, also in Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law as published in the Los Angeles Times, U.S. News, and American Law Media. On June 17, 2009, he became a Commissioner of the Fair Political Practices Commission, a state regulatory agency (analogous to the Federal Election Commission) that is California's independent political watchdog. He served until January 31, 2013, when his term expired. In 2012, he became a Distinguished International Research Fellow at the World Engagement Institute, a non-profit, multidisciplinary and academically-based non-governmental organization with the mission to facilitate professional global engagement for international development and poverty reduction http://www.weinstitute.org/fellows.html. In 2012, Chapman University honored him with The Chapman University Excellence In Scholarly/Creative Work Award, 2011-2012. Since 2014, he has been a member of the Editorial Board of, The International Journal of Sustainable Human Security (IJSHS), a peer-reviewed publication of the World Engagement Institute (WEI). Rotunda was a Member of the Editorial Board of ABA's Journal of Legal Education (2014 to 2016).
Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Kenneth Wainstein is a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he focuses his practice on corporate internal investigations and civil and criminal enforcement proceedings. Ken spent over 20 years in a variety of law enforcement and national security positions in the government. Between 1989 and 2001, Ken served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in both the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia, where he handled criminal prosecutions ranging from public corruption to gang prosecution cases and held a variety of supervisory positions, including Acting United States Attorney. In 2001, he was appointed Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, where he provided oversight and support to the 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. Between 2002 and 2004, Ken served as General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then as Chief of Staff to Director Robert S. Mueller III. In 2004, Ken was appointed and then confirmed as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he had the privilege to lead the largest United States Attorney’s Office in the country. In 2006, the U.S. Senate confirmed Ken as the first Assistant Attorney General for National Security. In that position, Ken established and led the new National Security Division, which consolidated DOJ’s law enforcement and intelligence activities on counterterrorism and counterintelligence matters. In 2008, after 19 years at the Justice Department, Ken was named Homeland Security Advisor by President George W. Bush. In this capacity, he coordinated the nation’s counterterrorism, homeland security, infrastructure protection, and disaster response and recovery efforts. He advised the President, convened and chaired meetings of the Cabinet Officers on the Homeland Security Council, and oversaw the inter-agency coordination process for homeland security and counterterrorism programs.
Senior Attorney, Sensient Technologies Corporation
United States Attorney General
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was sworn in as the 86th Attorney General of the United States on March 11, 2021. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Garland leads the Justice Department’s 115,000 employees, who work across the United States and in more than 50 countries worldwide. Under his leadership, the Department of Justice is dedicated to upholding the rule of law, keeping our country safe, and protecting the civil rights of all Americans.
Immediately preceding his confirmation as Attorney General, Attorney General Garland was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was appointed to that position in 1997, served as Chief Judge of the Circuit from 2013-20, and served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 2017-20. In 2016, President Obama nominated him for the position of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Before becoming a federal judge, Attorney General Garland spent a substantial part of his professional life at the Department of Justice. He served in both career and non-career positions under five Attorneys General, including as Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Assistant United States Attorney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division, and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General. In those roles, his responsibilities spanned the work of the Department, including criminal, civil, and national security matters. They also included direct supervision of investigations and prosecutions of national importance, including the Oklahoma City bombing, Unabomber, and Montana Freemen cases.
Earlier in his career, Attorney General Garland was a partner in the law firm of Arnold & Porter, where his practice involved civil and criminal litigation, antitrust, and administrative law. He also taught antitrust at Harvard Law School and published law review articles on both antitrust and administrative law.
Attorney General Garland graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., of the United States Supreme Court.
Sidney Powell, PC
Sidney Powell has been lead counsel in more than 500 federal appeals resulting in more than 180 published decisions. She represents clients in complex federal appeals and consults in complex federal litigation in civil and selective criminal cases. Her representative cases traverse the following areas of substantive law: real estate, employment law, asbestos injuries (the $3 billion class action against Fiberboard), health care and medical malpractice, environmental issues, oil and gas, contract claims, patent, trademark, copyright, and other civil actions. She has also represented judges and lawyers on ethical issues and sanctions. For most of the last decade, she has represented one of the Merrill Lynch executives in the Enron “Nigerian Barge” litigation, in which she uncovered evidence that the Enron Task Force Prosecutors “plainly suppressed” exculpatory evidence that was favorable to the defense.
Ms. Powell is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers for which she served in 2001-2002 as President. She has long been a member of the Board of Governors of the Fifth Circuit Bar Association for which she also served as President and as Editor of the Fifth Circuit Reporter for 20 years.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina, where she also attended law school, Ms. Powell was the youngest Assistant United States Attorney in the country when she began with the United States Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas in 1978. She later chaired its Appellate Section. Thereafter, she began an Appellate Section for the Northern District of Texas. She also served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where she obtained the conviction of a local attorney for bankruptcy fraud.
Ms. Powell has written and taught extensively in the area of federal appellate practice, including for the Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute of the United States Department of Justice. Her most recent publication is the Chapter Evaluating an Appeal–Strategic Thinking Before and During The Appeal in the book Appellate Practice in Federal and State Courts (Law Journal Press, September 2011).
She is currently working on a book entitled Licensed To Lie, which will reveal to the layman and the broader Bar the insidious prosecutorial misconduct infecting the government’s cases against Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and the Merrill Lynch executives in the Enron litigation, including the dramatic distinctions in the responses to the two cases by both the judiciary and the Department of Justice.
Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprude, Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
Ronald D. Rotunda was the Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, at Chapman University, the Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He joined the faculty in 2008. Before that, he was University Professor and Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. From 2002 to 2006, he was the George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law. Before that, he was the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law, at the University of Illinois. He was a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a member of Harvard Law Review. He joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1974 after clerking for Judge Walter R. Mansfield of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, practicing law in Washington, D.C., and serving as assistant majority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee. He has co-authored the most widely used course book on legal ethics, Problems and Materials on Professional Responsibility(Foundation Press, 12th ed. 2014) and was the author of a leading course book on constitutional law, Modern Constitutional Law (West Academic Co., 11th ed. 2015)(Abridged & Unabridged editions). He was the coauthor of, Legal Ethics: The Lawyer's Deskbook on Professional Responsibility (ABA- West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2016-2017 ed.) (Jointly published by the ABA and West/Thompson Reuters Publishing) (with John Dzienkowski). Rotunda also co-authored (with John Nowak) the six-volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, 5th ed. 2012)(with annual updates), and a one volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West Academic, 8th ed. 2010). He was also the author of several other books and more than 500 articles in various law reviews, journals, newspapers, and books in this country and abroad. His works have been translated into French, Portuguese German, Romanian, Czech, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. These books and articles have been cited more than 2000 times by law reviews, by state and federal courts at every level, from trial courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, and by foreign courts in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. He has been interviewed on radio and television on legal issues, both in this country and abroad. In 1993 he was the Constitutional Law Adviser to the Supreme National Council of Cambodia and assisted that country in writing its first democratic constitution. He has consulted with various new democracies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine, on their proposed constitutions and judicial codes. He chaired the subcommittee that drafted the American Bar Association's Model Rules for Lawyer Disciplinary Enforcement; was a member of the Publications Board of the A.B.A. Center for Professional Responsibility from 1994 to 2016; was a member of the A.B.A. Standing Committee on Professional Discipline (1991-1997); and was Liaison to the A.B.A. Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (1994-1997). He was a Fulbright Professor in Venezuela in 1986 and a Fulbright Research Scholar in Italy in 1981. In 1996 he assisted the Czech Republic in drafting the first Rules of Ethics for lawyers in that country. During the Spring, 1999 semester, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, holding the John S. Stone Endowed Chair of Law. During the summer and fall of 2000, he was the Visiting Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, in Washington, DC. In the fall of 2001, he was visiting professor at George Mason University School of Law. During November-December, 2002, he was Visiting Scholar, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Faculty of Law, Leuven, Belgium. In May, 2004, and December, 2005, he was visiting lecturer at the Institute of Law and Economics, Institut für Recht und Ökonomik, at the University of Hamburg. From early June 2004 to May 2005, he was the Special Counsel to the Department of Defense. He was on the Panel of Contributing Editors that produced, Black's Law Dictionary (West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, 8th ed. 2004; Thomson-Reuters, 10th ed. 2014). From 2005-2006, he was a member of the Task Force on Judicial Functions of the Commission on Virginia Courts in the 21st Century: To Benefit All, to Exclude None.
In May, 2000, American Law Media, publisher of The American Lawyer, the National Law Journal, and the Legal Times picked Professor Rotunda as one of the ten most influential Illinois Lawyers. Also in 2000, a lengthy study that the University of Chicago Press published, which sought to determine the influence, productivity, and reputations of law professors over the last several decades, listed Professor Rotunda as the 17th highest in the nation. The 2002-2003 New Educational Quality Ranking of U.S. Law Schools (EQR) [the last year for which such records are available] ranks Professor Rotunda as the eleventh most cited of all law faculty in the United States. Seehttp://www.leiterrankings.com/faculty/2002faculty_impact_cites.shtml.
In July, 2007, he was one of the main speakers at the International Judicial Conference hosted by the United States Embassy, the Supreme Court of Latvia, and the Latvian Ministry of Justice. The other main speakers were Justice Samuel Alito, the President of Latvia, the Prime Minister of Latvia, the Chief Justice of Latvia, and the Minister of Justice of Latvia. On February 27, 2008, President George W. Bush nominated Ronald D. Rotunda to become a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) for an initial four-year term and sent his nomination to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for confirmation hearings on the nominees. He was selected the Best Lawyer in Washington, DC, in 2009 in Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law, as published in November 2008 in the Washington Post in association with the Legal Times. When he moved to California, he was also selected as one of the Best Lawyers in Southern California, in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, also in Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law as published in the Los Angeles Times, U.S. News, and American Law Media. On June 17, 2009, he became a Commissioner of the Fair Political Practices Commission, a state regulatory agency (analogous to the Federal Election Commission) that is California's independent political watchdog. He served until January 31, 2013, when his term expired. In 2012, he became a Distinguished International Research Fellow at the World Engagement Institute, a non-profit, multidisciplinary and academically-based non-governmental organization with the mission to facilitate professional global engagement for international development and poverty reduction http://www.weinstitute.org/fellows.html. In 2012, Chapman University honored him with The Chapman University Excellence In Scholarly/Creative Work Award, 2011-2012. Since 2014, he has been a member of the Editorial Board of, The International Journal of Sustainable Human Security (IJSHS), a peer-reviewed publication of the World Engagement Institute (WEI). Rotunda was a Member of the Editorial Board of ABA's Journal of Legal Education (2014 to 2016).
Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Kenneth Wainstein is a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he focuses his practice on corporate internal investigations and civil and criminal enforcement proceedings. Ken spent over 20 years in a variety of law enforcement and national security positions in the government. Between 1989 and 2001, Ken served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in both the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia, where he handled criminal prosecutions ranging from public corruption to gang prosecution cases and held a variety of supervisory positions, including Acting United States Attorney. In 2001, he was appointed Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, where he provided oversight and support to the 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. Between 2002 and 2004, Ken served as General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then as Chief of Staff to Director Robert S. Mueller III. In 2004, Ken was appointed and then confirmed as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he had the privilege to lead the largest United States Attorney’s Office in the country. In 2006, the U.S. Senate confirmed Ken as the first Assistant Attorney General for National Security. In that position, Ken established and led the new National Security Division, which consolidated DOJ’s law enforcement and intelligence activities on counterterrorism and counterintelligence matters. In 2008, after 19 years at the Justice Department, Ken was named Homeland Security Advisor by President George W. Bush. In this capacity, he coordinated the nation’s counterterrorism, homeland security, infrastructure protection, and disaster response and recovery efforts. He advised the President, convened and chaired meetings of the Cabinet Officers on the Homeland Security Council, and oversaw the inter-agency coordination process for homeland security and counterterrorism programs.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Partner-in-Charge Washington, Jones Day
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Partner-in-Charge Washington, Jones Day
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
Staff Attorney, National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation
Glenn Taubman is a Staff Attorney for the National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation (1982 to the present). He was a Law Clerk for Senior Circuit Judge Warren L. Jones, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits, Jacksonville, Florida, from 1981-82, and a Staff Attorney for the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, from 1980-81. His Bar Admissions include: Georgia, 1980; New York, 1981; U.S. Supreme Court, 1983; District of Columbia, 1985. He regularly appears before the National Labor Relations Board and various federal courts, representing individual employees only.
He is the author of "'Neutrality Agreements' and the Destruction of Employees' Section 7 Rights" (2005) and co-author of "Union Discipline and Employee Rights," a monograph published by the National Right to Work Foundation.
A partial listing of his reported cases includes: Lucas v. NLRB, 333 F.3d 927 (9th Cir. 2003);Penrod v. NLRB, 203 F.3d 41 (D.C. Cir. 2000);Production Workers v. NLRB, 161 F.3d 1047 (7th Cir. 1998);Food & Commercial Workers Local 951 v. Mulder, 31 F.3d 365 (6th Cir. 1994);NLRB v. Office Employees Local 2, 902 F.2d 1164 (4th Cir. 1990);Tierney v. City of Toledo, 917 F.2d 927 (6th Cir. 1990);Lowary v. Lexington Local Board of Education, 902 F.2d 422 (6th Cir. 1990);Lowary v. Lexington Local Board of Education, 854 F.2d 131 (6th Cir. 1988);Tierney v. City of Toledo, 824 F.2d 1497 (6th Cir. 1987);Masiello v. US Airways, Inc., 113 F. Supp. 2d 870 (W.D.N.C. 2000);Jordan v. City of Bucyrus, 739 F. Supp. 1124 (1990),further proceedings, 754 F. Supp. 554 (N.D. Ohio 1991);Dana Corp., 341 N.L.R.B. No. 150, 2004 WL 1329345 (June 7, 2004);California Saw & Knife Works, 320 N.L.R.B. 224 (1995),enforced, 133 F.3d 1012 (7th Cir. 1998).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and Douglas D. Drysdale Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Lawrence B. Solum is an internationally recognized legal theorist who works in constitutional theory, procedure and the philosophy of law. Solum contributes to debates in constitutional theory and normative legal theory. He is especially interested in the intersection of law with the philosophy of language and with moral and political philosophy. His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the great debate between originalism and constitutional theory. Solum’s original theory of the fundamental nature and purpose of law, “Virtue Jurisprudence,” has been debated and discussed in Asia, Europe and North America. He also works on problems of law and technology, including Internet governance, copyright policy and patent law. His pathbreaking article, “Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences,” published in the early 1990s, is widely acknowledged as far ahead of its time.
Solum received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and received his B.A. with highest departmental honors in philosophy from the University of California at Los Angeles. While at Harvard, he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he worked for the law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore in New York, and then clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Prior to joining the UVA Law faculty in 2020, he was a member of the faculty at Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Illinois, the University of San Diego and Loyola Marymount University, and visited at Boston University and the University of Southern California. He regularly teaches Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law. His other teaching includes seminars in constitutional theory and the philosophy of law as well as courses in conflict of laws, federal courts, intellectual property and internet law and governance.
Catherine Stetson is a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches Appellate Practice and Evidence. Simultaneously, Professor Stetson is the co-director of Hogan Lovell's appellate practice. Alongside her commitment to her firm, Professor Stetson co-leads UVA's Appellate Litigation Clinic, providing students with hands-on experience in appellate advocacy through real-world cases. A distinguished member of the American Law Institute, Professor Stetson brings extensive appellate expertise, having argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, every federal circuit court, and ten state appellate courts.
Professor Stetson earned her undergraduate degree from Duke University and her Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law. Following clerkships with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, she joined Hogan Lovells. Throughout her 28 year tenure with the firm, Professor Stetson advanced from associate to partner and currently serves as co-director of the firm’s appellate practice. Professor Stetson continues to balance her appellate litigation career at Hogan Lovells alongside her academic role at UVA Law.
Senior Attorney, Sensient Technologies Corporation
United States Attorney General
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was sworn in as the 86th Attorney General of the United States on March 11, 2021. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Garland leads the Justice Department’s 115,000 employees, who work across the United States and in more than 50 countries worldwide. Under his leadership, the Department of Justice is dedicated to upholding the rule of law, keeping our country safe, and protecting the civil rights of all Americans.
Immediately preceding his confirmation as Attorney General, Attorney General Garland was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was appointed to that position in 1997, served as Chief Judge of the Circuit from 2013-20, and served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 2017-20. In 2016, President Obama nominated him for the position of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Before becoming a federal judge, Attorney General Garland spent a substantial part of his professional life at the Department of Justice. He served in both career and non-career positions under five Attorneys General, including as Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Assistant United States Attorney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division, and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General. In those roles, his responsibilities spanned the work of the Department, including criminal, civil, and national security matters. They also included direct supervision of investigations and prosecutions of national importance, including the Oklahoma City bombing, Unabomber, and Montana Freemen cases.
Earlier in his career, Attorney General Garland was a partner in the law firm of Arnold & Porter, where his practice involved civil and criminal litigation, antitrust, and administrative law. He also taught antitrust at Harvard Law School and published law review articles on both antitrust and administrative law.
Attorney General Garland graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., of the United States Supreme Court.
Sidney Powell, PC
Sidney Powell has been lead counsel in more than 500 federal appeals resulting in more than 180 published decisions. She represents clients in complex federal appeals and consults in complex federal litigation in civil and selective criminal cases. Her representative cases traverse the following areas of substantive law: real estate, employment law, asbestos injuries (the $3 billion class action against Fiberboard), health care and medical malpractice, environmental issues, oil and gas, contract claims, patent, trademark, copyright, and other civil actions. She has also represented judges and lawyers on ethical issues and sanctions. For most of the last decade, she has represented one of the Merrill Lynch executives in the Enron “Nigerian Barge” litigation, in which she uncovered evidence that the Enron Task Force Prosecutors “plainly suppressed” exculpatory evidence that was favorable to the defense.
Ms. Powell is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers for which she served in 2001-2002 as President. She has long been a member of the Board of Governors of the Fifth Circuit Bar Association for which she also served as President and as Editor of the Fifth Circuit Reporter for 20 years.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina, where she also attended law school, Ms. Powell was the youngest Assistant United States Attorney in the country when she began with the United States Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas in 1978. She later chaired its Appellate Section. Thereafter, she began an Appellate Section for the Northern District of Texas. She also served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where she obtained the conviction of a local attorney for bankruptcy fraud.
Ms. Powell has written and taught extensively in the area of federal appellate practice, including for the Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute of the United States Department of Justice. Her most recent publication is the Chapter Evaluating an Appeal–Strategic Thinking Before and During The Appeal in the book Appellate Practice in Federal and State Courts (Law Journal Press, September 2011).
She is currently working on a book entitled Licensed To Lie, which will reveal to the layman and the broader Bar the insidious prosecutorial misconduct infecting the government’s cases against Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and the Merrill Lynch executives in the Enron litigation, including the dramatic distinctions in the responses to the two cases by both the judiciary and the Department of Justice.
Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprude, Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
Ronald D. Rotunda was the Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, at Chapman University, the Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He joined the faculty in 2008. Before that, he was University Professor and Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. From 2002 to 2006, he was the George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law. Before that, he was the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law, at the University of Illinois. He was a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a member of Harvard Law Review. He joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1974 after clerking for Judge Walter R. Mansfield of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, practicing law in Washington, D.C., and serving as assistant majority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee. He has co-authored the most widely used course book on legal ethics, Problems and Materials on Professional Responsibility(Foundation Press, 12th ed. 2014) and was the author of a leading course book on constitutional law, Modern Constitutional Law (West Academic Co., 11th ed. 2015)(Abridged & Unabridged editions). He was the coauthor of, Legal Ethics: The Lawyer's Deskbook on Professional Responsibility (ABA- West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2016-2017 ed.) (Jointly published by the ABA and West/Thompson Reuters Publishing) (with John Dzienkowski). Rotunda also co-authored (with John Nowak) the six-volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, 5th ed. 2012)(with annual updates), and a one volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West Academic, 8th ed. 2010). He was also the author of several other books and more than 500 articles in various law reviews, journals, newspapers, and books in this country and abroad. His works have been translated into French, Portuguese German, Romanian, Czech, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. These books and articles have been cited more than 2000 times by law reviews, by state and federal courts at every level, from trial courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, and by foreign courts in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. He has been interviewed on radio and television on legal issues, both in this country and abroad. In 1993 he was the Constitutional Law Adviser to the Supreme National Council of Cambodia and assisted that country in writing its first democratic constitution. He has consulted with various new democracies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine, on their proposed constitutions and judicial codes. He chaired the subcommittee that drafted the American Bar Association's Model Rules for Lawyer Disciplinary Enforcement; was a member of the Publications Board of the A.B.A. Center for Professional Responsibility from 1994 to 2016; was a member of the A.B.A. Standing Committee on Professional Discipline (1991-1997); and was Liaison to the A.B.A. Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (1994-1997). He was a Fulbright Professor in Venezuela in 1986 and a Fulbright Research Scholar in Italy in 1981. In 1996 he assisted the Czech Republic in drafting the first Rules of Ethics for lawyers in that country. During the Spring, 1999 semester, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, holding the John S. Stone Endowed Chair of Law. During the summer and fall of 2000, he was the Visiting Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, in Washington, DC. In the fall of 2001, he was visiting professor at George Mason University School of Law. During November-December, 2002, he was Visiting Scholar, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Faculty of Law, Leuven, Belgium. In May, 2004, and December, 2005, he was visiting lecturer at the Institute of Law and Economics, Institut für Recht und Ökonomik, at the University of Hamburg. From early June 2004 to May 2005, he was the Special Counsel to the Department of Defense. He was on the Panel of Contributing Editors that produced, Black's Law Dictionary (West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, 8th ed. 2004; Thomson-Reuters, 10th ed. 2014). From 2005-2006, he was a member of the Task Force on Judicial Functions of the Commission on Virginia Courts in the 21st Century: To Benefit All, to Exclude None.
In May, 2000, American Law Media, publisher of The American Lawyer, the National Law Journal, and the Legal Times picked Professor Rotunda as one of the ten most influential Illinois Lawyers. Also in 2000, a lengthy study that the University of Chicago Press published, which sought to determine the influence, productivity, and reputations of law professors over the last several decades, listed Professor Rotunda as the 17th highest in the nation. The 2002-2003 New Educational Quality Ranking of U.S. Law Schools (EQR) [the last year for which such records are available] ranks Professor Rotunda as the eleventh most cited of all law faculty in the United States. Seehttp://www.leiterrankings.com/faculty/2002faculty_impact_cites.shtml.
In July, 2007, he was one of the main speakers at the International Judicial Conference hosted by the United States Embassy, the Supreme Court of Latvia, and the Latvian Ministry of Justice. The other main speakers were Justice Samuel Alito, the President of Latvia, the Prime Minister of Latvia, the Chief Justice of Latvia, and the Minister of Justice of Latvia. On February 27, 2008, President George W. Bush nominated Ronald D. Rotunda to become a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) for an initial four-year term and sent his nomination to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for confirmation hearings on the nominees. He was selected the Best Lawyer in Washington, DC, in 2009 in Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law, as published in November 2008 in the Washington Post in association with the Legal Times. When he moved to California, he was also selected as one of the Best Lawyers in Southern California, in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, also in Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law as published in the Los Angeles Times, U.S. News, and American Law Media. On June 17, 2009, he became a Commissioner of the Fair Political Practices Commission, a state regulatory agency (analogous to the Federal Election Commission) that is California's independent political watchdog. He served until January 31, 2013, when his term expired. In 2012, he became a Distinguished International Research Fellow at the World Engagement Institute, a non-profit, multidisciplinary and academically-based non-governmental organization with the mission to facilitate professional global engagement for international development and poverty reduction http://www.weinstitute.org/fellows.html. In 2012, Chapman University honored him with The Chapman University Excellence In Scholarly/Creative Work Award, 2011-2012. Since 2014, he has been a member of the Editorial Board of, The International Journal of Sustainable Human Security (IJSHS), a peer-reviewed publication of the World Engagement Institute (WEI). Rotunda was a Member of the Editorial Board of ABA's Journal of Legal Education (2014 to 2016).
Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Kenneth Wainstein is a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he focuses his practice on corporate internal investigations and civil and criminal enforcement proceedings. Ken spent over 20 years in a variety of law enforcement and national security positions in the government. Between 1989 and 2001, Ken served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in both the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia, where he handled criminal prosecutions ranging from public corruption to gang prosecution cases and held a variety of supervisory positions, including Acting United States Attorney. In 2001, he was appointed Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, where he provided oversight and support to the 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. Between 2002 and 2004, Ken served as General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then as Chief of Staff to Director Robert S. Mueller III. In 2004, Ken was appointed and then confirmed as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he had the privilege to lead the largest United States Attorney’s Office in the country. In 2006, the U.S. Senate confirmed Ken as the first Assistant Attorney General for National Security. In that position, Ken established and led the new National Security Division, which consolidated DOJ’s law enforcement and intelligence activities on counterterrorism and counterintelligence matters. In 2008, after 19 years at the Justice Department, Ken was named Homeland Security Advisor by President George W. Bush. In this capacity, he coordinated the nation’s counterterrorism, homeland security, infrastructure protection, and disaster response and recovery efforts. He advised the President, convened and chaired meetings of the Cabinet Officers on the Homeland Security Council, and oversaw the inter-agency coordination process for homeland security and counterterrorism programs.
In his 35 years at the Justice Department and in private practice, Mike Carvin was one of the leading appellate and trial lawyers challenging state and federal regulations on constitutional and statutory grounds, with 10 Supreme Court arguments and numerous high-profile victories. In addition to his numerous cases in the United States Supreme Court, he argued in virtually every federal appeals court. His major cases include the recent constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act and the decisions invalidating Sarbanes-Oxley's accounting board, preventing the Justice Department from obtaining monetary relief against the tobacco industry under RICO, overturning the federal government's plan to statistically adjust the census, limiting the Justice Department's ability to create "majority-minority" districts, and upholding Proposition 209's ban on racial preferences in California.
Mike was one of the lead lawyers, and argued before the Florida Supreme Court, on behalf of George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election Florida recount controversy. He also has represented state governments, financial institutions, telecommunications, and energy companies in "takings," First Amendment, civil rights, and statutory challenges to federal government actions.
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Given the breaking news, George Mason Law School Professor Todd Zywicki, Chapman University School of...
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