Albert A. Walsh Chair in Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law; Faculty Director, Urban Law Center, Fordham Law School
Nestor Davidson joined Fordham in 2011 and was named the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law in 2017. Professor Davidson is an expert in property, urban law, and affordable housing law and policy, and is the co-author of the casebook Property Law: Rules, Policies and Practices (7th ed. 2017). Professor Davidson founded and serves as the faculty director of the law school’s Urban Law Center and previously served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Professor Davidson practiced with the firm of Latham and Watkins, focusing on commercial real estate and affordable housing, and served as Special Counsel and Principal Deputy General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He currently serves as a Member of the Board of the New York State Housing Finance Agency.
Professor Davidson earned his AB from Harvard College and his JD from Columbia Law School. After law school, he clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor of Law and Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government, University of Mississippi School of Law
Christopher Green (https://law.olemiss.edu/faculty-directory/christopher-green/) is Professor of Law and Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government at the University of Mississippi, where he has taught since 2006. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, and has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. He clerked for Judge Rhesa H. Barksdale on the Fifth Circuit and is the author of Equal Citizenship, Civil Rights, and the Constitution: The Original Sense of the Privileges or Immunities Clause (2015) and a large number of articles and essays on constitutional theory and the Fourteenth Amendment, including the two-part Original Sense of the (Equal) Protection Clause and Clarity and Reasonable Doubt in Early State-Constitutional Judicial Review. He is an affiliated scholar with the University of San Diego Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Born 1971 in Fort Wayne, IN
Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Nominated by Donald J. Trump on February 15, 2018, to a seat vacated by Richard Allen Posner. Confirmed by the Senate on May 14, 2018, and received commission on May 21, 2018.
Education:
St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, Indiana, B.B.A., 1993
Northwestern University School of Law, J.D., 1998
Professional Career:
Law clerk, Hon. Paul V. Niemeyer, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1998-1999
Law clerk, Hon. Anthony M. Kennedy, Supreme Court of the United States, 1999-2000
Private practice, Cleveland, Ohio, 2000-2002
Assistant U.S. attorney, Southern District of New York, 2002-2006
Counselor to the deputy attorney general, U.S. Department of Justice, 2006
Associate counsel, President George W. Bush, 2007
General counsel, National Security Council, and senior associate counsel, President George W. Bush, 2007-2009
Private practice, Chicago, Illinois, 2009-2018
Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin School of Law
Miriam Seifter's research and teaching interests include administrative law, federalism, state and local government law, energy law, and property law. Her recent work focuses on executive power and the separation of powers at the state level, and on the role of states and interest groups in the federal regulatory process. Her publications appear or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. In 2017, UW Law students honored Professor Seifter with the Classroom Teacher of the Year Award, and in 2018, she received one of twelve Distinguished Teaching Awards from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For her article Gubernatorial Administration, Seifter was named the 2017 winner of the American Constitution Society's Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law.
Professor Seifter received a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University, an M.Sc. with distinction from Oxford University, and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was the Environmental Fellow and an Articles Editor on the Harvard Law Review. After law school, she served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Merrick Garland on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to joining the UW Law faculty, she was a Visiting Researcher and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and worked in private practice at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in San Francisco.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Director of Law & Policy, Environmental Integrity Project
Following Princeton and the University of Chicago Law School, David began practicing law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Eventually tiring of litigation where the result was a wire transfer from Entity A to Entity B, in the early 1990’s David began his environmental law career at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Since then, he has litigated dozens of cases under all of the major environmental statutes including, as Sierra Club’s Chief Climate Counsel, initiating and managing Massachusetts v. EPA. Most recently, he has been busy challenging FERC’s permitting of natural gas pipelines and LNG export terminals. Apart from litigation, David has helped lead efforts on both greenhouse gas regulation and global warming legislation (and may be the only person ever invited to testify by both Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe).
He has drafted a range of federal climate legislation, advised states as to their greenhouse gas regulatory authority (and for many years has represented environmental groups defending state GHG regulations from dormant Commerce Clause challenges). David has designed and taught courses on “Environmental Litigation” at Georgetown University Law Center and “Environmental Law and Science” at the William and Mary Law School/Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Executive Director of the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project & Special Counsel to the Manufacturers’ Center for Legal Action, The National Association of Manufacturers
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Partner, Briscoe Prows Kao Ivester & Bazel LLP
Tony Francois is experienced in Water and Real Property Law, Land Use and Zoning, Environmental Regulation, Natural Resources Development, Agricultural Law, and Constitutional Law. He has represented homeowners, builders, farmers and ranchers, trade associations, and water districts in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies and state and federal trial and appellate courts. He is a member of the California State Bar and the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California and the Districts of New Mexico and North Dakota, and has litigated cases in federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has appeared before the Supreme Courts of California, Idaho, Nevada, and the United States.
Prior to attending law school, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in the former West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tony was an Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation from 2012 to 2021. He was a lobbyist for 10 years, first with California Farm Bureau Federation from 2003 to 2007, and then with KP Public Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was an attorney at McQuaid, Bedford & Van Zandt in San Francisco from 1999 – 2003.
Professor of Environmental Practice and Director, California Env, UC Davis School of Law
Richard M. Frank is a Professor of Environmental Practice and Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center (CELPC). Formerly the executive director of the Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law, Frank returned to UC Davis School of Law in January 2010. In addition to leading the CELPC, he teaches classroom courses in the environmental law curriculum.
Before coming to CLEE and UC Berkeley, Professor Frank practiced law with federal and state agencies for 32 years, most of that time with the California Department of Justice. Immediately before joining Berkeley Law, he served as California's Chief Deputy Attorney General for Legal Affairs.
In 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Frank to the Delta Vision Task Force, an advisory body asked to develop policy recommendations for the Governor and Legislature, addressing environmental problems confronting the California Delta. He served in that capacity in 2007-08. In May 2009, the Chair of the California Air Resources Board appointed Frank Vice Chair of the Economic Allocation & Advisory Committee, an advisory body formed to assist the Air Resources Board in implementing California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32).
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Judge, Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One
The Honorable Jennifer M. Perkins began service on the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, on October 30, 2017. At the time of her appointment by Governor Douglas Ducey, Judge Perkins was Assistant Solicitor General for the State of Arizona.
Judge Perkins was born in Portales, New Mexico, and primarily raised in Albuquerque. She attended the prestigious Albuquerque Academy from 1988-1995, before moving to Washington D.C. to attend the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University as a National Merit Scholar. Therafter, she relocated again to Dallas, Texas, and earned her juris doctor from the SMU Dedman School of Law, graduating cum laude in 2002.
Judge Perkins started her career at the law firm of Browning & Peifer (now Peifer, Hanson, Mullins, and Baker) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. While there, she litigated complex commercial matters including class action plaintiff and defense work, and assisted with employment and contract litigation. In 2003, the judge accompanied the Honorable James O. Browning in transitioning to the federal district court bench, serving as his first law clerk.
After her clerkship, Judge Perkins moved to Arizona to work for the Institute for Justice, Arizona Chapter, a public interest law firm. She spent five years with IJ-AZ litigating civil rights cases in Arizona and across the country. In 2009, the judge became Disciplinary Counsel for the Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct, where she reviewed and prosecuted ethics complaints against state court judges throughout Arizona. After five years serving the state in this capacity, Judge Perkins entered private practice by joining an appellate law firm in Phoenix. While there, she worked on state and federal appeals involving a wide range of legal subjects, including complex business disputes, property rights, judicial ethics, and personal injury matters.
In January 2015, Judge Perkins joined the Office of the Arizona Attorney General to serve as the first Assistant Solicitor General; in that capacity, she was responsible for oversight of Attorney General Opinions and served as ethics counsel to the entire office. In addition to these two primary roles, the judge assisted on a variety of matters including trial and appellate litigation of election-related matters; federal appellate litigation with the Federalism Unit; state criminal appeals; and drafting amicus briefs on behalf of Arizona in state and federal courts.
Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Professor Justin Pidot graduated with high honors from Wesleyan University before attending Stanford Law School, where he graduated with distinction and was editor in chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. Professor Pidot clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to joining the University of Denver faculty, he was an appellate litigator at the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he presented argument in more than a dozen federal appellate cases and acted as the staff attorney on two cases before the United States Supreme Court. Professor Pidot also completed a fellowship at the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute.
Professor Pidot’s scholarship and teaching focus on environmental law, natural resources law, and federal courts.
United States Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit
Milan Smith was confirmed on May 16, 2006 to the Ninth Circuit, which hears appeals from the federal district courts of Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
Judge Smith has a distinguished record as a practicing attorney in the public and private sectors. In his private practice, Judge Smith was well recognized for his expertise in real estate law. He represented major corporations, such as Honeywell International and Toyota Motor sales USA, Inc., and a wide range of public clients, such as the Palos Verdes Unified School District, the Los Angeles State Business Authority, and non-profit organizations such as Marymount College. Judge Smith also has extensive experience in the areas of tax law, corporate law and environmental law.
In 1988, Judge Smith was appointed by Governor George Deukmejian to the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission. This Commission hears cases of alleged housing and employment discrimination and determines whether and how much recovery to award to claimants. Mr. Smith participated in dozens of such cases on such topics as racial discrimination and sexual harassment.
Judge Smith’s litigation experience encompassed not only real estate matters, but also contract, family law, tax, and administrative cases. He also had a thriving transactional practice.
Judge Smith graduated from Brigham Young University in 1966, where he received his degree cum laude. In 1969, Judge Smith received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School
Albert A. Walsh Chair in Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law; Faculty Director, Urban Law Center, Fordham Law School
Nestor Davidson joined Fordham in 2011 and was named the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law in 2017. Professor Davidson is an expert in property, urban law, and affordable housing law and policy, and is the co-author of the casebook Property Law: Rules, Policies and Practices (7th ed. 2017). Professor Davidson founded and serves as the faculty director of the law school’s Urban Law Center and previously served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Professor Davidson practiced with the firm of Latham and Watkins, focusing on commercial real estate and affordable housing, and served as Special Counsel and Principal Deputy General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He currently serves as a Member of the Board of the New York State Housing Finance Agency.
Professor Davidson earned his AB from Harvard College and his JD from Columbia Law School. After law school, he clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor of Law and Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government, University of Mississippi School of Law
Christopher Green (https://law.olemiss.edu/faculty-directory/christopher-green/) is Professor of Law and Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government at the University of Mississippi, where he has taught since 2006. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, and has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. He clerked for Judge Rhesa H. Barksdale on the Fifth Circuit and is the author of Equal Citizenship, Civil Rights, and the Constitution: The Original Sense of the Privileges or Immunities Clause (2015) and a large number of articles and essays on constitutional theory and the Fourteenth Amendment, including the two-part Original Sense of the (Equal) Protection Clause and Clarity and Reasonable Doubt in Early State-Constitutional Judicial Review. He is an affiliated scholar with the University of San Diego Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Born 1971 in Fort Wayne, IN
Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Nominated by Donald J. Trump on February 15, 2018, to a seat vacated by Richard Allen Posner. Confirmed by the Senate on May 14, 2018, and received commission on May 21, 2018.
Education:
St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, Indiana, B.B.A., 1993
Northwestern University School of Law, J.D., 1998
Professional Career:
Law clerk, Hon. Paul V. Niemeyer, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1998-1999
Law clerk, Hon. Anthony M. Kennedy, Supreme Court of the United States, 1999-2000
Private practice, Cleveland, Ohio, 2000-2002
Assistant U.S. attorney, Southern District of New York, 2002-2006
Counselor to the deputy attorney general, U.S. Department of Justice, 2006
Associate counsel, President George W. Bush, 2007
General counsel, National Security Council, and senior associate counsel, President George W. Bush, 2007-2009
Private practice, Chicago, Illinois, 2009-2018
Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin School of Law
Miriam Seifter's research and teaching interests include administrative law, federalism, state and local government law, energy law, and property law. Her recent work focuses on executive power and the separation of powers at the state level, and on the role of states and interest groups in the federal regulatory process. Her publications appear or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. In 2017, UW Law students honored Professor Seifter with the Classroom Teacher of the Year Award, and in 2018, she received one of twelve Distinguished Teaching Awards from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For her article Gubernatorial Administration, Seifter was named the 2017 winner of the American Constitution Society's Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law.
Professor Seifter received a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University, an M.Sc. with distinction from Oxford University, and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was the Environmental Fellow and an Articles Editor on the Harvard Law Review. After law school, she served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Merrick Garland on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to joining the UW Law faculty, she was a Visiting Researcher and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and worked in private practice at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in San Francisco.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Albert A. Walsh Chair in Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law; Faculty Director, Urban Law Center, Fordham Law School
Nestor Davidson joined Fordham in 2011 and was named the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law in 2017. Professor Davidson is an expert in property, urban law, and affordable housing law and policy, and is the co-author of the casebook Property Law: Rules, Policies and Practices (7th ed. 2017). Professor Davidson founded and serves as the faculty director of the law school’s Urban Law Center and previously served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Professor Davidson practiced with the firm of Latham and Watkins, focusing on commercial real estate and affordable housing, and served as Special Counsel and Principal Deputy General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He currently serves as a Member of the Board of the New York State Housing Finance Agency.
Professor Davidson earned his AB from Harvard College and his JD from Columbia Law School. After law school, he clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor of Law and Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government, University of Mississippi School of Law
Christopher Green (https://law.olemiss.edu/faculty-directory/christopher-green/) is Professor of Law and Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government at the University of Mississippi, where he has taught since 2006. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, and has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. He clerked for Judge Rhesa H. Barksdale on the Fifth Circuit and is the author of Equal Citizenship, Civil Rights, and the Constitution: The Original Sense of the Privileges or Immunities Clause (2015) and a large number of articles and essays on constitutional theory and the Fourteenth Amendment, including the two-part Original Sense of the (Equal) Protection Clause and Clarity and Reasonable Doubt in Early State-Constitutional Judicial Review. He is an affiliated scholar with the University of San Diego Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Born 1971 in Fort Wayne, IN
Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Nominated by Donald J. Trump on February 15, 2018, to a seat vacated by Richard Allen Posner. Confirmed by the Senate on May 14, 2018, and received commission on May 21, 2018.
Education:
St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, Indiana, B.B.A., 1993
Northwestern University School of Law, J.D., 1998
Professional Career:
Law clerk, Hon. Paul V. Niemeyer, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1998-1999
Law clerk, Hon. Anthony M. Kennedy, Supreme Court of the United States, 1999-2000
Private practice, Cleveland, Ohio, 2000-2002
Assistant U.S. attorney, Southern District of New York, 2002-2006
Counselor to the deputy attorney general, U.S. Department of Justice, 2006
Associate counsel, President George W. Bush, 2007
General counsel, National Security Council, and senior associate counsel, President George W. Bush, 2007-2009
Private practice, Chicago, Illinois, 2009-2018
Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin School of Law
Miriam Seifter's research and teaching interests include administrative law, federalism, state and local government law, energy law, and property law. Her recent work focuses on executive power and the separation of powers at the state level, and on the role of states and interest groups in the federal regulatory process. Her publications appear or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. In 2017, UW Law students honored Professor Seifter with the Classroom Teacher of the Year Award, and in 2018, she received one of twelve Distinguished Teaching Awards from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For her article Gubernatorial Administration, Seifter was named the 2017 winner of the American Constitution Society's Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law.
Professor Seifter received a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University, an M.Sc. with distinction from Oxford University, and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was the Environmental Fellow and an Articles Editor on the Harvard Law Review. After law school, she served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Merrick Garland on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to joining the UW Law faculty, she was a Visiting Researcher and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and worked in private practice at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in San Francisco.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Partner, Briscoe Prows Kao Ivester & Bazel LLP
Tony Francois is experienced in Water and Real Property Law, Land Use and Zoning, Environmental Regulation, Natural Resources Development, Agricultural Law, and Constitutional Law. He has represented homeowners, builders, farmers and ranchers, trade associations, and water districts in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies and state and federal trial and appellate courts. He is a member of the California State Bar and the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California and the Districts of New Mexico and North Dakota, and has litigated cases in federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has appeared before the Supreme Courts of California, Idaho, Nevada, and the United States.
Prior to attending law school, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in the former West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tony was an Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation from 2012 to 2021. He was a lobbyist for 10 years, first with California Farm Bureau Federation from 2003 to 2007, and then with KP Public Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was an attorney at McQuaid, Bedford & Van Zandt in San Francisco from 1999 – 2003.
Professor of Environmental Practice and Director, California Env, UC Davis School of Law
Richard M. Frank is a Professor of Environmental Practice and Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center (CELPC). Formerly the executive director of the Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law, Frank returned to UC Davis School of Law in January 2010. In addition to leading the CELPC, he teaches classroom courses in the environmental law curriculum.
Before coming to CLEE and UC Berkeley, Professor Frank practiced law with federal and state agencies for 32 years, most of that time with the California Department of Justice. Immediately before joining Berkeley Law, he served as California's Chief Deputy Attorney General for Legal Affairs.
In 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Frank to the Delta Vision Task Force, an advisory body asked to develop policy recommendations for the Governor and Legislature, addressing environmental problems confronting the California Delta. He served in that capacity in 2007-08. In May 2009, the Chair of the California Air Resources Board appointed Frank Vice Chair of the Economic Allocation & Advisory Committee, an advisory body formed to assist the Air Resources Board in implementing California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32).
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Judge, Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One
The Honorable Jennifer M. Perkins began service on the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, on October 30, 2017. At the time of her appointment by Governor Douglas Ducey, Judge Perkins was Assistant Solicitor General for the State of Arizona.
Judge Perkins was born in Portales, New Mexico, and primarily raised in Albuquerque. She attended the prestigious Albuquerque Academy from 1988-1995, before moving to Washington D.C. to attend the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University as a National Merit Scholar. Therafter, she relocated again to Dallas, Texas, and earned her juris doctor from the SMU Dedman School of Law, graduating cum laude in 2002.
Judge Perkins started her career at the law firm of Browning & Peifer (now Peifer, Hanson, Mullins, and Baker) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. While there, she litigated complex commercial matters including class action plaintiff and defense work, and assisted with employment and contract litigation. In 2003, the judge accompanied the Honorable James O. Browning in transitioning to the federal district court bench, serving as his first law clerk.
After her clerkship, Judge Perkins moved to Arizona to work for the Institute for Justice, Arizona Chapter, a public interest law firm. She spent five years with IJ-AZ litigating civil rights cases in Arizona and across the country. In 2009, the judge became Disciplinary Counsel for the Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct, where she reviewed and prosecuted ethics complaints against state court judges throughout Arizona. After five years serving the state in this capacity, Judge Perkins entered private practice by joining an appellate law firm in Phoenix. While there, she worked on state and federal appeals involving a wide range of legal subjects, including complex business disputes, property rights, judicial ethics, and personal injury matters.
In January 2015, Judge Perkins joined the Office of the Arizona Attorney General to serve as the first Assistant Solicitor General; in that capacity, she was responsible for oversight of Attorney General Opinions and served as ethics counsel to the entire office. In addition to these two primary roles, the judge assisted on a variety of matters including trial and appellate litigation of election-related matters; federal appellate litigation with the Federalism Unit; state criminal appeals; and drafting amicus briefs on behalf of Arizona in state and federal courts.
Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Professor Justin Pidot graduated with high honors from Wesleyan University before attending Stanford Law School, where he graduated with distinction and was editor in chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. Professor Pidot clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to joining the University of Denver faculty, he was an appellate litigator at the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he presented argument in more than a dozen federal appellate cases and acted as the staff attorney on two cases before the United States Supreme Court. Professor Pidot also completed a fellowship at the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute.
Professor Pidot’s scholarship and teaching focus on environmental law, natural resources law, and federal courts.
United States Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit
Milan Smith was confirmed on May 16, 2006 to the Ninth Circuit, which hears appeals from the federal district courts of Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
Judge Smith has a distinguished record as a practicing attorney in the public and private sectors. In his private practice, Judge Smith was well recognized for his expertise in real estate law. He represented major corporations, such as Honeywell International and Toyota Motor sales USA, Inc., and a wide range of public clients, such as the Palos Verdes Unified School District, the Los Angeles State Business Authority, and non-profit organizations such as Marymount College. Judge Smith also has extensive experience in the areas of tax law, corporate law and environmental law.
In 1988, Judge Smith was appointed by Governor George Deukmejian to the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission. This Commission hears cases of alleged housing and employment discrimination and determines whether and how much recovery to award to claimants. Mr. Smith participated in dozens of such cases on such topics as racial discrimination and sexual harassment.
Judge Smith’s litigation experience encompassed not only real estate matters, but also contract, family law, tax, and administrative cases. He also had a thriving transactional practice.
Judge Smith graduated from Brigham Young University in 1966, where he received his degree cum laude. In 1969, Judge Smith received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School
Partner, Briscoe Prows Kao Ivester & Bazel LLP
Tony Francois is experienced in Water and Real Property Law, Land Use and Zoning, Environmental Regulation, Natural Resources Development, Agricultural Law, and Constitutional Law. He has represented homeowners, builders, farmers and ranchers, trade associations, and water districts in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies and state and federal trial and appellate courts. He is a member of the California State Bar and the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California and the Districts of New Mexico and North Dakota, and has litigated cases in federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has appeared before the Supreme Courts of California, Idaho, Nevada, and the United States.
Prior to attending law school, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in the former West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tony was an Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation from 2012 to 2021. He was a lobbyist for 10 years, first with California Farm Bureau Federation from 2003 to 2007, and then with KP Public Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was an attorney at McQuaid, Bedford & Van Zandt in San Francisco from 1999 – 2003.
Professor of Environmental Practice and Director, California Env, UC Davis School of Law
Richard M. Frank is a Professor of Environmental Practice and Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center (CELPC). Formerly the executive director of the Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law, Frank returned to UC Davis School of Law in January 2010. In addition to leading the CELPC, he teaches classroom courses in the environmental law curriculum.
Before coming to CLEE and UC Berkeley, Professor Frank practiced law with federal and state agencies for 32 years, most of that time with the California Department of Justice. Immediately before joining Berkeley Law, he served as California's Chief Deputy Attorney General for Legal Affairs.
In 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Frank to the Delta Vision Task Force, an advisory body asked to develop policy recommendations for the Governor and Legislature, addressing environmental problems confronting the California Delta. He served in that capacity in 2007-08. In May 2009, the Chair of the California Air Resources Board appointed Frank Vice Chair of the Economic Allocation & Advisory Committee, an advisory body formed to assist the Air Resources Board in implementing California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32).
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Judge, Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One
The Honorable Jennifer M. Perkins began service on the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, on October 30, 2017. At the time of her appointment by Governor Douglas Ducey, Judge Perkins was Assistant Solicitor General for the State of Arizona.
Judge Perkins was born in Portales, New Mexico, and primarily raised in Albuquerque. She attended the prestigious Albuquerque Academy from 1988-1995, before moving to Washington D.C. to attend the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University as a National Merit Scholar. Therafter, she relocated again to Dallas, Texas, and earned her juris doctor from the SMU Dedman School of Law, graduating cum laude in 2002.
Judge Perkins started her career at the law firm of Browning & Peifer (now Peifer, Hanson, Mullins, and Baker) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. While there, she litigated complex commercial matters including class action plaintiff and defense work, and assisted with employment and contract litigation. In 2003, the judge accompanied the Honorable James O. Browning in transitioning to the federal district court bench, serving as his first law clerk.
After her clerkship, Judge Perkins moved to Arizona to work for the Institute for Justice, Arizona Chapter, a public interest law firm. She spent five years with IJ-AZ litigating civil rights cases in Arizona and across the country. In 2009, the judge became Disciplinary Counsel for the Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct, where she reviewed and prosecuted ethics complaints against state court judges throughout Arizona. After five years serving the state in this capacity, Judge Perkins entered private practice by joining an appellate law firm in Phoenix. While there, she worked on state and federal appeals involving a wide range of legal subjects, including complex business disputes, property rights, judicial ethics, and personal injury matters.
In January 2015, Judge Perkins joined the Office of the Arizona Attorney General to serve as the first Assistant Solicitor General; in that capacity, she was responsible for oversight of Attorney General Opinions and served as ethics counsel to the entire office. In addition to these two primary roles, the judge assisted on a variety of matters including trial and appellate litigation of election-related matters; federal appellate litigation with the Federalism Unit; state criminal appeals; and drafting amicus briefs on behalf of Arizona in state and federal courts.
Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Professor Justin Pidot graduated with high honors from Wesleyan University before attending Stanford Law School, where he graduated with distinction and was editor in chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. Professor Pidot clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to joining the University of Denver faculty, he was an appellate litigator at the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he presented argument in more than a dozen federal appellate cases and acted as the staff attorney on two cases before the United States Supreme Court. Professor Pidot also completed a fellowship at the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute.
Professor Pidot’s scholarship and teaching focus on environmental law, natural resources law, and federal courts.
United States Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit
Milan Smith was confirmed on May 16, 2006 to the Ninth Circuit, which hears appeals from the federal district courts of Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
Judge Smith has a distinguished record as a practicing attorney in the public and private sectors. In his private practice, Judge Smith was well recognized for his expertise in real estate law. He represented major corporations, such as Honeywell International and Toyota Motor sales USA, Inc., and a wide range of public clients, such as the Palos Verdes Unified School District, the Los Angeles State Business Authority, and non-profit organizations such as Marymount College. Judge Smith also has extensive experience in the areas of tax law, corporate law and environmental law.
In 1988, Judge Smith was appointed by Governor George Deukmejian to the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission. This Commission hears cases of alleged housing and employment discrimination and determines whether and how much recovery to award to claimants. Mr. Smith participated in dozens of such cases on such topics as racial discrimination and sexual harassment.
Judge Smith’s litigation experience encompassed not only real estate matters, but also contract, family law, tax, and administrative cases. He also had a thriving transactional practice.
Judge Smith graduated from Brigham Young University in 1966, where he received his degree cum laude. In 1969, Judge Smith received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School
Showcase Panel III: The States & Administrative Law
2018 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCShowcase Panel III: The States & Administrative Law
Nestor Davidson, Christopher R. Green, Michael Scudder, Miriam Seifter, Jeffrey S. Sutton
We live in a system where regulators make the rules, investigate alleged violations of the...
Showcase Panel III: The States & Administrative Law
Nestor Davidson, Christopher R. Green, Michael Scudder, Miriam Seifter, Jeffrey S. Sutton
We live in a system where regulators make the rules, investigate alleged violations of the...
The Rise of Environmental Nuisance Litigation: Can Municipalities Sue Oil Companies for Climate Change?
New York, NYTopics
Public Lands: Pride, Place, Proximity & Power
Professor Donald Kochan has a new article on public lands and federalism just published in...
Federalism, the Environment, Land Use, and Energy Independence
Tony Francois, Richard Frank, Donald J. Kochan, Jennifer Perkins, Justin Pidot, Milan D. Smith
Some states have criticized Washington overreach on a number of energy and environmental issues, from...
Federalism, the Environment, Land Use, and Energy Independence
Tony Francois, Richard Frank, Donald J. Kochan, Jennifer Perkins, Justin Pidot, Milan D. Smith
Some states have criticized Washington overreach on a number of energy and environmental issues, from...
Federalism, the Environment, Land Use, and Energy Independence
2016 Annual Western Chapters Conference
Simi Valley, CA