Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Times. Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University.
Adjunct Professor, Belmont Abbey College
Director of the Program on Environmental and Energy Law, Assistant Dean of Adjunct Faculty Affairs, and Fellow in Environmental Law, American University Washington College of Law
William Snape has litigated a number of environmental and related cases in federal court, and argued Center for Biological Diversity v. Interior at the DC Circuit, which rejected the federal government’s plan for oil and gas drilling off the coast of Alaska in part because of climate change concerns. Snape is the author of numerous articles on natural resource issues, including the book Biodiversity and the Law published by Island Press. His public interest work currently focuses upon environmental justice advocacy at the state level, serving as board general counsel to the United States Climate Action Network, and litigating an active federal docket under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In Summer 2020, Snape was named director of WCL’s Program on Environmental and Energy Law (PEEL).
Professor of Law; Director, Business Law Program, American University Washington College of Law
David V. Snyder is professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law and is the director of the Business Law Program. He was also a visiting professor of law at the University of Michigan from January to May 2024. He has been a regular visiting professor at the law school of the University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) since 2012, and during 2021-2022, he held a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute (Florence). In 2014, he was awarded a McCormick Fellowship, during which he delivered the Wilson Memorial Lecture (University of Edinburgh).
Professor Snyder’s research and teaching interests are primarily in contracts and commercial law, including their U.S., international, and comparative aspects. He is known for his work on international commercial transactions and is the author (with Martin Davies) of International Transactions in Goods: Global Sales in Comparative Context (Oxford University Press 2014). More particularly, he has devoted considerable effort to using contracts to protect the environment and the human rights of workers in international supply chains, and his book (with Susan A. Maslow) Contracts for Responsible and Sustainable Supply Chains (American Bar Association 2023) includes the Model Contract Clauses produced by a working group and task force that he chairs for the ABA Business Law Section. He is also co-chair of a similar working group in Europe. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on these and other topics
A Louisiana native, Professor Snyder graduated summa cum laude from Tulane Law School after earning his undergraduate degree cum laude from Yale. He clerked for the Honorable John M. Duhé Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and subsequently joined the D.C. firm of Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells). He began his academic career at Cleveland-Marshall College at Law Cleveland State University and then moved to Indiana University (Bloomington) before joining the faculty at Tulane Law School. He returned to Washington to accept his current appointment in 2006. In addition, Professor Snyder has served as a visiting professor at the University of Paris 10 (Nanterre La Défense), Boston University, and the College of William and Mary, and he has taught summer courses at the University of Mainz (Germany).
Professor Snyder was chair of the Section on Contracts of the Association of American Law Schools (2005-2006) and chaired the Washington steering committee for the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law (2010). He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and has served on the board of directors of the Washington Foreign Law Society, the board of editors of the American Journal of Comparative Law, and the scientific council of the French Journal of Legal Policy
Professor of Law; Director, Business Law Program, American University Washington College of Law
David V. Snyder is professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law and is the director of the Business Law Program. He was also a visiting professor of law at the University of Michigan from January to May 2024. He has been a regular visiting professor at the law school of the University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) since 2012, and during 2021-2022, he held a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute (Florence). In 2014, he was awarded a McCormick Fellowship, during which he delivered the Wilson Memorial Lecture (University of Edinburgh).
Professor Snyder’s research and teaching interests are primarily in contracts and commercial law, including their U.S., international, and comparative aspects. He is known for his work on international commercial transactions and is the author (with Martin Davies) of International Transactions in Goods: Global Sales in Comparative Context (Oxford University Press 2014). More particularly, he has devoted considerable effort to using contracts to protect the environment and the human rights of workers in international supply chains, and his book (with Susan A. Maslow) Contracts for Responsible and Sustainable Supply Chains (American Bar Association 2023) includes the Model Contract Clauses produced by a working group and task force that he chairs for the ABA Business Law Section. He is also co-chair of a similar working group in Europe. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on these and other topics
A Louisiana native, Professor Snyder graduated summa cum laude from Tulane Law School after earning his undergraduate degree cum laude from Yale. He clerked for the Honorable John M. Duhé Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and subsequently joined the D.C. firm of Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells). He began his academic career at Cleveland-Marshall College at Law Cleveland State University and then moved to Indiana University (Bloomington) before joining the faculty at Tulane Law School. He returned to Washington to accept his current appointment in 2006. In addition, Professor Snyder has served as a visiting professor at the University of Paris 10 (Nanterre La Défense), Boston University, and the College of William and Mary, and he has taught summer courses at the University of Mainz (Germany).
Professor Snyder was chair of the Section on Contracts of the Association of American Law Schools (2005-2006) and chaired the Washington steering committee for the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law (2010). He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and has served on the board of directors of the Washington Foreign Law Society, the board of editors of the American Journal of Comparative Law, and the scientific council of the French Journal of Legal Policy
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
United States Representative, United States House of Representatives
Congressman Jamie Raskin proudly represents Maryland’s 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. The district includes Montgomery, Carroll, and Frederick Counties. Congressman Raskin was sworn into his second Term at the start of the 116th Congress on January 3, 2019.
Congressman Raskin is a returning Member of the House Judiciary Committee, the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and the Committee on House Administration. This Congress, he joined the House Committee on Rules and now Chairs the Rules Subcommittee on Expedited Procedures. Raskin is Vice Chair of the House Administration Committee, Chair of the Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and Vice Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. Raskin is the Caucus Leadership Representative for the 116th Congress, a role in which he represents Junior Members of the Caucus (those who have served five or less Terms) at the leadership table. He was also appointed to serve as a Senior Whip for the 116th Congress.
Prior to his time in Congress, Raskin was a three-term State Senator in Maryland, where he also served as the Senate Majority Whip. He earned a reputation for building coalitions in Annapolis to deliver a series of landmark legislative accomplishments. He was also a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for more than 25 years. He authored several books, including the Washington Post best-seller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People and the highly-acclaimed We the Students: Supreme Court Cases For and About America’s Students, which has sold more than 50,000 copies.
Congressman Raskin is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, live in Takoma Park with their dogs, Potter and Toby. They have three grown children: Tabitha, Tommy, and Hannah.
Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
Sterling and Eleanor Colton Endowed Chair in Law; Associate Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, BYU Law
Professor Moore is a scholar of foreign relations law, international law, international human rights, and international development. His publications have appeared in the Harvard, Columbia, Virginia, and Northwestern Law Reviews, among others. Professor Moore has taught international law, international human rights, U.S. foreign relations law, civil procedure, legal scholarship, a plenary powers colloquium, and an international religious freedom clinic. As a teacher, he has been recognized with the University's R. Wayne Hansen Teaching and Learning Fellowship, the BYU Law Alumni Association Teacher of the Year Award, and the Student Bar Association First Year Professor of the Year Award. He is a member of the American Law Institute.
As a human rights expert, Professor Moore serves on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Moscow Mechanism. In 2020, he was elected to a brief term on the Human Rights Committee, a body of independent experts that oversees states’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Professor Moore also serves as an Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, which seeks to secure the blessings of religious freedom and belief for everyone.
Between 2017 and 2019, Professor Moore served, variously, as the Acting Deputy Administrator and General Counsel of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government’s lead agency for international development and humanitarian assistance. From 2016 to 2017, he was the Associate Dean for Research and Academic Affairs at Brigham Young University Law School. He was a Visiting Professor at the George Washington University Law School from 2008 to 2009.
Before joining BYU, Professor Moore clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. during the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 Term. From 2003 to 2007, Professor Moore was an assistant and then associate professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. He arrived at the University of Kentucky after researching and teaching at the University of Chicago Law School as an Olin Fellow from 2001 to 2003. From 2000 to 2001, Professor Moore clerked for Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. From 1996 to 2000, he was an Honor Program trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch.
Professor Moore is a summa cum laude graduate of Brigham Young University Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Law Review and graduated first in his class. He received his BA from Brigham Young University, where he was a Benson scholar and graduated summa cum laude, with University Honors, and as co-valedictorian of his college. He and his wife Natalie are the parents of seven wonderful children.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
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Cleveland State Student Chapter
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Pontifical Catholic Student Chapter
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Is Customary International Law U.S. Law?
First Amendment Issues