Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Aditya Bamzai is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He teaches administrative law, civil procedure, computer crime and conflicts of law, and he has written about these and related subjects. He has argued cases relating to the separation of powers and national security in the U.S. Supreme Court, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, D.C. Circuit and other federal courts of appeals. From 2019 to 2021, he served as a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a federal agency charged with ensuring that the government’s national security efforts are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties. Before entering the academy, Bamzai was an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and an appellate attorney in both private practice and for the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. Earlier in his career, he was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Professor of Law, Baylor Law School
Professor Ron Beal has developed an expertise in Texas administrative law. He has authored numerous law review articles that have been cited as authoritative by the Texas judiciary, taught training courses for administrative law judges and lectured in advanced courses for practicing lawyers.
"Procedure is the lifeblood of the practicing attorney," he says. "There is no greater error that can be committed by a lawyer than making a procedural error that deprives his/her client of the right to have a decision made on the merits of a claim or defense. At the same time, there is no other area of the law that a student perceives as more boring than studying procedural law. Thus, I am highly motivated to engage students in studying procedure and to demonstrate to them the vital importance of the subject area."
"In addition, administrative law can be properly labeled as a "hybrid system" that borrows principles from the constitutional system and blends them with informal processes of decision-making and policy formation. It is difficult for the average student to view issues with clarity when the answer is not black or white, but is found within the gray area that merges principles from both disciplines. However, if one can discern the consistent themes within this unique area of law, the sun shines through the trees and the student experiences the 'Ah-Ha' phenomenon of understanding. That is my reward and my goal for Baylor Law students."
Professor Beal earned a J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law in 1979 after receiving a B.A. in 1975 from St. Olaf College. After graduation, he was a civil trial lawyer for three years in St. Paul, Minn., at Murnane, Brandt . Professor Beal then earned a LL.M. at Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia, Penn. In 1983, he joined the faculty at Baylor Law School.
In 1991, he was honored by the State Bar of Texas Administrative and Public Law Council for writing the Outstanding Administrative Law Review Article and in 1994, Baylor University conferred upon him the award of Outstanding Research Professor. In 1997, he completed a treatise, Texas Administrative Practice and Procedure, which is considered the "bible" of Texas administrative law. He also has served as Editor-in-Chief of the General Practice Digest of the General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Section of the State Bar of Texas for the last 25 years. He has also been the contributing editor for Texas Administrative Law for 25 years.
Professor Beal is an avid jogger and recently ran in the infamous Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco. He also enjoys reading, PBS Mysteries and Masterpiece Theatre, classical music, art and foreign films and model railroading.
Founding Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and the chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, “one of the Nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above The Law 2017). The National Law Journal recently wrote that Mr. Cooper’s “brilliant legal career has so far spanned five decades and thrust Cooper into the spotlight in some of the most historic moments of the country’s modern history.” He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. He has been lead trial counsel in numerous complex, weeks-long trials in federal courts throughout the country. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the 10 best litigators in Washington D.C., Mr. Cooper’s work has been reported in numerous press accounts, and he has been called a “powerhouse attorney” (Fortune 2015), “a hard-nosed litigator” (Washington Post 2017), and “one of the country’s most in-demand civil litigators and a Washington legal institution unto himself” (The American Spectator 2014).
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978–79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of, among other things, appellate matters. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office responsible for providing legal opinions and advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues covering the full spectrum of federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.
In 1988 he returned to private practice as a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.
Mr. Cooper has represented a wide range of public and private clients in highly complex constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, healthcare, banking, intellectual property, elections, campaign finance, administrative, commercial, and government contract cases. He has led trial teams in cases that have won judgments and settlements valued in the billions of dollars and that have established ground-breaking constitutional precedents.
Much of Mr. Cooper’s practice has involved representing high-profile clients in nationally prominent matters, including: the State of Florida in a First Amendment suit brought by the Disney Company concerning its autonomous regulatory authority over its Disney World property; the Commonwealth of Virginia in a suit seeking to enjoin the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls; 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team falsely accused of rape by officials of Duke University and the City of Durham; Harper Lee in a copyright dispute with the heirs of Gregory Peck; high-ranking former government officials such as former Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr, and Ambassador John Bolton; several Governors and United States Senators; over 100 Members of Congress; and many state, territorial, and local government bodies and officials. He has also represented and advised government officials and public figures in connection with sensitive private issues that needed to be, and were, resolved discreetly without becoming matters of public record.
In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he served for three terms. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the American Law Institute (since 1993) and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (since 1996). He is also an active member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, which in 2010 named him Republican Lawyer of the Year and in 2016 honored him with its Edwin Meese III Award.
Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 26 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues, including the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to administrative agencies, the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of federal courts, statehood bills for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the impeachment of President Clinton.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Founder, Libertas-West Project
Karen Lugo is a constitutional law consultant and national security analyst. She was Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment at Texas Public Policy Foundation from 2013 to 2015. When living in California, she was Co-Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence Center. From 2005 – 2012, she was a clinical visiting and adjunct professor at Chapman University School of Law where she co-taught the advanced Constitutional Law Clinic. Karen has co-authored and written circuit-level and Supreme Court amicus briefs on such issues as FISA Surveillance, Healthcare Reform, Arizona’s Border Security, Gay Marriage, The Ten Commandments, Eminent Domain, Christian Clubs on University Campuses, and Material Support for Terrorists.
Karen is the founder of the Libertas-West Project, a center for study Islamic integration and radicalization issues. In this capacity, she consulted with the Center for Security Policy to write a book on local over-watch of mosque construction and community engagement called: Mosques in America: A Guide to Accountable Permit Hearings and Continuing Citizen Oversight.
Karen writes and speaks for European and American groups on the importance of basing assimilation efforts on principles of Western exceptionalism. She presented a policy brief to the French Conseil d’Etat analyzing the legal implications of banning the burqa. Ms. Lugo has written one of the most comprehensive overviews of sharia law in American courts, American Family Law and Sharia-Compliant Marriages, for the Federalist Society law journal, Engage. She has written several white papers on the American Law for American Courts legislation and sharia tribunals in America.
Ms. Lugo was an appointee to the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also taught a Human Rights law course on the contrast between French and English Enlightenment theories in Strasbourg, France.
Until moving from California, Ms. Lugo was a member of the David Horowitz Freedom Center Board of Directors. She was also a regular guest on the Orange County PBS local issues debate program, Inside OC, and she is a contributor to Pajamas Media, National Review Online, City Journal, American Spectator, American Greatness, Townhall.com, American Thinker, Daily Caller, and Family Security Matters. She has been interviewed by dozens of radio hosts and has spoken for civic groups on constitutional and cultural concerns.
Charles I. Francis Professorship in Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Professor Aaron Nielson lectures and writes in the areas of administrative law, civil procedure, and federal courts. Before joining the faculty, he served as Solicitor General of Texas and represented Texas before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court, as well as overseeing all appellate litigation for the State. Earlier in his career, he was a professor at Brigham Young University and an appellate and antitrust partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He also clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
As Solicitor General, Professor Nielson successfully defended against a First Amendment challenge Texas’s law requiring online pornographers to institute age verification. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court appointed him to defend the constitutionality of a federal agency. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States after completing a six-year term as an appointed public member and chair of the Conference’s Administration & Management Committee.
Nielson’s research focuses on administrative law, federal litigation, and the separation of powers. He has published (or soon will publish) in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Northwestern University Law Review, among others. Nielson has been recognized for teaching for teaching and scholarship and in 2021 received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic for excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, and a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society. He is also an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Professor Nielson received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and an LL.M from the University of Cambridge, where he focused his studies on the institutions that regulate global competition and commerce. He received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in economics and political science.
State Attorney General, Texas
Of Counsel, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Prerak Shah is Of Counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. He was most recently the Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, leading a team of approximately 120 Assistant U.S. Attorneys handling a wide range of cases, including securities fraud, health care fraud, the False Claims Act, computer crime, national security, tax fraud, money laundering, public corruption, and terrorism. Mr. Shah previously held several leadership positions at the Department of Justice, including Deputy Associate Attorney General in the office overseeing the work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment & Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. Before joining the Justice Department, Mr. Shah served as Chief of Staff to Senator Ted Cruz and as a Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Aditya Bamzai is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He teaches administrative law, civil procedure, computer crime and conflicts of law, and he has written about these and related subjects. He has argued cases relating to the separation of powers and national security in the U.S. Supreme Court, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, D.C. Circuit and other federal courts of appeals. From 2019 to 2021, he served as a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a federal agency charged with ensuring that the government’s national security efforts are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties. Before entering the academy, Bamzai was an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and an appellate attorney in both private practice and for the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. Earlier in his career, he was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Professor of Law, Baylor Law School
Professor Ron Beal has developed an expertise in Texas administrative law. He has authored numerous law review articles that have been cited as authoritative by the Texas judiciary, taught training courses for administrative law judges and lectured in advanced courses for practicing lawyers.
"Procedure is the lifeblood of the practicing attorney," he says. "There is no greater error that can be committed by a lawyer than making a procedural error that deprives his/her client of the right to have a decision made on the merits of a claim or defense. At the same time, there is no other area of the law that a student perceives as more boring than studying procedural law. Thus, I am highly motivated to engage students in studying procedure and to demonstrate to them the vital importance of the subject area."
"In addition, administrative law can be properly labeled as a "hybrid system" that borrows principles from the constitutional system and blends them with informal processes of decision-making and policy formation. It is difficult for the average student to view issues with clarity when the answer is not black or white, but is found within the gray area that merges principles from both disciplines. However, if one can discern the consistent themes within this unique area of law, the sun shines through the trees and the student experiences the 'Ah-Ha' phenomenon of understanding. That is my reward and my goal for Baylor Law students."
Professor Beal earned a J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law in 1979 after receiving a B.A. in 1975 from St. Olaf College. After graduation, he was a civil trial lawyer for three years in St. Paul, Minn., at Murnane, Brandt . Professor Beal then earned a LL.M. at Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia, Penn. In 1983, he joined the faculty at Baylor Law School.
In 1991, he was honored by the State Bar of Texas Administrative and Public Law Council for writing the Outstanding Administrative Law Review Article and in 1994, Baylor University conferred upon him the award of Outstanding Research Professor. In 1997, he completed a treatise, Texas Administrative Practice and Procedure, which is considered the "bible" of Texas administrative law. He also has served as Editor-in-Chief of the General Practice Digest of the General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Section of the State Bar of Texas for the last 25 years. He has also been the contributing editor for Texas Administrative Law for 25 years.
Professor Beal is an avid jogger and recently ran in the infamous Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco. He also enjoys reading, PBS Mysteries and Masterpiece Theatre, classical music, art and foreign films and model railroading.
Founding Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and the chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, “one of the Nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above The Law 2017). The National Law Journal recently wrote that Mr. Cooper’s “brilliant legal career has so far spanned five decades and thrust Cooper into the spotlight in some of the most historic moments of the country’s modern history.” He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. He has been lead trial counsel in numerous complex, weeks-long trials in federal courts throughout the country. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the 10 best litigators in Washington D.C., Mr. Cooper’s work has been reported in numerous press accounts, and he has been called a “powerhouse attorney” (Fortune 2015), “a hard-nosed litigator” (Washington Post 2017), and “one of the country’s most in-demand civil litigators and a Washington legal institution unto himself” (The American Spectator 2014).
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978–79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of, among other things, appellate matters. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office responsible for providing legal opinions and advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues covering the full spectrum of federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.
In 1988 he returned to private practice as a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.
Mr. Cooper has represented a wide range of public and private clients in highly complex constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, healthcare, banking, intellectual property, elections, campaign finance, administrative, commercial, and government contract cases. He has led trial teams in cases that have won judgments and settlements valued in the billions of dollars and that have established ground-breaking constitutional precedents.
Much of Mr. Cooper’s practice has involved representing high-profile clients in nationally prominent matters, including: the State of Florida in a First Amendment suit brought by the Disney Company concerning its autonomous regulatory authority over its Disney World property; the Commonwealth of Virginia in a suit seeking to enjoin the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls; 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team falsely accused of rape by officials of Duke University and the City of Durham; Harper Lee in a copyright dispute with the heirs of Gregory Peck; high-ranking former government officials such as former Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr, and Ambassador John Bolton; several Governors and United States Senators; over 100 Members of Congress; and many state, territorial, and local government bodies and officials. He has also represented and advised government officials and public figures in connection with sensitive private issues that needed to be, and were, resolved discreetly without becoming matters of public record.
In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he served for three terms. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the American Law Institute (since 1993) and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (since 1996). He is also an active member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, which in 2010 named him Republican Lawyer of the Year and in 2016 honored him with its Edwin Meese III Award.
Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 26 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues, including the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to administrative agencies, the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of federal courts, statehood bills for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the impeachment of President Clinton.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Founder, Libertas-West Project
Karen Lugo is a constitutional law consultant and national security analyst. She was Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment at Texas Public Policy Foundation from 2013 to 2015. When living in California, she was Co-Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence Center. From 2005 – 2012, she was a clinical visiting and adjunct professor at Chapman University School of Law where she co-taught the advanced Constitutional Law Clinic. Karen has co-authored and written circuit-level and Supreme Court amicus briefs on such issues as FISA Surveillance, Healthcare Reform, Arizona’s Border Security, Gay Marriage, The Ten Commandments, Eminent Domain, Christian Clubs on University Campuses, and Material Support for Terrorists.
Karen is the founder of the Libertas-West Project, a center for study Islamic integration and radicalization issues. In this capacity, she consulted with the Center for Security Policy to write a book on local over-watch of mosque construction and community engagement called: Mosques in America: A Guide to Accountable Permit Hearings and Continuing Citizen Oversight.
Karen writes and speaks for European and American groups on the importance of basing assimilation efforts on principles of Western exceptionalism. She presented a policy brief to the French Conseil d’Etat analyzing the legal implications of banning the burqa. Ms. Lugo has written one of the most comprehensive overviews of sharia law in American courts, American Family Law and Sharia-Compliant Marriages, for the Federalist Society law journal, Engage. She has written several white papers on the American Law for American Courts legislation and sharia tribunals in America.
Ms. Lugo was an appointee to the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also taught a Human Rights law course on the contrast between French and English Enlightenment theories in Strasbourg, France.
Until moving from California, Ms. Lugo was a member of the David Horowitz Freedom Center Board of Directors. She was also a regular guest on the Orange County PBS local issues debate program, Inside OC, and she is a contributor to Pajamas Media, National Review Online, City Journal, American Spectator, American Greatness, Townhall.com, American Thinker, Daily Caller, and Family Security Matters. She has been interviewed by dozens of radio hosts and has spoken for civic groups on constitutional and cultural concerns.
Charles I. Francis Professorship in Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Professor Aaron Nielson lectures and writes in the areas of administrative law, civil procedure, and federal courts. Before joining the faculty, he served as Solicitor General of Texas and represented Texas before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court, as well as overseeing all appellate litigation for the State. Earlier in his career, he was a professor at Brigham Young University and an appellate and antitrust partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He also clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
As Solicitor General, Professor Nielson successfully defended against a First Amendment challenge Texas’s law requiring online pornographers to institute age verification. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court appointed him to defend the constitutionality of a federal agency. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States after completing a six-year term as an appointed public member and chair of the Conference’s Administration & Management Committee.
Nielson’s research focuses on administrative law, federal litigation, and the separation of powers. He has published (or soon will publish) in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Northwestern University Law Review, among others. Nielson has been recognized for teaching for teaching and scholarship and in 2021 received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic for excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, and a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society. He is also an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Professor Nielson received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and an LL.M from the University of Cambridge, where he focused his studies on the institutions that regulate global competition and commerce. He received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in economics and political science.
State Attorney General, Texas
Of Counsel, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Prerak Shah is Of Counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. He was most recently the Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, leading a team of approximately 120 Assistant U.S. Attorneys handling a wide range of cases, including securities fraud, health care fraud, the False Claims Act, computer crime, national security, tax fraud, money laundering, public corruption, and terrorism. Mr. Shah previously held several leadership positions at the Department of Justice, including Deputy Associate Attorney General in the office overseeing the work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment & Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. Before joining the Justice Department, Mr. Shah served as Chief of Staff to Senator Ted Cruz and as a Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
President and CEO, Liberty Strategies LLC
Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, and now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, where he serves as chairman of the state’s Judicial Qualifications Commission. Bob also chairs Liberty Guard, Inc. a non-profit and non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting individual liberty. He also heads a consulting firm, Liberty Strategies, Inc., and is a registered Mediator and Arbitrator. Bob has taught constitutional law at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School and government at Kennesaw State University.
Bob is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Rifle Association, and serves on the Board of the Interactive College of Technology. He is a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity.
From 2003 to 2008, Bob occupied the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union. He served as a member of The Constitution Project’s Initiative on Liberty and Security, and from 2003 to 2005 was a member of a project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government addressing matters of privacy and security. Barr has served as an advisory board member for Privacy International, headquartered in London, and was labeled “Mr. Privacy” by former New York Times columnist William Safire. He was the Libertarian Party nominee for President in 2008.
Bob has appeared on virtually every major cable and network television program dealing with public policy matters. He writes regularly for Townhall.com, The Daily Caller, and The Marietta Daily Journal, and has been a columnist and blogger for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He writes occasional pieces for other publications and hosts a regular podcast, “Bob Barr’s Laws of the Universe.” He is the author of three books: “The Meaning of Is: The Squandered Impeachment and Wasted Legacy of William Jefferson Clinton,” “Patriot Nation: Bob Barr’s Laws of the Universe Volume One,” and “Lessons in Liberty.”
Bob was appointed by President Reagan as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia (1986-90), served as President of Southeastern Legal Foundation from 1990-91, and was an official with the CIA from 1971-78. Additionally, he has served as a member of U.S. delegations at several United Nations conferences on firearms.
Bob Barr was awarded his law degree from Georgetown University, his master’s degree from The George Washington University, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. He and his wife Jeri live in Smyrna, Georgia just outside Atlanta.
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.
President and CEO, Liberty Strategies LLC
Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, and now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, where he serves as chairman of the state’s Judicial Qualifications Commission. Bob also chairs Liberty Guard, Inc. a non-profit and non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting individual liberty. He also heads a consulting firm, Liberty Strategies, Inc., and is a registered Mediator and Arbitrator. Bob has taught constitutional law at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School and government at Kennesaw State University.
Bob is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Rifle Association, and serves on the Board of the Interactive College of Technology. He is a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity.
From 2003 to 2008, Bob occupied the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union. He served as a member of The Constitution Project’s Initiative on Liberty and Security, and from 2003 to 2005 was a member of a project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government addressing matters of privacy and security. Barr has served as an advisory board member for Privacy International, headquartered in London, and was labeled “Mr. Privacy” by former New York Times columnist William Safire. He was the Libertarian Party nominee for President in 2008.
Bob has appeared on virtually every major cable and network television program dealing with public policy matters. He writes regularly for Townhall.com, The Daily Caller, and The Marietta Daily Journal, and has been a columnist and blogger for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He writes occasional pieces for other publications and hosts a regular podcast, “Bob Barr’s Laws of the Universe.” He is the author of three books: “The Meaning of Is: The Squandered Impeachment and Wasted Legacy of William Jefferson Clinton,” “Patriot Nation: Bob Barr’s Laws of the Universe Volume One,” and “Lessons in Liberty.”
Bob was appointed by President Reagan as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia (1986-90), served as President of Southeastern Legal Foundation from 1990-91, and was an official with the CIA from 1971-78. Additionally, he has served as a member of U.S. delegations at several United Nations conferences on firearms.
Bob Barr was awarded his law degree from Georgetown University, his master’s degree from The George Washington University, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. He and his wife Jeri live in Smyrna, Georgia just outside Atlanta.
Partner (retd.), Foley & Lardner LLP
Cleta Mitchell was a partner and political law attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Foley & Lardner LLP and a member of the firm’s Political Law Practice. With more than 40 years of experience in law, politics and public policy, Ms. Mitchell advised nonprofit and issue organizations, corporations, candidates, campaigns, and individuals on state and federal campaign finance law, election law, and compliance issues related to lobbying, ethics and financial disclosure. Ms. Mitchell practiced before the Federal Election Commission, the ethics committees of the US House and Senate and similar state and local enforcement bodies and agencies.
Ms. Mitchell has extensive experience on the federal lobbying and ethics law enacted by Congress in 2007, having taught dozens of seminars on the subject since its passage. In 2008, Ms. Mitchell authored The Lobbying Compliance Handbook, published by Columbia Books, Inc.
Ms. Mitchell represented numerous candidates, campaigns and members of Congress, as well as state and national political party committees. She has served as legal counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Ms. Mitchell served as co-counsel for the National Rifle Association in the Supreme Court case involving the 2002 federal campaign finance law.
Ms. Mitchell has testified before Congress on numerous occasions related to election law, campaign finance and lobbying and ethics laws, and is a frequent speaker and guest commentator on political law. In 1999, she authored "The Rise of America’s Two National Pastimes: Baseball and the Law," published by the University of Michigan Law Review, and in 2012, Ms. Mitchell authored “Donor Disclosure: Undermining The First Amendment,” published by the Minnesota Law Review. In 2013, she was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, “How to Investigate the IRS.”
Ms. Mitchell served on the advisory council to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law and as an advisor on the American Law Institute's Election Law Project entitled, “Principles of Election Law: Dispute Resolution.” She serves on the board of directors of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, is chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation, and has served as the president of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Ms. Mitchell was a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976-1984 where she chaired the House Appropriations and Budget Committee. She served on the executive committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Ms. Mitchell was in private law practice in Oklahoma City in litigation and administrative law until 1991 when she became director and general counsel of the Term Limits Legal Institute in Washington, D.C. She litigated cases in state and federal courts nationwide on congressional term limits and served as co-counsel with former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell in the Supreme Court of the United States case on term limits for members of Congress.
Ms. Mitchell earned both her B.A., magna cum laude, and J.D. from the University of Oklahoma.
Founder, Paredes Strategies LLC
Troy A. Paredes is the founder of Paredes Strategies LLC. From 2008-2013, Mr. Paredes was a Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, having been appointed by President George W. Bush. At the SEC, Mr. Paredes was a strong advocate for small business and the JOBS Act, for solving the information overload problem of securities law disclosure, and for rigorous cost-benefit analysis. He also consistently expressed concerns about the overregulation and overreach of the Dodd-Frank Act. Since leaving government, Mr. Paredes has had an active consulting practice. Mr. Paredes advises on financial regulation, corporate governance, compliance, and governmental and regulatory affairs. He also serves as an expert and adviser in regulatory enforcement investigations and actions and in private litigation involving securities law and corporate law, and he has been an independent compliance consultant/monitor. Before becoming an SEC Commissioner, Mr. Paredes was a professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and a professor of business (by courtesy) at Washington University’s Olin Business School. Currently, he is the Distinguished Policy Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. Next year he will be a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU School of Law. Mr. Paredes is the author of numerous academic articles on financial regulation, corporate governance, innovation, and behavioral economics. He also is a co-author (beginning with the 4th edition) of a multi-volume securities regulation treatise with Louis Loss and Joel Seligman entitled Securities Regulation. Mr. Paredes serves on the board of directors of Electronifie Inc. and is a member of the board of advisors of StreetShares, Inc. Mr. Paredes holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from UC Berkeley and earned his J.D. from Yale Law School.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance, Harvard Business Sc, Harvard Law School
Mihir A. Desai is the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He received his Ph.D. in political economy from Harvard University; his MBA as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School; and a bachelor's degree in history and economics from Brown University. In 1994, he was a Fulbright Scholar to India.
Professor Desai's areas of expertise include tax policy, international finance, and corporate finance. His academic publications have appeared in leading economics, finance, and law journals. His work has emphasized the appropriate design of tax policy in a globalized setting, the links between corporate governance and taxation, and the internal capital markets of multinational firms. His research has been cited in The Economist, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, and several other publications. He is a Research Associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research's Public Economics and Corporate Finance Programs, and served as the co-director of the NBER's India program.
His general interest publications include opinion pieces on varied topics, including tax policy and the effects of globalization on domestic welfare, in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Tax Notes and The New York Times. He has also written for practitioners in the Harvard Business Review on the role of the Global CFO, on how to reform the U.S. tax system, and how changing incentive systems have contributed to the degradation of American competitiveness. He has testified several times to Congressional bodies, including most recently to the Senate Finance Committee on corporate tax reform and inversions.
Professor Desai has taught extensively as an award-winning teacher at HBS and at Harvard University. As a second-year professor teaching finance in the required curriculum, he received the Student Association Award for teaching excellence from the HBS Class of 2001. He subsequently built a second-year elective on International Financial Management, and his many cases on international finance are collected in a casebook published by John Wiley and are taught around the world. Since 1999, he has co-taught Public Economics (EC 1410) at Harvard College. He has also taught seminars and classes on tax policy at Harvard Law School, NYU Law School, and Columbia Law School. Most recently, Professor Desai has been active in delivering various executive education programs at HBS, including the General Managers Program (GMP), on campus and around the world. In 2011, Professor Desai launched, with Professor Joe Lassiter, the first offering at HBS for Harvard undergraduates, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, that is also included as part of the General Education curriculum at Harvard College. In the fall of 2014, Professor Desai began teaching Taxation at Harvard Law School.
From 2008 to 2011, Professor Desai led HBS's doctoral programs, which include the DBA and joint programs with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In that role, he led the restructuring of various programs and initiated a terminal master's program. From 2010 to 2014, Professor Desai was the Senior Associate Dean for Planning and University Affairs, where he was part of the senior management team of the Business School focused on integration with the rest of the University. Specifically, he has launched a program for Harvard undergraduates to collaborate on research with HBS professors (PRIMO), led the course for undergraduates described above, helped launch the Harvard Innovation Lab, worked on campus planning efforts including the design of Tata Hall and served on the newly created Harvard Libraries Board.
His professional experiences include working at CS First Boston (1989-1991), McKinsey & Co. (1992), and advising a number of firms and governmental organizations. He is also on the Advisory Board of the International Tax Policy Forum and the Centre for Business Taxation at Oxford University.
Senior Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School
Stephen E. Shay is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Law School.
Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty as a Professor of Practice in 2011, Mr. Shay was Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs in the United States Department of the Treasury. Prior to re-joining the Treasury Department in 2009, Mr. Shay was a tax partner for 22 years with Ropes & Gray, LLP. Mr. Shay served in the Office of International Tax Counsel at the Department of the Treasury, including as International Tax Counsel, from 1982 to 1987, during which Mr. Shay actively participated in the development and enactment of international provisions in the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Mr. Shay has published scholarly and practice articles relating to international taxation, and testified for law reform before Congressional tax-writing committees. He has had extensive practice experience in the international tax area and while in active practice was recognized as a leading practitioner in Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers, Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers, The Best Lawyers in America, Euromoney's Guide to The World's Leading Tax Advisers and Euromoney's, Guide to The Best of the Best. Mr. Shay discloses certain related interests and activities not connected with his position at Harvard Law School on the Harvard Law School website.
Mr. Shay is President of the American Tax Policy Institute Board of Trustees and is the IBFD Professor in Residence for 2015. Mr. Shay serves on the Executive Committee of the New York State Bar Association Tax Section and has been active in the American Bar Association Tax Section as a Council Director and Chair of the Committee on Foreign Activities of U.S. Taxpayers, in the American Law Institute as an Associate Reporter and in the Taxes Committee of the International Bar Association. Mr. Shay is a 1972 graduate of Wesleyan University, and he earned his J.D. and his M.B.A. from Columbia University in 1976.
Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law
Professor Bryant is a prolific scholar and a popular teacher. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Cincinnaiti College of Law, he spent three years on the faculty of the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he was voted Law Professor of the year in 2001-02.
After earning his JD from the University of Chicago Law School, Professor Bryant clerked for James L. Buckley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was a litigation associate at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C. and Assistant Senate Legal Counsel in the U.S. Senate Office of Legal Counsel.
BA, Hanover College
JD, University of Chicago
Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Professor Dent taught law at New York University, Cardozo, and the New York Law School before joining the faculty in 1990. Earlier he had clerked for Judge Paul R. Hays of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, and practiced corporate law in New York with Debevoise, Plimpton, Lyons & Gates. He teaches Business Associations, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Business Planning and is the faculty supervisor for the Business Organizations Concentration. He has published many articles on corporate and securities law, including “Academics in Wonderland: The Team Production and Director Primacy Models of Corporate Governance,” Houston Law Review (2008); “Corporate Governance: Still Broke, No Fix in Sight,” Journal of Corporation Law (2005); “Lawyers and Trust in Business Alliances,” Business Lawyer (2002); and “Gap Fillers and Fiduciary Duties in Strategic Alliances,” The Business Lawyer (2001). He also writes on law and religion, as in “Civil Rights for Whom: Gay Rights Versus Religious Freedom,” University of Kentucky Law Journal (2006-07); and “How Does Same-Sex Marriage Threaten You?,” Rutgers Law Review (2007). Mr. Dent serves as a director of the National Association of Scholars and as president of the Ohio Association of Scholars. He serves as an officer of Cleveland Chapter of the Federalist Society. He heads the Law Section of the Association for the Study of Free Institutions. He is chairman of the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Ave Maria School of Law
Antony “Tony” Kolenc joined the Ave Maria School of Law faculty in 2022 as the Director of the Veterans and Servicemembers Law Clinic (VSLC), which gives students the opportunity to help those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, representing them in litigation, administrative proceedings, and veterans treatment courts. Professor Kolenc taught in several law schools after serving over 21 years in the United States Air Force, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel from the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. During his career as a JAG, he litigated both civil and criminal cases before trial and appellate courts, including the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He has also taught at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and Florida Coastal School of Law as a tenured professor.
Professor Kolenc received his Juris Doctor degree in 1999, graduating at the top of his class from the University of Florida Levin College of Law. While there, he served as a senior editor on the Florida Law Review and as a competitor and coach on the Justice Campbell Thornal Moot Court Board. He also earned his Master of Arts degree in Theology and Christian Ministry from the Franciscan University of Steubenville. His professional writings have focused on matters of constitutional law and military policy, especially focusing on Freedom of Religion. His articles have appeared in several academic legal journals and magazines. He also writes a regular legal column for homeschooling families in Practical Homeschooling Magazine and has penned an award-winning historical fiction trilogy for teens. He and his wife, Alisa, homeschooled their five children. You can learn more about him at www.antonykolenc.com.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Professor of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law
Professor Robert Steinbuch joined the Bowen School of Law faculty in 2005 after several years in government and private practice. Professor Steinbuch’s government service includes clerking on the United States Court of Appeals and working for the United States Department of Justice. Most recently, he worked for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee. He is well published in law reviews, legal periodicals and medical journals, and he has been interviewed by various news sources for his legal expertise. Professor Steinbuch’s publications include articles in the Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal (renamed the Harvard Journal on Racial & Ethnic Justice), the Houston Law Review, the Maryland Law Review, the Loyola of L.A. Law Review, the Kentucky Law Review, the Health Matrix, the National Law Journal, the American Journal of Cardiology, and the Journal of the National Medical Association. His article “Mere Thieves” was republished in the Securities Law Review as one of the year’s ten best securities-law articles. Professor Steinbuch has served as an expert witness on complex economic matters and is singular at Bowen to have testified before the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. He has also testified before the Arkansas Legislature. Professor Steinbuch serves as a Peer Reviewer for United States Department of State’s Fulbright Program. In addition, he is an editor for Journal of the National Medical Association. As a scholar in health law, Professor Steinbuch currently serves as a Commissioner on the Arkansas Commission for Newborn Umbilical Cord Blood Bank Initiative and as a Board of Trustees Member for the Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium. He has previously served on the Board of the Society of Chest Pain Centers. Professor Steinbuch is the recipient of the law school’s Faculty Excellence Awards in both Scholarship and Service.
Lecturer of Law, National University of Ireland Maynooth
Professor Tillman is a member of the law faculty at the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM). He clerked for Judge Mark E. Fuller (U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama), Judge William J. Martini (U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey), Judge Jane R. Roth (U.S Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit), and for Magistrate Judge Malachy E. Mannion (U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania). He has also been an adjunct professor at Rutgers University School of Law (Newark), where he taught Constitutional Law, legal writing, and equity.
Professor Tillman has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Assistant Professor of Law, Barry University - Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law
Nadia B. Ahmad is an Associate Professor at Barry University School of Law. Professor Ahmad’s research explores the intersections of energy siting, the environment, and sustainable development and draws on international investment law and corporate social responsibility. She has published over 30 scholarly articles and book chapters. In 2016, she was recognized by the Orlando Business Journal as a 40 Under 40 honoree for her leadership and community involvement.
Professor Ahmad was competitively selected twice to present at the Sabin Colloquium on Innovative Environmental Scholarship at Columbia Law School. She has presented her research on the law and policy of advanced biofuels in Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Cambridge, Doha, Denver, New York, and San Francisco. Prior to joining the Barry Law faculty, Professor Ahmad was the inaugural Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Law at Pace Law School. She also worked as a Legal Fellow with Sustainable Development Strategies Group on tax policy for natural resources, community development agreements, and mineral leasing rights for projects in Afghanistan, Mali, and Mozambique. At the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University, she advised on offshore drilling laws for Sierra Leone. Professor Ahmad’s earlier experience included working for a multinational oil and gas company in the Denver-Julesburg Basin and in private law practice in Florida in the areas of land use, zoning, asset protection, and bad faith insurance litigation defense.
Professor Ahmad earned an undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature with language emphases in Latin and English from the University of California at Berkeley with high honors. Her undergraduate thesis examined representations of tradition and modernity in Indo-Anglian literature from 1947 to 1997. She completed her law degree (J.D.) from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where she was a Virgil Hawkins Fellowship recipient. At UF Law, she served as executive editor of the Florida Journal of International Law and wrote about women’s property rights in Post-Partition South Asia. Later, she earned a masters of law (LL.M.) in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where she explored the legal barriers for the deployment of advanced renewable technologies in the Global South and worked on the editorial review of the Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law.
She currently serves as Vice Chair of the ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice’s Environmental Justice Committee, which was presented with the 2016-2017 ABA Committee Excellence Award, and the ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources' Superfund and Natural Resource Damages Litigation Committee. She is an official expert for multilateral development organization, International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR) Taskforce on Bamboo for Renewable Energy (TFB4RE), which promotes environmentally sustainable development using bamboo and rattan. She was previously Chair of the Younger Comparativists Committee’s Linkages and Engagement Advisory Group of the American Society of Comparative Law, Regional Chair of Mid-Florida for the Florida Muslim Bar Association, Chair of the Florida Bar’s Media and Communications Law Committee and a Board Member of the City and County of Denver’s Human Rights and Community Partnerships Advisory Board. Professor Ahmad is a member of the state bars of Florida and Colorado.
Professor Ahmad’s most publications and working papers may be found on Social Science Research Network.
Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law (on leave); Senior Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice
Professor Dolin’s scholarship centers on patent law with a specific focus on how the patent regime affects innovation, especially in bio-pharmaceutical areas. His work in these areas includes a number of scholarly articles, presentations, amicus briefs, and congressional testimony.
Dr. Dolin is currently on leave from his academic duties while he serves as Senior Counsel in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.
From January 2020 to January 2022, Professor Dolin served as a resident Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau. In this role, he (together with other members of the Court) heard appeals in civil, criminal, administrative, and constitutional law matters.
Prior to joining the University of Baltimore School of Law, Professor Dolin held visiting appointments in other law schools. He also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Pauline Newman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the late Hon. H. Emory Widener Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Rumors that he has a real Russian bear in his office are entirely true.
Jeremy Kidd graduated in 2007 with honors from George Mason University School of Law, where he was Executive Editor for the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy. He holds a BA in economics and political science and a Ph.D. in economics from Utah State University.
After law school, he practiced as a real estate associate with Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll in Washington, D.C. and later as a litigation associate with Strong & Hanni in Salt Lake City, Utah. He clerked for the Honorable Ted Stewart on the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah and the Honorable Alice Batchelder, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Professor Kidd's primary teaching interests are in the areas of business associations, torts, contracts, and law and economics. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at George Mason University School of Law and has taught courses in business law and economics at Utah State University and Weber State University.
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Professor Manta teaches intellectual property law subjects. Her research examines the intersection between intellectual property law and social science, with a focus on psychology. She has most recently written about the hedonic value of trademarks and its legal implications, the problem of cognitive bias in copyright infringement litigation, price discrimination through software licensing in the age of the Internet of Things, and the role of criminal sanctions in intellectual property. Professor Manta has published or has forthcoming work in the Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Stanford Technology Law Review, Florida Law Review, Arizona Law Review, and Cornell Law Review Online, among others. She is also a co-author for a forthcoming textbook on criminal law issues in intellectual property. Professor Manta has further been a guest blogger for PrawfsBlawg and for Concurring Opinions. In 2014, she received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publications, which is awarded to two junior faculty members across all disciplines at Hofstra University.
Before joining the law school faculty in 2012, Professor Manta was an Assistant Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2007 to 2009. Professor Manta has also served on the faculties of Brooklyn Law School, The George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for the 2006-2007 term.
While earning her J.D. at Yale Law School, Professor Manta was the grand prize winner of the Foley & Lardner LLP Intellectual Property Writing Competition. She also served as tributes editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in psychology.
Professor of Law, University of Wyoming College of Law
George Mocsary is an expert in corporate and small-business law, and the law of firearms.
Currently, he is Professor of Law, Founder & Director of Firearms Research Center, and Director of the Business Planning Practicum and at the University of Wyoming College of Law.
Professor Mocsary teaches and writes about Agency & Partnership, Contracts, Corporations, Securities Regulation, the Second Amendment, and Firearms Law, including the intersection of Firearms Law and private law. He is a co-author of Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy (3rd ed. 2021), the first casebook on this topic.
Prior to his appointment at Wyoming, he served as an Associate Professor of Law at the Southern Illinois University School of Law and spent two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He practiced corporate and bankruptcy law at Cravath, Swaine and Moore in New York, and clerked for the Honorable Harris L. Hartz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Professor Mocsary holds a J.D. from Fordham Law School and an M.B.A. from the University of Rochester Simon School of Business. At Fordham, he graduated first in his class, and served as Notes and Articles Editor of the Fordham Law Review. He has published in the George Washington Law Review, George Mason Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Duke Law Journal Online, and other journals. His work has been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, several U.S. Courts of Appeals, the Supreme Court of Illinois, the Delaware Court of Chancery, and other courts.
Associate Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
Frank Edwards Tyler Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Kansas School of Law
Stephen Ware is the author of four books, over 50 law review articles, and many other publications. His writings have been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States and in at least 36 other cases. Ware teaches and writes on: Arbitration, Mediation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution, Bankruptcy, Insolvency, and Debt Collection, Contracts and Commercial Law, and Judicial Selection, each with an international or comparative dimension.
Ware has testified before both houses of the U.S. Congress, several state legislatures and, as an expert witness, in court. He is a frequent guest lecturer and speaker at academic and professional conferences—having given such presentations throughout the U.S. and in several other countries. He has appeared on numerous television and radio stations and been quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, National Law Journal and many other news outlets. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and has served, at various times in his career, on the editorial board of the Journal of Legal Education and as an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
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Richard J. Sullivan was sworn in as a United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit in October 2018. Before that, Judge Sullivan served for eleven years as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Prior to becoming a judge, he served as the General Counsel and Managing Director of Marsh Inc., the world's leading risk management and insurance brokerage firm. From 1994 to 2005, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he was Chief of the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit and Director of the New York/New Jersey Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. In 2003, he was awarded the Henry L. Stimson Medal from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In 1998, he was named the Federal Law Enforcement Association's Prosecutor of the Year. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, he was a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York and a law clerk to the Honorable David M. Ebel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, the College of William & Mary, and Chaminade High School on Long Island. From 1986 to 1987, he served as a New York City Urban Fellow under New York City Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward. Judge Sullivan is on the executive board of the New York American Inn of Court and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on sentencing and jurisprudence, and he previously served as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where he taught courses on white collar crime and trial advocacy and was named Adjunct Professor of the Year.
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Former Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service
Gerald Walpin, the new Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service, has vowed a vigorous effort to investigate and prosecute all persons who betray the public’s trust by defrauding the Corporation and its programs.
A prominent New York attorney, Walpin was nominated by President George W. Bush, confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn into office on January 8, 2007. He leads the Office of Inspector General (OIG), an independent Federal agency charged with oversight over the taxpayer-supported Corporation and its service programs, including AmeriCorps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)and Senior Corps.
“My major objective is to expand upon the good work of this office by preventing, detecting and prosecuting all thefts and frauds,” said Walpin. “The reality is that such misconduct takes precious resources away from deserving people, the same way the theft of a welfare check hurts a single mother who needs that money to buy milk for her children. For that reason, this office will seek out and ensure sanctions for all wrongdoing involving Corporation funds.”
Walpin said his other major goal is to “assist the Corporation in making its services efficient and accessible for all national service stakeholders.”
A New York City native, Walpin graduated from College of the City of New York in 1952. He earnedhis law degree, cum laude, in 1955 from Yale Law School, where he was managing editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1957-60, he served as a lieutenant in the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General.
His career included a five-year stint as Chief of Prosecutions for the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted a number of high-profile cases. He spent more than 40 years as senior partner and, more recently, of counsel to New York-based Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP.
Mr. Walpin has represented a wide range of clients, including large public corporations, securities brokerage firms, accounting firms, law firms, banks in lender liability claims, and individuals, both American and foreign, in securities litigations, employment litigations, criminal prosecutions, and investigations by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Both as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and in his law firm, he was frequently called upon to investigate fraudulent conduct.
Included in the published compilation “The Best Lawyers in America,” Mr. Walpin served from 2002-2004 as president of the Federal Bar Council, the association of attorneys practicing in the Second Circuit Federal courts. In 2003, he was honored with the American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for outstanding professionalism as an attorney and for mentoring younger lawyers.
Walpin and his wife Sheila, married for almost 50 years, have three children and six grandchildren.
Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service
Chief of Prosecutions in the New York U.S. Attorney's Office.
President of the Federal Bar council
Senior Partner of and Council to Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Chief of Prosectutions for the US Attornery for the Southern District of New York
Lieutenant in the US Air Force Judge Advocate General
B.A., College of the City of New York, 1952
J.D., Yale Law School
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Justice Scalia and the Evolution of Chevron Deference
Aditya Bamzai, Ron Beal, Charles J. Cooper, Edith H. Jones, Karen J. Lugo, Aaron Nielson, Ken Paxton, Prerak Shah
For over thirty years, the seminal Supreme Court decision in Chevron v. NRDC has provided the principles...
Justice Scalia and the Evolution of Chevron Deference
Second Annual Texas Chapters Conference
Austin, TXLiberty’s Nemesis: An Editors' Presentation
Chicago, IllinoisDinner with CFTC Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo
Washington, District of ColumbiaLiberty's Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State
New York, New YorkCorporate Inversions: Tax Dodge, or Symptom of the Tax Code?
Teleforum7 Minute Presentations of Works in Progress Panel 1-A
18th Annual Faculty Conference
New York, NY7 Minute Presentations of Works in Progress Panel 1-B
18th Annual Faculty Conference
New York, NYWho's Right on Birthright? Are Trump and Cruz, or Rubio and Bush, Reading the 14th Amendment Right on Birthright Citizenship?
New York, New YorkAccreditation Overreach
In my Wall Street Journal op-ed today, "Why Aren't There More Black Scientists?: The Evidence...