Of Counsel, Fisher & Phillips, LLP
Greg Grisham has over 25 years of successful experience counseling and representing employers in all aspects of workplace law in Tennessee and across the United States.
He has helped employers avoid claims, charges and lawsuits with a focus on preventative practices. Preventative practices include counseling in situations involving discipline, termination, demotion, promotion and other workplace changes in the terms and conditions of employment, harassment investigations, wage and hour compliance, FMLA Compliance, Reasonable Accommodation assessment, supervisor training and the review of employment policies and procedures. In addition, Greg's practice includes the representation of business entities subject to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act in Public Accommodation cases.
Greg has successfully litigated hundreds of administrative charges, employment lawsuits, and arbitration demands on behalf of employers, including federal and state law claims alleging discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, defamation, invasion of privacy, breach of contract, wage and hour violations and ERISA violations, among others. He also represents employers before the National Labor Relations Board in unfair labor practice proceedings. He represents employers in the enforcement of post-employment restrictive covenants such as non-compete, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements and related trade secret litigation. Greg's practice also includes the defense of property owners and property management companies in federal and state Housing Discrimination charges and litigation. He also advises Tennessee Public Charter Schools on education law and workplace compliance matters.
Greg has extensive experience working with insurance carriers and their insureds in the defense of EPLI claims. He is a regular speaker at public seminars on workplace law issues and has authored numerous articles on a variety of labor and employment law related topics.
Greg holds an AV Preeminent Peer Review rating from Martindale-Hubbell and has been selected for inclusion in Mid-South Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers in America for Employment Litigation-Management side. Greg was elected as a 2016 Fellow to the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and has been selected to the “Top 20 Lawyers in Traditional Labor & Employment Law” list in conjunction with Human Resource Executive Magazine and LawDragon’s 2017 and 2018 “Most Powerful Employment Attorneys” lists and specialty guides. Greg was also named a Fellow in the American Bar Foundation in 2017.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Daniel Blomberg is vice president and senior counsel for Becket. Before joining Becket, he clerked for Chief Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as litigation counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Daniel’s clients have included an international order of nuns, the world’s largest religious media organization, synagogues, members of the U.S. military, religious healthcare ministries, peaceful protestors, halfway houses, religious colleges, state legislators, homeless shelters, religious business owners, an art gallery, and churches. Daniel has represented a wide variety of faith groups, including Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Hindus, Hutterites, Jews, Lutherans, Mennonites, Muslims, Presbyterians, Russian Orthodox, and Sikhs. Cases on which he has served as counsel to a party include: Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey-Berru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020); Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 141 S. Ct. 63 (2020); Zubik v. Burwell, 136 S. Ct. 1557 (2016); Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius, 134 S. Ct. 1022 (2014); Wheaton College v. Burwell, 134 S. Ct. 2806 (2014); Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. SJUSD, 82 F.4th 664 (9th Cir. 2023) (en banc); Singh v. Berger, 56 F.4th 88 (D.C. Cir. 2022); Demkovich v. St. Andrew the Apostle Parish, 3 F.4th 968 (7th Cir. 2021) (en banc); Maxon v. Fuller Theological Seminary, 2021 WL 5882035 (9th Cir. 2021); Intervarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. University of Iowa, 5 F.4th 855, 867 (8th Cir. 2021); Business Leaders in Christ v. University of Iowa, 991 F.3d 969 (8th Cir. 2021); Whole Woman’s Health v. Smith, 896 F.3d 362 (5th Cir. 2018); Lee v. Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, 903 F.3d 113 (3d Cir. 2018); Gagliardi v. TJCV, 889 F.3d 728 (11th Cir. 2018); Harvest Family Church v. FEMA, 2018 WL 386192 (5th Cir. 2018); Fratello v. Archdiocese of New York, 863 F.3d 190 (2d Cir. 2017); Eternal Word Television Network v. U.S. Dep’t of HHS, 756 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2014); InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. Bd. of Governors of Wayne State Univ., 534 F. Supp. 3d 785 (E.D. Mich. 2021); and Singh v. Carter, 168 F. Supp. 3d 216 (D.D.C. 2016).
Daniel has been featured on CNN, Huffington Post Live, Fox News, EWTN Nightly News, and CBS Evening News.
He earned his J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law, graduating magna cum laude. While in law school, Daniel clerked for the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office, served on a South Carolina Supreme Court task force, and interned with Judge J. Michelle Childs of the Circuit Court for the Fifth Judicial Circuit as a part of the Judicial Observation and Education program. He is a Blackstone Fellow. Daniel received his undergraduate degree from Columbia International University. He and his wife have five children and too many animals.
General Counsel, The Center for Individual Rights
Michael E. Rosman is CIR’s General Counsel. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rochester in 1981, majoring in economics and political science. He received his J.D. in 1984 from Yale Law School. Mr. Rosman worked as an associate at Rosenman & Colin in New York City from 1984-93.
Mr. Rosman joined CIR in March 1994. Mr. Rosman is the author of several articles, including: “Ambiguity and the First Amendment: Some Thoughts On All-White Advertising,” 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 289 (1993); and “Standing Alone: Standing Under The Fair Housing Act,” 60 Mo. L. Rev. 547 (1995), “Thoughts on Bakke and Its Effect on Race- Conscious Decision-Making,” 2002 U. Chi. Legal F. 45 Book Review of Kent Greenawalt’s Fighting Words, 13 Constitutional Commentary 317 (1996)
Mr. Rosman has litigated throughout the federal court system, and has argued many times in the federal courts of appeals. He also successfully argued on behalf of CIR client Tony Morrison in the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case of United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000).
Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh
Chris W. Bonneau is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been since 2002. His research is primarily in the areas of judicial selection (specifically, judicial elections) and judicial decisionmaking. Professor Bonneau’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and he has published numerous articles, including in the American Journal of Political Science and Journal of Politics. He is also the coauthor of three books: Strategic Behavior and Policy Choice on the U.S. Supreme Court (2005), In Defense of Judicial Elections (2009), and the award-winning Voters’ Verdicts: Citizens, Campaigns, and Institutions in State Supreme Court Elections (2015).
Professor Bonneau teaches undergraduate classes in constitutional law, judicial politics, and research methods, as well as graduate classes in judicial politics and research design.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Chair, Issues & Appeals, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP
The former Solicitor General of West Virginia, Mr. Lin has been on the front lines of many precedent-setting cases in appellate courts across the country, including in a US Supreme Court victory that George Will called “the court’s most severe rebuke of a president” since the Truman administration. Having argued more than 60 appeals, he brings to clients a well-honed ability to identify the most persuasive issues for appeal and a practiced understanding of how best to frame complex legal questions in appellate courts.
With experience in the private sector and multiple branches of government, Mr. Lin’s practice has spanned a wide range of issues, including major questions of constitutional and administrative law at the federal and state levels. On behalf of more than two dozen states, he won a stay from the US Supreme Court of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Described by the New York Times as an “unprecedented” order, the stay was the first time the Supreme Court had ever put a regulation on hold before review by a federal appeals court. In that same case, Elbert argued before the en banc DC Circuit in an historic proceeding that one commenter quoted in E&E News compared to “the NBA All-Star Game.” At the state level, Elbert led the effort that persuaded the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to overturn an injunction of the state’s right-to-work law.
In 2013, Mr. Lin was appointed the Solicitor General of West Virginia. During his four-and-a-half year tenure, he served as a member of the Attorney General’s senior management team, oversaw all civil and criminal appeals, and argued nearly two dozen cases in federal and state appellate courts. He authored more than twenty-five briefs in the US Supreme Court and more than forty-five formal Opinions of the Attorney General.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Lin served as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the US Department of Justice’s Civil Division, where he received a Special Service Award. He has also been a law clerk at all three levels of the federal judiciary: for Justice Clarence Thomas on the US Supreme Court; for Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit; and for Senior Judge Robert E. Keeton on the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Mr. Lin speaks regularly on a wide variety of topics, including constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, state and federal relations, the US Supreme Court, and appellate practice. He has testified before Congress, and has spoken at the national conventions of the American Bar Association, the Association of Corporate Counsel, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Federalist Society, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Mr. Lin is admitted to practice in the following federal courts: the Supreme Court of the United States; the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, D.C., and Federal Circuits; the District of Massachusetts; the Northern and Southern Districts of West Virginia; and the Eastern and Western Districts of Virginia.
Justice, Texas Fourteenth District Court of Appeals
Katy Boatman was elected to the Fourteenth Court of Appeals, Place 6, in November 2024. She is board certified in civil appellate law and a member of the Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists.
Prior to becoming a judge, Katy practiced appellate law at a large law firm, handling a wide variety of state and federal appeals. She clerked for the Supreme Court of Texas Justice Dale Wainwright and for the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jennifer Elrod. She received her bachelor's degree from Texas A&M University and her law degree from Baylor University School of Law, where she served as a senior executive editor of the Baylor Law Review and was a member of the National Order of the Barristers. Katy has been recognized as a Rising Star in appellate law, was honored as a 40 Under 40 recipient by the Houston Business Journal, and was the sole recipient of the American Bar Association's National Outstanding Young Lawyers Award, Outstanding Young Lawyer of Houston Award, and the Outstanding Young Lawyer of Texas.
Katy has been married to her husband since 2005. They have three children and are involved in several non-profit organizations.
Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Josh Blackman is a national thought leader on constitutional law and the United States Supreme Court. Josh’s work was quoted during two presidential impeachment trials. He has testified before Congress and advises federal and state lawmakers. Josh regularly appears on TV, including NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the BBC. Josh is also a frequent guest on NPR and other syndicated radio programs. He has published commentaries in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and leading national publications.
Since 2012, Josh has served as a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. He holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law. Josh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Josh has written more than seven dozen law review articles that have been cited more than a thousand times. Josh was selected as the Jurist of the Year by the Texas Journal of Law & Public Policy, received the inaugural Meese III Originalism Award, and was awarded the Inaugural Joseph Story Award. Josh was selected by Forbes Magazine for the “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy. Josh is the President of the Harlan Institute, and founded FantasySCOTUS, the Internet’s Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracyand posts@JoshMBlackman.
Justice, Fifth District Court of Appeals
Justice John Browning was appointed to the Fifth District Court of Appeals by Governor Greg Abbott on August 24, 2020. Before joining the Court, he was a trial and appellate lawyer for thirty-one years as a partner with large national law firms and his own small law firm. While in private practice, Justice Browning’s vast experience encompassed personal injury and wrongful death; product liability; commercial litigation; intellectual property disputes; employment matters; consumer protection and DTPA cases; professional liability; health care; class action litigation; defamation and media law; and cyberliability and data privacy. He is admitted in both Texas and Oklahoma, as well as before the U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of Texas, the Western District of Oklahoma, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Justice Browning received bachelors degrees in History and Comparative Literature in 1986 from Rutgers University, where he was a National Merit Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, and Henry Rutgers Scholar. He received his J.D. in 1989 from the University of Texas School of Law, where he received awards for legal writing and advocacy. A former varsity tennis player and teaching professional, Justice Browning won tournaments at the local, state, national, and international levels. During his years in private practice, Justice Browning was rated “AV Preeminent” (5.0 out of 5.0) by Martindale-Hubbell, designated a “Texas Super Lawyer” from 2005-2020, and named to a variety of “Best Lawyers” lists and trial lawyer honorary societies.
Justice Browning has a long record of leadership and service to the bar, and has served as Chair of the Texas Bar Journal Editorial Advisory Board, as Chair of the Computer & Technology Section of the State Bar, as an appointed member of the Professional Ethics Committee, as a member of the State Bar Grievance Committee, as a member of the State Bar Jury Service Committee, and as President of the Rockwall County Bar Association. He also serves on the UT Law Alumni Association Executive Committee. Justice Browning is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a board member of SCRIBES, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society.
A noted legal author and CLE speaker, Justice Browning has received the Bar’s highest honors for legal writing, legal ethics, and public service. These include the State Bar of Texas Presidents’ Certificate of Merit; the Texas Bar Foundation’s Dan Rugeley Price Memorial Award; the Lola Wright Foundation Award for lifetime contributions to legal ethics; the Texas Bar College’s Patrick Nester Award for Outstanding Achievement in Continuing Legal Education; the Texas Bar College’s Jim Bowmer Professionalism Award; the Texas Bar Foundation’s Outstanding Law Review Article of the Year Award; the Texas Bar College’s Outstanding CLE Article of the Year Award; the Houston Bar Foundation’s Outstanding Legal Article of the Year Award; the DRI’s G. Duffield Smith Outstanding Publication of the Year Award; the J.L. Turner Foundation Award for Contributions to Legal History; and the Burton Award for Distinguished Achievement in Legal Writing (2009, 2010, 2012, 2014). Justice Browning is the author of four law books, more than forty law review articles, and hundreds of other articles on legal subjects.
Presiding Judge, Georgia Court of Appeals
Presiding Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard was appointed as the 73rd judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia on November 1, 2010 by Governor Sonny Perdue. Prior to his appointment, Judge Dillard was in private practice with James, Bates, Pope & Spivey in Macon, serving as chairman of the firm’s appellate practice group. Judge Dillard was elected and then reelected by his fellow Georgians in 2012, 2018, and 2024. On July 1, 2017, Judge Dillard was sworn in as the 30th Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia for a two-year term that ended on June 30, 2019. He currently serves as the presiding judge of the Court’s Fourth Division, and will begin serving as the presiding judge of the Court’s Third Division in 2026.
Judge Dillard was born in Nashville, Tennessee on November 13, 1969. He attended and graduated from Hillwood High School in Nashville, Tennessee; Samford University (B.A. 1992); Mississippi College School of Law (J.D., cum laude, 1996); and Duke University School of Law (LL.M., Judicial Studies, 2025). In college, Judge Dillard was a member of The Sigma Chi Fraternity and Omicron Delta Kappa. He was also given the Evelyn Meadows Historical Essay Award, as well as the William McMillian Rogers Colonial Dames Overall Essay Award, for “The Tempting of America to be America: Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Papers.” During law school, Judge Dillard was a member of the Moot Court Board and received the Judge Robert G. Gillespie Outstanding Achievement in Appellate Advocacy Award, as well as the American Jurisprudence Award in Appellate Advocacy. He also served as president of the Mississippi College Chapter of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
After graduating from law school, Judge Dillard joined the Macon law firm of Stone and Baxter, where he practiced from 1996 until 2001. In September 2001, he left private practice for a two-year period to serve as a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for Judge Daniel A. Manion (who was appointed by President Ronald W. Reagan in 1986 and served until 2022). In September 2003, Judge Dillard joined James Bates as of counsel, specialized in appellate practice and complex litigation, and served as chairperson of the firm’s appellate practice group. While in practice, he received an AV® Preeminent™ Peer-Review Rating from Martindale-Hubbell and was named by Super Lawyers as one of Georgia’s “rising stars.”
Additionally, Judge Dillard was appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue to the Judicial Nominating Commission and the Public Defender Selection Panel for the Macon Judicial Circuit. He has published scholarly essays in the Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties, the Encyclopedia of Great American Judges, the Encyclopedia of Great American Lawyers, Judicature, the Green Bag Almanac & Reader, the Journal of Appellate Practice & Process, as well as two articles in the Mercer Law Review regarding the inner workings and culture of the Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia. He was also a participating lawyer with the Criminal Justice Act Appellate Panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, handling pro bono publico appeals for indigent individuals. Judge Dillard is a member of the State Bar of Georgia’s Appellate Practice and Judicial Sections, the Macon Bar Association, the Atlanta Bar Association, the Lawyers Club of Atlanta, the Saint Thomas More Society, the Judge Clarence Cooper American Inn of Court, the Logan E. Bleckley American Inn of Court, the William Augustus Bootle American Inn of Court, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the Palaver Club of Macon, and the Samford Bulldog Club. He also has served as a mentor for The Appellate Project, which is “focused on empowering law students of color to pursue appellate work.”
Since joining the Court of Appeals, Judge Dillard has spoken to numerous organizations, participated in countless state and national seminars, held a wide variety of leadership positions, and received many awards. In 2025, one of Judge Dillard’s opinions—his concurrence in Board of Commissioners of Brantley County v. Brantley County Development Partners LLC et al.—was selected by The Green Bag Almanac and Reader as one of its works of “exemplary writing.” Judge Dillard was also named as the Milvain Chair in Advocacy by the University of Calgary Law Faculty that year, and he is the first American jurist and 43rd person to ever receive this honor. In 2024, Judge Dillard was appointed by Chief Justice Michael P. Boggs as co-chair of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Study Committee on Legal Regulatory Reform, joined The Legal Accountability Project’s Advisory Board, and also gave the “Last Senior Lecture” to the Samford University Class of 2024. In 2023, Judge Dillard began serving his second term on Samford University’s Board of Overseers, and started the L.L.M. program for Judicial Studies at the Duke University School of Law. In 2022, he began serving on the Communications Committee of the Council of Chief Judges of the State Courts of Appeal. In 2021, Judge Dillard was given the “Significant Sig” award by The Sigma Chi Fraternity (one of its highest honors), which “recognizes those alumni members whose exemplary achievements in their fields of endeavor have brought great honor and prestige to the name of Sigma Chi.” He also began serving that year on the Dean Search Committee for Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, and completed his work on that committee in April 2022. In 2020, Judge Dillard began serving his second two-year term as the president of the Samford University Alumni Association, a three-year term on Samford University’s Board of Overseers, as an advisor to the Pi Chapter of The Sigma Chi Fraternity at Samford University, and as a member of the Samford University Presidential Search Committee and the Samford University Task Force on Racial Justice. He was also given the Distinguished Judicial Service Award that year by the Young Lawyers Division of the State Bar of Georgia for the second time in his career. In 2019, Judge Dillard began teaching Appellate Practice and Procedure at Mercer University Law School and joined the National Advisory Board for The Constitutional Sources Project (“ConSource”), an organization dedicated to increasing access to and understanding of the United States Constitution and its history and creation. He was also named that year as the “Tweeter Laureate” of Georgia by the Georgia House of Representatives, as one of Atlanta’s 500 most powerful leaders by Atlanta Magazine, and as “Best Social Mediator” by the Fulton County Daily Report. In 2018, Judge Dillard began serving his first two-year term as president of the Samford University Alumni Association, as well as a member of the Samford University Athletic Director’s Cabinet. He also began his service that year as a member of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Justice for Children Committee. In 2017, Judge Dillard was named Samford University’s “Alumnus of the Year,” which is the highest honor the university bestows on its graduates. In 2016, Judge Dillard began serving a two-year term as president of Samford University’s Atlanta Alumni chapter. He was also appointed that year as the co-chairperson of the Georgia Judicial Council’s Strategic Plan Standing Committee, and as a member of the Council’s Standing Committee on Technology. Finally, he was also named Samford University’s 2016 “Featured Alumnus” for the Howard College of Arts and Sciences. In 2015, Judge Dillard was appointed by Governor Nathan Deal to the Georgia Appellate Jurisdiction Review Commission. He was also appointed that year to serve on the Georgia Judicial Council, and as the chairperson of the Court Reporting Matters Committee. In 2014, Judge Dillard was named the “State Judge of the Year” by his alma mater, the Mississippi College School of Law, for his outstanding judicial service; and he also received the “Fastcase 50” award, which honors leaders in the world of law, scholarship, and legal technology. In 2013, Judge Dillard was awarded the Distinguished Judicial Service Award by the Young Lawyers Division of the State Bar of Georgia, recognizing his outstanding service on the bench and commitment to improving the practice of law. In 2012, Judge Dillard was appointed to the Code of Judicial Conduct Review Committee by Chief Judge John J. Ellington, and he also began serving as the special consultant to the Georgia High School Mock Trial Committee.
Among his many accomplishments in leadership at the Court of Appeals, Judge Dillard restructured the Court’s Central Staff Attorney Office, advocated for and implemented livestreaming and archiving of the Court’s oral arguments, helped design and shepherd a complete overhaul of the Court’s operational structure, had the primary responsibility for overseeing the Court’s move to the Nathan Deal Judicial Center (during his time as chief judge), drafted numerous Court rules (including the rule abolishing “physical precedent”) and IOM revisions, and lead the implementation of the Court’s transition to its first typography change in twenty years (i.e., the “Equity” font). Finally, he created, designed, and continues to oversee the Judge Herbert E. Phipps Fellowship program in partnership with Morehouse College.
Judge Dillard is married to the former Krista McDaniel, and they have three children. He is a parishioner of Saint Joseph Catholic Church and the former president of the School Board for Saint Joseph’s Catholic School.
Founder, Original Jurisdiction
David Lat is a lawyer turned writer. He publishes Original Jurisdiction, a newsletter on Substack about law and legal affairs, and he writes for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Prior to launching Original Jurisdiction, David founded Above the Law, one of the nation's most widely read legal news websites, and Underneath Their Robes, a popular blog about federal judges that he wrote under a pseudonym. He is also the author of a novel set in the world of the federal courts, Supreme Ambitions. Before entering the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Don Willett serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Before joining the federal bench, Judge Willett served 13 years on the Supreme Court
of Texas. His career spans decades of public service, including roles as legal counsel to
a Texas Attorney General, a Texas Governor, a U.S. Attorney General, and the
President of the United States.
Raised by a heroic widowed mom in a doublewide trailer in a town of 32, Judge
Willett is his family’s first college graduate. He earned a triple-major B.B.A. from Baylor
University—where he serves on the Board of Regents—and three degrees from Duke
University—where he serves on the Board of Visitors: a J.D. with honors, an A.M. in
political science, and an LL.M. in judicial studies. After law school, he clerked on the
Fifth Circuit and practiced at Haynes and Boone before entering public service.
Judge Willett publishes widely in both leading law reviews and national media, including
The Yale Law Journal, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Wall Street
Journal. The longtime editor-in-chief of Judicature—the Scholarly Journal for Judges, he
holds academic appointments at various law schools and has received more than a
dozen Green Bag honors for “exemplary legal writing.” He was named Distinguished
Jurist of the Year by the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and he is a member of the
American Law Institute and a Life Fellow of the American, Texas, and Austin Bar
Foundations.
A onetime bull rider and professional drummer, Judge Willett was named “Tweeter
Laureate of Texas” in 2015. He is the namesake of Don R. Willett Elementary
School—home of mighty Willett Wranglers—located just a mile from where he grew up.
He and his radiant wife, Tiffany have three children—Jacob, Shane-David, and
Geneviève—plus the family pup, Amicus.
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Technology, Social Media and Professional Ethics
2018 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC