University Professor of Law and Executive Director, Liberty & Law Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
David Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Turin, and Hebrew University. Professor Bernstein teaches Constitutional Law, Evidence, and Products Liability.
A prolific author, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. He is the author of five books, and coauthor of two more. Professor Bernstein’s book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as “intellectual history in its highest form,” a “fresh perspective and a cogent analysis,” “delightful and informative,” “sharp and iconoclastic,” and “a terrific work of historical revisionism.” Columnist George Will praised Bernstein’s most recent book, Classified, The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, as “perhaps the most consequential American book of 2022.”
Professor Bernstein has also written dozens of articles and essays published in major law reviews, including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. An article he coauthored, Defending Daubert: It’s Time to Amend Federal Rule of Evidence 702, directly inspired a pending amendment to Rule 702.
Professor Bernstein blogs at the Instapundit.com, the Times of Israel, and the Volokh Conspiracy. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy.
Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School
Stacy Hawkins is a frequent writer and sought-after speaker on the issue of employment law and diversity. She’s served on the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group and the Pennsylvania Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession Diversity Task Force. She worked as a senior labor and employment attorney and as the director of diversity for major law firms.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
District Judge, State of Texas
Cory Liu is a state district judge in Austin, Texas. He previously served as assistant general counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Mr. Liu clerked for Judge Andrew Oldham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Judge Danny Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago.
Austin E. Owen Research Scholar & Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law
Professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson is a national expert who speaks domestically and internationally about educational equity, equal educational opportunity, civil rights and the federal role in education. Her scholarship has been published widely in leading journals and proposes innovative legal and policy solutions for ensuring that all children receive equal access to an excellent education. In 2019, New York University Press will publish her second edited book, tentatively titled Thoughts on a Federal Right to Education, which gathers leading constitutional and education law scholars to consider the challenging questions raised by recognizing a federal right to education in the United States. In 2015, Harvard Education Press published her book that was co-edited with Professor Charles Ogletree, Jr. of Harvard Law School titled The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity. Professor Robinson’s article, titled “Disrupting Education Federalism” in the Washington University Law Review, won the 2016 Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law from the Education Law Association. This article argues that the United States should reconstruct its understanding of education federalism to support a national effort to ensure equal access to an excellent education.
Professor Robinson published “Fisher’s Cautionary Tale and the Urgent Need for Equal Access to an Excellent Education” in the November 2016 issue of the Harvard Law Review, which analyzes the legal and policy issues regarding the challenge to the affirmative action policy at the University of Texas in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. In 2016, she published an article in the Stanford Law and Policy Review titled “No Quick Fix for Equity and Excellence: The Virtues of Incremental Shifts in Education Federalism” that proposes how the federal government could incrementally increase its influence over education in ways that would promote equity and excellence in school funding. Her scholarship has appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review, Boston College Law Review, William and Mary Law Review, and UC Davis Law Review, among other venues.
Professor Robinson was a visiting professor at the George Washington University Law School in spring 2017 where she taught Race, Racism and the Law. Professor Robinson is a Senior Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute, a leading think tank on education policy, where she is working with Linda Darling-Hammond on issues related to educational access and equality.
Among her many service roles at the University of Richmond, Professor Robinson recently served as chair of the law school’s Diversity Committee and co-chair of a university-wide faculty learning community on reducing implicit bias in teaching. She previously served as co-chair of the Faculty Senate’s Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Committee, where she led the drafting of recommendations for strengthening the University’s sexual assault policy, including many recommendations that were incorporated into a revised sexual assault policy. Professor Robinson also served as chair of a university-wide faculty learning community on reducing stereotype threat in teaching.
Prior to joining the Richmond Law faculty in 2010, Professor Robinson was an Associate Professor at Emory University School of Law and a visiting fellow at George Washington University Law School. She also served in the General Counsel’s Office of the United States Department of Education, where she helped draft federal policy on issues of race, sex, and disability discrimination. In addition, Professor Robinson represented school districts in school finance and constitutional law litigation as an associate with Hogan & Hartson, LLP (now Hogan Lovells). Professor Robinson is a frequent lecturer on education law and policy issues, including serving as the Dean’s Distinguished Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in March 2014 and the keynote speaker at the "Is Education a Civil Right?" conference at Harvard Law School in April 2013. She also has written editorials that address national education law and policy issues, including co-authoring with Professor Charles Ogletree, Jr. an article in 2017 in Education Next titled “Inequitable Schools Demand a Federal Remedy” and “Neglecting the Broken Foundation of K-12 Funding” in Education Week on May 18, 2016. Professor Robinson organized a conference to analyze the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez in 2013.
Clinical Professor, University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Steven T. Collis researches and teaches on religion and law and other First Amendment topics. He is the founding faculty director of the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center and of Texas's Law & Religion Clinic. On the topic of religious freedom law, he is a sought-after speaker to academic and lay audiences across the United States, including foreign diplomats from countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America on behalf of the United States State Department. He has been interviewed by and quoted in various news and media outlets, including The Deseret News, Bloomberg, The Washington Times, Law360, The Salt Lake Tribune, PBS, The Denver Business Journal, Law Week Colorado, CBN News, and numerous podcasts and television shows. His scholarly work has appeared in The Michigan Law Review, The Nebraska Law Review, The University of Denver Law Review Online, and in his book Deep Conviction, which brings to life the history of free exercise law in the United States for lay audiences.
Prior to joining Texas, Steven was the Olin-Darling Research Fellow in the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School.
Earlier in his career, he was an equity partner at Holland & Hart LLP, where he chaired the firm’s nationwide religious institutions and First Amendment practice group and was a member of the firm's complex civil litigation and employment practice groups. He also taught religious liberty law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and clerked for Chief Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Steven graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor on The Michigan Law Review and The Michigan Journal of Race and Law. He also holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as the associate editor of the literary journal Blackbird. He completed his undergraduate studies, with university honors, at Brigham Young University.
T.J. Maloney Chair in Business Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Griffith is an expert in corporate and financial regulatory law. He writes and speaks on corporate law, political economy, and the constitutional rights of corporations and other business associations. In addition to his academic writing, he has authored or contributed to many amicus briefs, including: Iowa v SEC, NCPPR v SEC, AFBR v SEC, and In re Tesla.
Associate Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Ben Johnson is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He researches and writes on governance by committees. Sometimes, the governing committee is a board of directors. Other times, it is a committee of justices at the Supreme Court. His research has won awards from national organizations in law (AALS) and political science (APSA) and can be found in law reviews and peer reviewed outlets. His recent work on the Supreme Court has been published in the Columbia Law Review and Alabama Law Review. Earlier work on district judges with financial conflicts (published in the North Carolina Law Review) led to a large exposé in the Wall Street Journal. His game theoretic model of corporate fiduciary duties is forthcoming at the BYU Law Review. He has ongoing projects on the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket, corporate fiduciary duties, shareholder voting, and machine learning.
Professor Johnson teaches Corporations (the only course in the curriculum where students learn to build and maintain institutions that can make the world a better place long after they are gone), Empirical Methods for Lawyers, and topics on the federal judiciary.
Associate Professor of Law, J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University
Tyler Lindley joined BYU Law School in 2024 as an Associate Professor of Law. His research centers on the judicial role and the historical evolution of the judiciary in America. He has extensively examined and published on judicial remedies, federal courts, constitutional law, and administrative law. His scholarly contributions have been or will be featured in the Alabama Law Review, BYU Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Wake Forest Law Review.
Professor Lindley holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Brigham Young University (2018) and a Juris Doctor from The University of Chicago Law School (2021). During his legal studies, he served as a judicial extern for Judge Ryan Nelson on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to joining the faculty at BYU Law, he clerked for Chief Judge William Pryor on the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Judge Gregory Katsas on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also served as a Research Fellow at BYU Law between his clerkships.
University Professor of Law and Religion and Director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Michael P. Moreland was appointed University Professor of Law and Religion and Director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy at Villanova University in 2017. Professor Moreland joined the Villanova faculty in 2006 and served as Vice Dean from 2012 to 2015. His research is primarily in the areas of torts, law and religion, constitutional law, and Catholic social thought, and he regularly teaches Torts, First Amendment, seminars in law and religion, and undergraduate courses in ethics.
Professor Moreland is the co-editor of Christianity and Private Law (Routledge, 2021), and his most recent publications include: “The Authority of Tradition: John Henry Newman and Legal Theory” in Christianity and the Making of Irish Law (Routledge, 2025); “Christianity and Torts” in The Oxford Handbook on Christianity and Law, (Oxford University Press, 2023); “Germaneness and Religious Liberty” in the Notre Dame Law Review (2023); “Contingency and Contestation in Christianity and Liberalism” in the Notre Dame Law Review (2023); “Friendship as the Primary Purpose of Law” in The American Journal of Jurisprudence 279 (2022); and “The Moral of Torts” (with Jeffrey Pojanowski) in Christianity and Private Law (Routledge, 2021).
Professor Moreland was a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and the Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture from 2015 to 2017. He was the Forbes Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in the James Madison Program during academic year 2010-11. He has served as the project leader for grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation. He serves as the Chair of the Federalist Society’s Religious Liberties Practice Group Executive Committee and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California.
Professor Moreland received his BA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, his MA and PhD in theological ethics from Boston College, and his JD from the University of Michigan Law School. Following law school, Professor Moreland clerked for the Honorable Paul J. Kelly Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and was an associate at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC, where he represented clients in First Amendment, professional liability, and products liability matters. Before coming to Villanova, he served as Associate Director for Domestic Policy at the White House under President George W. Bush, where he worked on a range of legal policy issues, including criminal justice, immigration, civil rights, and liability reform.
Professor, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law, University of Saskatchewan College of Law
Dwight Newman, B.A. in Economics (Regina), J.D. (Saskatchewan), B.C.L., M.Phil., D.Phil. in Legal Philosophy (Oxford), is a Professor of Law and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law at the University of Saskatchewan, where he started in a faculty position in 2005 and has also served a three-year term as Associate Dean. He has been a Canada Research Chair since 2013.
Dr. Newman has also taught during visiting terms at Alberta, McGill, Osgoode Hall (PD), and Oxford. During the 2015-16 year, he was a James Madison Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, and during the second half of the 2016-17 year he was a Professeur invité at the Université de Montréal Faculté de Droit and a Herbert Smith Freehills Visitor at Cambridge University. In 2017 he became a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada.
Dr. Newman has published close to a hundred articles or book chapters and ten books. His books include: The Duty to Consult: New Relationships with Aboriginal Peoples (Purich/UBC, 2009), Community and Collective Rights: A Theoretical Framework for Rights Held by Groups (Hart/Bloomsbury, 2011), Natural Resource Jurisdiction in Canada (LexisNexis, 2013), Revisiting the Duty to Consult Aboriginal Peoples (Purich/UBC, 2014) and both the Charter of Rights volume of Halsbury’s Laws of Canada and The Law of the Canadian Constitution (with co-author Guy Régimbald) (LexisNexis, 2013, 2nd edn 2017). His forthcoming books include Mining Law of Canada (LexisNexis), an edited collection on Business Implications of Aboriginal Law (LexisNexis), and the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on the International Law of Indigenous Rights (Edward Elgar). His writing has been cited by all levels of Canadian courts, including a number of times by the Supreme Court of Canada, and in argument before the United States Supreme Court.
Dr. Newman is a Munk Senior Fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and has contributed to policy discussions by publishing a number of think tank reports. He also serves as an expert member of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on Implementation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and contributes to ongoing discussion on international norms on related issues. He has delivered dozens of presentations to a variety of audiences on six continents and has published many op eds in leading Canadian and American newspapers.
Prior to entering a faculty role, Dr. Newman clerked for Chief Justice Lamer and Justice LeBel at the Supreme Court of Canada, worked for NGOs in South Africa and Hong Kong and for the Canadian Department of Justice, and completed his graduate studies at Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He has lived in half a dozen countries and has travelled to over seventy countries.
Dr. Newman is a member of the Ontario and Saskatchewan bars and he does selective legal work for industry, government, and Indigenous communities focused mainly on constitutional issues associated with resource development as well as consulting work on related issues for international investment entities.
Some of his publications are available on his Google Scholar page and his SSRN page.
Assistant Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Haley Palfreyman Jankowski joined the faculty at South Texas College of Law Houston in 2023. Her scholarly interests include, among other areas, civil procedure law, international law, and tort law. Before teaching, Professor Jankowski was a litigation associate at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLC where she specialized in complex commercial litigation and appeals. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jay S. Bybee on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Jankowski earned her J.D. summa cum laude, as valedictorian, from Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark School of Law, where she was an Articles Editor for the Brigham Young University Law Review.
Teaching Fellow and Supervising Attorney, Georgetown Law’s Federal Legislation Clinic
Anthony Marcum is a Teaching Fellow and Supervising Attorney at Georgetown Law’s Federal Legislation Clinic. Previously, he served as Counsel for U.S. Senator Ben Sasse. Before that, he was a Resident Fellow at the R Street Institute, where his research focused on the federal judiciary and separation of powers. While at R Street, he was an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, teaching students seeking a master’s degree in legislative affairs. Earlier in his career, Anthony was a litigation associate in Michigan and law clerk in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire and U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.
Professor of Law and J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow, University of North Dakota School of Law
Michael S. McGinniss is Professor of Law and J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow at the University of North Dakota School of Law, where he joined the faculty in 2010 and served as the Dean from 2019 to 2022. He chairs the executive committee for the Federalist Society's Practice Group on Professional Responsibility and Legal Education.
Before entering the legal academy, Professor McGinniss served for twelve years as a Disciplinary Counsel for the Supreme Court of Delaware. He currently teaches courses on Professional Responsibility, Advanced Legal Ethics, Civil Procedure, and Federal Courts. He also serves as Faculty Advisor for the North Dakota Law Review and the UND Law Federalist Society student chapter.
Professor McGinniss’ research and scholarship interests are wide-ranging and include lawyer and judicial ethics, lawyer discipline and regulation of the profession, constitutional law (especially First Amendment, separation of powers, and federalism), and cultural challenges faced by conservatives in the law schools and the legal profession. His most recent law review article, Declaring Independence to Secure Integrity: The Supreme Court Justices' Code of Conduct, was published in the Federalist Society Review. His article Expressing Conscience with Candor: Saint Thomas More and First Freedoms in the Legal Profession, was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Professor McGinniss has spoken to Federalist Society lawyer and student chapters across the country about judicial independence and ethics, especially relating to the federal courts and the United States Supreme Court Justices. In addition, he has spoken to several chapters about rising challenges to ideological diversity and targeting of conservative viewpoints in law schools and the legal profession. Although he is very pleased to speak on these and many other topics that may be of interest to lawyer and student chapters, in 2026-2027, he has particular interest in speaking on the topic “Lawyer Discipline as Political ‘Resistance’: Separation of Powers, Federalism, and the Rule of Law,” concerning his work-in-progress on the weaponization of professional disciplinary processes against conservative lawyers for political and ideological purposes.
Tamar is an Assistant Professor. She holds a J.D. degree from the University of British Columbia, and a B.A. (Hons), LL.M., and SJD degrees from the University of Toronto.
Tamar practiced international commercial arbitration in a law firm in Vancouver and as Deputy Counsel at the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. She also acted as legal advisor to the Jerusalem Arbitration Center in Israel and Palestine and was a Graduate Fellow with the conflict resolution group of The Carter Center in Atlanta.
Senior Corporate Governance Fellow, Research Fellow, and Member of the Editorial Advisory Board, RealClearFoundation, Law & Economics Center at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, and Journal of Corporation Law
Bernard Sharfman is a Senior Corporate Governance Fellow at the RealClearFoundation, a research fellow with the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, a member of the Journal of Corporation Law’s editorial advisory board.
Mr. Sharfman has written extensively on corporate law and governance and securities regulation. His current working papers include “The Ascertainable Standards that Define the Boundaries of the SEC's Rulemaking Authority” and “The Ascertainable Standards that Guide and Limit the Surface Transportation Board's Authority over the Railroads.”
Mr. Sharfman has written numerous comment letters to the SEC. His op-eds have been published in RealClearMarkets, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, and the Business Insider. His blog posts can be found on ProMarket, the Oxford Business Law Blog, the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, Columbia Law School’s Blue Sky Blog, and Duke Law School's FinReg Blog. Mr. Sharfman has refereed corporate governance articles for the Stanford Law Review and the Yale Law Journal.
Mr. Sharfman, a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 2000), was an Executive Editor of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics and a recipient of the Saint Thomas More Award.
Professor of Law; Director, Business Law Program, American University Washington College of Law
David V. Snyder is professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law and is the director of the Business Law Program. He was also a visiting professor of law at the University of Michigan from January to May 2024. He has been a regular visiting professor at the law school of the University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) since 2012, and during 2021-2022, he held a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute (Florence). In 2014, he was awarded a McCormick Fellowship, during which he delivered the Wilson Memorial Lecture (University of Edinburgh).
Professor Snyder’s research and teaching interests are primarily in contracts and commercial law, including their U.S., international, and comparative aspects. He is known for his work on international commercial transactions and is the author (with Martin Davies) of International Transactions in Goods: Global Sales in Comparative Context (Oxford University Press 2014). More particularly, he has devoted considerable effort to using contracts to protect the environment and the human rights of workers in international supply chains, and his book (with Susan A. Maslow) Contracts for Responsible and Sustainable Supply Chains (American Bar Association 2023) includes the Model Contract Clauses produced by a working group and task force that he chairs for the ABA Business Law Section. He is also co-chair of a similar working group in Europe. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on these and other topics
A Louisiana native, Professor Snyder graduated summa cum laude from Tulane Law School after earning his undergraduate degree cum laude from Yale. He clerked for the Honorable John M. Duhé Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and subsequently joined the D.C. firm of Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells). He began his academic career at Cleveland-Marshall College at Law Cleveland State University and then moved to Indiana University (Bloomington) before joining the faculty at Tulane Law School. He returned to Washington to accept his current appointment in 2006. In addition, Professor Snyder has served as a visiting professor at the University of Paris 10 (Nanterre La Défense), Boston University, and the College of William and Mary, and he has taught summer courses at the University of Mainz (Germany).
Professor Snyder was chair of the Section on Contracts of the Association of American Law Schools (2005-2006) and chaired the Washington steering committee for the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law (2010). He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and has served on the board of directors of the Washington Foreign Law Society, the board of editors of the American Journal of Comparative Law, and the scientific council of the French Journal of Legal Policy
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. Attorney, Middle District of Tennessee, U.S. Department of Justice
Braden Boucek was sworn in on December 24, 2025, as the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. Prior to becoming United States Attorney, Mr. Boucek served as the senior vice president of litigation at the Southeastern Legal Foundation having previously served as the vice president of legal affairs at the Beacon Center. Mr. Boucek has extensive experience as a prosecutor, starting his career at the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office before serving for two years as an Assistant District Attorney General in Williamson County. He was a federal prosecutor for ten years, first serving as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of Tennessee from 2005 to 2011. From 2011 to 2015, Mr. Boucek was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, the district he now leads as the United States Attorney.
Professor, Cleveland State University College of Law
Professor Christa Laser comes to Cleveland Marshall after nearly a decade of practice experience as an intellectual property litigator at the law firms WilmerHale and Kirkland & Ellis LLP. She has deep expertise in patents, trademarks, copyrights, false advertising, pharmaceutical litigation and regulation, and technology law. She has represented leading life sciences and technology companies in all stages of trial and appellate matters and consulted on legislative changes to intellectual property laws.
Professor Laser's research focuses on intellectual property and innovation. Her patent law scholarship has been cited by numerous scholars, by judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and in briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her research envisions an intellectual property system that supports innovation, investment, and competition across all technology areas.
Professor Laser was the World Champion of the Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. Prior to law school, she worked as a scientific researcher, where her work studying protein dynamics of photosynthesis using genetically modified bacteria and laser spectroscopy was published in the prestigious journal Science.
Senior Associate, Intellectual Property Litigation, WilmerHale; Associate, Kirkland & Ellis LLP; judicial intern for Chief Judge Randall R. Rader, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and Judge Roger W. Titus, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland; Scientific Researcher, The BioDesign Institute at Arizona State University, Department of BioOptical Nanotechnology.
J.D., The George Washington University Law School (World Champion, International & North American Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition; Research Assistant, Professor Lawrence Cunningham; Notes Editor, American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal); B.S., Arizona State University, Barrett Honors College (Beckman Scholar; Biochemistry Award).
Deputy Counsel, the President
Gary currently is the Deputy Counsel to the President. He was previously a partner at the Dhillon Law Group and worked at the Department of the Interior and Federal Election Commission. He is a native of Virginia, and earned his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Virginia.
Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Laura Stanley is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and is a member of the Environmental Litigation and Mass Tort Practice Group. Laura previously served as an economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where she developed regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.
Laura graduated with high honors from The George Washington University Law School and was awarded Order of the Coif. Laura served as an Articles Editor of the George Washington Law Review, and she was awarded the ABA Gellhorn-Sargentich Award for the best student essay in administrative law. Laura received a Master of Arts degree in Economics from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from James Madison University.
She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ryan D. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Stephen S. Schwartz of the United States Court of Federal Claims.
She is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Senior Legal Fellow, Advancing American Freedom
Amy Swearer is a leading national expert on a wide range of public policy, legal, and constitutional issues, including the Second Amendment, criminal justice, and mental health policy. She has long been a respected conservative voice on gun policy and is routinely asked to testify before state and federal legislative bodies. Her work on birthright citizenship, meanwhile, has been featured extensively in litigation over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
Swearer was formerly a Senior Legal Fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, she ran the Defensive Gun Use Database and was the primary author of the e-book “The Essential Second Amendment.” She was also a driving force behind the organization’s School Safety Initiative.
She was the 2022 recipient of the Heritage Foundation’s Joseph Shattan Award for “writing that presents conservative ideas in a powerful and compelling fashion to policymakers and the American people.” She was also named the Second Amendment Institute’s 2022 Gun Rights Champion.
Swearer received her law degree from the University of Nebraska College of Law and was a member of the Nebraska Law Review. She holds a B.S. in Criminology & Criminal Justice from the University of Nebraska, where she was a Chancellor’s Scholar and a goalkeeper on the women’s soccer team
Distinguished Research Professor, Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, University of Notre Dame
Donald L. Drakeman is Distinguished Research Professor in the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame, and a Fellow of the Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise at the University of Cambridge. His writings have been cited by the Supreme Courts of the United States and the Philippines. He has published seven books, including The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Why We Need the Humanities (Palgrave, 2016), and Church, State, and Original Intent (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He received an A.B. magna cum laude from Dartmouth College; a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar; and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and he was the founding chair of the Advisory Council for the James Madison Program on American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
U.S. Attorney, Middle District of Tennessee, U.S. Department of Justice
Braden Boucek was sworn in on December 24, 2025, as the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. Prior to becoming United States Attorney, Mr. Boucek served as the senior vice president of litigation at the Southeastern Legal Foundation having previously served as the vice president of legal affairs at the Beacon Center. Mr. Boucek has extensive experience as a prosecutor, starting his career at the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office before serving for two years as an Assistant District Attorney General in Williamson County. He was a federal prosecutor for ten years, first serving as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of Tennessee from 2005 to 2011. From 2011 to 2015, Mr. Boucek was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, the district he now leads as the United States Attorney.
Professor, Cleveland State University College of Law
Professor Christa Laser comes to Cleveland Marshall after nearly a decade of practice experience as an intellectual property litigator at the law firms WilmerHale and Kirkland & Ellis LLP. She has deep expertise in patents, trademarks, copyrights, false advertising, pharmaceutical litigation and regulation, and technology law. She has represented leading life sciences and technology companies in all stages of trial and appellate matters and consulted on legislative changes to intellectual property laws.
Professor Laser's research focuses on intellectual property and innovation. Her patent law scholarship has been cited by numerous scholars, by judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and in briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her research envisions an intellectual property system that supports innovation, investment, and competition across all technology areas.
Professor Laser was the World Champion of the Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. Prior to law school, she worked as a scientific researcher, where her work studying protein dynamics of photosynthesis using genetically modified bacteria and laser spectroscopy was published in the prestigious journal Science.
Senior Associate, Intellectual Property Litigation, WilmerHale; Associate, Kirkland & Ellis LLP; judicial intern for Chief Judge Randall R. Rader, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and Judge Roger W. Titus, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland; Scientific Researcher, The BioDesign Institute at Arizona State University, Department of BioOptical Nanotechnology.
J.D., The George Washington University Law School (World Champion, International & North American Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition; Research Assistant, Professor Lawrence Cunningham; Notes Editor, American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal); B.S., Arizona State University, Barrett Honors College (Beckman Scholar; Biochemistry Award).
Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Laura Stanley is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and is a member of the Environmental Litigation and Mass Tort Practice Group. Laura previously served as an economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where she developed regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.
Laura graduated with high honors from The George Washington University Law School and was awarded Order of the Coif. Laura served as an Articles Editor of the George Washington Law Review, and she was awarded the ABA Gellhorn-Sargentich Award for the best student essay in administrative law. Laura received a Master of Arts degree in Economics from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from James Madison University.
She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ryan D. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Stephen S. Schwartz of the United States Court of Federal Claims.
She is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Senior Legal Fellow, Advancing American Freedom
Amy Swearer is a leading national expert on a wide range of public policy, legal, and constitutional issues, including the Second Amendment, criminal justice, and mental health policy. She has long been a respected conservative voice on gun policy and is routinely asked to testify before state and federal legislative bodies. Her work on birthright citizenship, meanwhile, has been featured extensively in litigation over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
Swearer was formerly a Senior Legal Fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, she ran the Defensive Gun Use Database and was the primary author of the e-book “The Essential Second Amendment.” She was also a driving force behind the organization’s School Safety Initiative.
She was the 2022 recipient of the Heritage Foundation’s Joseph Shattan Award for “writing that presents conservative ideas in a powerful and compelling fashion to policymakers and the American people.” She was also named the Second Amendment Institute’s 2022 Gun Rights Champion.
Swearer received her law degree from the University of Nebraska College of Law and was a member of the Nebraska Law Review. She holds a B.S. in Criminology & Criminal Justice from the University of Nebraska, where she was a Chancellor’s Scholar and a goalkeeper on the women’s soccer team
Deputy Counsel, the President
Gary currently is the Deputy Counsel to the President. He was previously a partner at the Dhillon Law Group and worked at the Department of the Interior and Federal Election Commission. He is a native of Virginia, and earned his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Virginia.
U.S. Attorney, Middle District of Tennessee, U.S. Department of Justice
Braden Boucek was sworn in on December 24, 2025, as the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. Prior to becoming United States Attorney, Mr. Boucek served as the senior vice president of litigation at the Southeastern Legal Foundation having previously served as the vice president of legal affairs at the Beacon Center. Mr. Boucek has extensive experience as a prosecutor, starting his career at the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office before serving for two years as an Assistant District Attorney General in Williamson County. He was a federal prosecutor for ten years, first serving as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of Tennessee from 2005 to 2011. From 2011 to 2015, Mr. Boucek was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, the district he now leads as the United States Attorney.
Professor, Cleveland State University College of Law
Professor Christa Laser comes to Cleveland Marshall after nearly a decade of practice experience as an intellectual property litigator at the law firms WilmerHale and Kirkland & Ellis LLP. She has deep expertise in patents, trademarks, copyrights, false advertising, pharmaceutical litigation and regulation, and technology law. She has represented leading life sciences and technology companies in all stages of trial and appellate matters and consulted on legislative changes to intellectual property laws.
Professor Laser's research focuses on intellectual property and innovation. Her patent law scholarship has been cited by numerous scholars, by judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and in briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her research envisions an intellectual property system that supports innovation, investment, and competition across all technology areas.
Professor Laser was the World Champion of the Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. Prior to law school, she worked as a scientific researcher, where her work studying protein dynamics of photosynthesis using genetically modified bacteria and laser spectroscopy was published in the prestigious journal Science.
Senior Associate, Intellectual Property Litigation, WilmerHale; Associate, Kirkland & Ellis LLP; judicial intern for Chief Judge Randall R. Rader, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and Judge Roger W. Titus, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland; Scientific Researcher, The BioDesign Institute at Arizona State University, Department of BioOptical Nanotechnology.
J.D., The George Washington University Law School (World Champion, International & North American Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition; Research Assistant, Professor Lawrence Cunningham; Notes Editor, American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal); B.S., Arizona State University, Barrett Honors College (Beckman Scholar; Biochemistry Award).
Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Laura Stanley is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and is a member of the Environmental Litigation and Mass Tort Practice Group. Laura previously served as an economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where she developed regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.
Laura graduated with high honors from The George Washington University Law School and was awarded Order of the Coif. Laura served as an Articles Editor of the George Washington Law Review, and she was awarded the ABA Gellhorn-Sargentich Award for the best student essay in administrative law. Laura received a Master of Arts degree in Economics from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from James Madison University.
She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ryan D. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Stephen S. Schwartz of the United States Court of Federal Claims.
She is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Senior Legal Fellow, Advancing American Freedom
Amy Swearer is a leading national expert on a wide range of public policy, legal, and constitutional issues, including the Second Amendment, criminal justice, and mental health policy. She has long been a respected conservative voice on gun policy and is routinely asked to testify before state and federal legislative bodies. Her work on birthright citizenship, meanwhile, has been featured extensively in litigation over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
Swearer was formerly a Senior Legal Fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, she ran the Defensive Gun Use Database and was the primary author of the e-book “The Essential Second Amendment.” She was also a driving force behind the organization’s School Safety Initiative.
She was the 2022 recipient of the Heritage Foundation’s Joseph Shattan Award for “writing that presents conservative ideas in a powerful and compelling fashion to policymakers and the American people.” She was also named the Second Amendment Institute’s 2022 Gun Rights Champion.
Swearer received her law degree from the University of Nebraska College of Law and was a member of the Nebraska Law Review. She holds a B.S. in Criminology & Criminal Justice from the University of Nebraska, where she was a Chancellor’s Scholar and a goalkeeper on the women’s soccer team
Deputy Counsel, the President
Gary currently is the Deputy Counsel to the President. He was previously a partner at the Dhillon Law Group and worked at the Department of the Interior and Federal Election Commission. He is a native of Virginia, and earned his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Virginia.
Shareholder & Co-Chair of the Workplace Policy Institute, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Alexander T. MacDonald advises employers on all aspects of the employment and labor landscape, focusing on emerging legislation and regulation. He has extensive experience advising businesses on worker classification, arbitration, the administrative and regulatory process, and the future of work. He frequently writes, publishes, and speaks on these subjects. His work has been cited by scholars and appellate courts. He is a recognized voice for the management perspective.
Alexander is a co-chair of the Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) team. With WPI, he advises employers on legislative, administrative, and regulatory developments at the state and federal level. He advocates for employers in the regulatory and administrative process. He also helps employers protect their businesses by understanding and anticipating cutting-edge legal developments.
Alexander also has extensive experience in traditional labor law. He represents management in all aspects of labor-management relations, including unfair labor practice charges, grievance arbitrations, representation elections, contract negotiations, and related litigation, including litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals.
Before joining Littler, Alexander served as the director, future of work, for a major technology company. He also worked in a national labor and employment law firm and a major public-sector general counsel’s office. He was a law clerk to the senior judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In law school, he graduated first in his class
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