Senior Attorney, Sensient Technologies Corporation
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
Senior Counsel, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
William J. Haun is Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and a Nonresident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). At Becket, Will litigates nationwide in defense of religious liberty for all faith traditions, particularly before the U.S. Supreme Court and in other federal and state appellate courts. His litigation includes being a member of the U.S. Supreme Court team that prevailed 9-0 for Catholic Social Services in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, arguing before multiple federal appellate courts, federal district courts, and the Supreme Court of Texas. At AEI, Will writes and researches on constitutionalism and self-government’s prerequisites, especially the role of religion in securing and preserving freedom.
Before joining Becket and AEI, Will practiced appellate and antitrust law at two international law firms—Shearman & Sterling and Hunton & Williams. He also served as a law clerk to Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Judge Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Will often writes on constitutional law issues, including in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, the Catholic University Law Review, National Affairs, Law & Liberty, National Review Online, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He also speaks on these topics, including at the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, Princeton University, the University of Virginia School of Law, and the University of Chicago Law School. He received his J.D. from the Catholic University of America, cum laude, where he was a published member of the Law Review. He received his B.A. from American University in political science, cum laude. He lives in Maryland with his wife and children, where they enjoy sailing, cheering on their favorite baseball teams, and discovering the great traditions of their Catholic faith.
Founder, President, and General Counsel, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty
Rick Esenberg is the founder and current President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a rapidly expanding law and policy organization headquartered in Milwaukee. Under Rick’s leadership, WILL has grown into one of the more active state-based think tanks and litigation centers in the country. Rick is a frequent litigator in state and federal courts and nationally recognized scholar and commentator on constitutional law, particularly the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and religion. He is one of the leading experts on the Wisconsin Constitution and a frequent advocate before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Rick’s work seeks to advance the rule of law and individual liberty, formed by a robust civil society that forms individual and community character, preserving the wisdom of the past and an openness to the future.
Rick’s commentary has been featured in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Weekly Standard, Real Clear Politics, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Washington Examiner. Formerly on the faculty of Marquette University Law School, his scholarship has appeared in such publications as the Harvard Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Wake Forest Law Review and William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. Back when they were a thing, he operated a blog called Shark and Shepherd where he tried to suggest something about the duality of man – “the Jungian thing.”
Rick holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and a B.A., summa cum laude, in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition to service on the Marquette Faculty, he was formerly a litigation partner at Foley & Lardner and General Counsel of an international manufacturing firm headquartered in Wisconsin. He lives in Mequon Wisconsin with his wife Karen, golden retrievers Cooper and Riley and more books than he can find places for.
Partner, Shook, Hardy & Bacon
William J. Crampton is a partner in Shook, Hardy & Bacon's Global Product Liability Group in Kansas City. Bill represents and consults with clients on product liability matters throughout Europe and Latin America, and he is co-author of a chapter on "Class Action Developments Overseas" in Product Liability Litigation: Current Law, Strategies and Best Practices (2009 and 2010).
Associate, Shook, Hardy & Bacon
Silvia Kim is an associate in Shook, Hardy & Bacon's Global Product Liability Group in Kansas City. Silvia is a licensed lawyer in the United States and Costa Rica. Her litigation practice, which centers on Latin America and Asia, focuses primarily on product liability, class action and consumer protection litigation.
Professor, Sturm College of Law, University of Denver
Professor Eli Wald holds SJD and LLM degrees from Harvard Law School and LLB and BA degrees from Tel-Aviv University. Prior to joining the University of Denver Sturm College of Law he was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City. Wald’s academic interests include the American legal profession, legal ethics and corporate law. His recent research has examined topics such as attorneys’ loyalty to clients, increased lawyer mobility, attorney-client communications and the ethno-religious and cultural identity of large law firms. Prof. Wald, a CLE instructor, legal ethics expert commentator for LexisNexis and expert witness, is a member of the Colorado Supreme Court Standing Committee on the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct and a member of the Colorado State Bar Association’s Ethics Committee.
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.
Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprude, Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
Ronald D. Rotunda was the Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, at Chapman University, the Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He joined the faculty in 2008. Before that, he was University Professor and Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. From 2002 to 2006, he was the George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law. Before that, he was the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law, at the University of Illinois. He was a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a member of Harvard Law Review. He joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1974 after clerking for Judge Walter R. Mansfield of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, practicing law in Washington, D.C., and serving as assistant majority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee. He has co-authored the most widely used course book on legal ethics, Problems and Materials on Professional Responsibility(Foundation Press, 12th ed. 2014) and was the author of a leading course book on constitutional law, Modern Constitutional Law (West Academic Co., 11th ed. 2015)(Abridged & Unabridged editions). He was the coauthor of, Legal Ethics: The Lawyer's Deskbook on Professional Responsibility (ABA- West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2016-2017 ed.) (Jointly published by the ABA and West/Thompson Reuters Publishing) (with John Dzienkowski). Rotunda also co-authored (with John Nowak) the six-volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, 5th ed. 2012)(with annual updates), and a one volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West Academic, 8th ed. 2010). He was also the author of several other books and more than 500 articles in various law reviews, journals, newspapers, and books in this country and abroad. His works have been translated into French, Portuguese German, Romanian, Czech, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. These books and articles have been cited more than 2000 times by law reviews, by state and federal courts at every level, from trial courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, and by foreign courts in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. He has been interviewed on radio and television on legal issues, both in this country and abroad. In 1993 he was the Constitutional Law Adviser to the Supreme National Council of Cambodia and assisted that country in writing its first democratic constitution. He has consulted with various new democracies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine, on their proposed constitutions and judicial codes. He chaired the subcommittee that drafted the American Bar Association's Model Rules for Lawyer Disciplinary Enforcement; was a member of the Publications Board of the A.B.A. Center for Professional Responsibility from 1994 to 2016; was a member of the A.B.A. Standing Committee on Professional Discipline (1991-1997); and was Liaison to the A.B.A. Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (1994-1997). He was a Fulbright Professor in Venezuela in 1986 and a Fulbright Research Scholar in Italy in 1981. In 1996 he assisted the Czech Republic in drafting the first Rules of Ethics for lawyers in that country. During the Spring, 1999 semester, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, holding the John S. Stone Endowed Chair of Law. During the summer and fall of 2000, he was the Visiting Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, in Washington, DC. In the fall of 2001, he was visiting professor at George Mason University School of Law. During November-December, 2002, he was Visiting Scholar, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Faculty of Law, Leuven, Belgium. In May, 2004, and December, 2005, he was visiting lecturer at the Institute of Law and Economics, Institut für Recht und Ökonomik, at the University of Hamburg. From early June 2004 to May 2005, he was the Special Counsel to the Department of Defense. He was on the Panel of Contributing Editors that produced, Black's Law Dictionary (West/Thompson Reuters Publishing, 8th ed. 2004; Thomson-Reuters, 10th ed. 2014). From 2005-2006, he was a member of the Task Force on Judicial Functions of the Commission on Virginia Courts in the 21st Century: To Benefit All, to Exclude None.
In May, 2000, American Law Media, publisher of The American Lawyer, the National Law Journal, and the Legal Times picked Professor Rotunda as one of the ten most influential Illinois Lawyers. Also in 2000, a lengthy study that the University of Chicago Press published, which sought to determine the influence, productivity, and reputations of law professors over the last several decades, listed Professor Rotunda as the 17th highest in the nation. The 2002-2003 New Educational Quality Ranking of U.S. Law Schools (EQR) [the last year for which such records are available] ranks Professor Rotunda as the eleventh most cited of all law faculty in the United States. Seehttp://www.leiterrankings.com/faculty/2002faculty_impact_cites.shtml.
In July, 2007, he was one of the main speakers at the International Judicial Conference hosted by the United States Embassy, the Supreme Court of Latvia, and the Latvian Ministry of Justice. The other main speakers were Justice Samuel Alito, the President of Latvia, the Prime Minister of Latvia, the Chief Justice of Latvia, and the Minister of Justice of Latvia. On February 27, 2008, President George W. Bush nominated Ronald D. Rotunda to become a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) for an initial four-year term and sent his nomination to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for confirmation hearings on the nominees. He was selected the Best Lawyer in Washington, DC, in 2009 in Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law, as published in November 2008 in the Washington Post in association with the Legal Times. When he moved to California, he was also selected as one of the Best Lawyers in Southern California, in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, also in Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law as published in the Los Angeles Times, U.S. News, and American Law Media. On June 17, 2009, he became a Commissioner of the Fair Political Practices Commission, a state regulatory agency (analogous to the Federal Election Commission) that is California's independent political watchdog. He served until January 31, 2013, when his term expired. In 2012, he became a Distinguished International Research Fellow at the World Engagement Institute, a non-profit, multidisciplinary and academically-based non-governmental organization with the mission to facilitate professional global engagement for international development and poverty reduction http://www.weinstitute.org/fellows.html. In 2012, Chapman University honored him with The Chapman University Excellence In Scholarly/Creative Work Award, 2011-2012. Since 2014, he has been a member of the Editorial Board of, The International Journal of Sustainable Human Security (IJSHS), a peer-reviewed publication of the World Engagement Institute (WEI). Rotunda was a Member of the Editorial Board of ABA's Journal of Legal Education (2014 to 2016).
Professor, Sturm College of Law, University of Denver
Professor Eli Wald holds SJD and LLM degrees from Harvard Law School and LLB and BA degrees from Tel-Aviv University. Prior to joining the University of Denver Sturm College of Law he was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City. Wald’s academic interests include the American legal profession, legal ethics and corporate law. His recent research has examined topics such as attorneys’ loyalty to clients, increased lawyer mobility, attorney-client communications and the ethno-religious and cultural identity of large law firms. Prof. Wald, a CLE instructor, legal ethics expert commentator for LexisNexis and expert witness, is a member of the Colorado Supreme Court Standing Committee on the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct and a member of the Colorado State Bar Association’s Ethics Committee.
Losing Confidence in Confidentiality: Do Expanding Exceptions to the Attorney-Client Privilege Gut Its Purpose?
True or false: attorney-client communications, simply speaking, are privileged? False, both under law and—more importantly—in...
Can Someone Please Turn on the Lights? Bringing Transparency to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
James C. Dunlop, Michael B. Mukasey
Note from the Editor: This paper assesses the Department of Justice’s authority under the Foreign...
A Tavern Debate
Chicago, IllinoisThe Philosopher in Action: A Tribute to the Honorable Edwin Meese III
William J. Haun
In December 2011, former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese celebrated his 80th birthday. While his...
Medical Marijuana: Federal Supremacy vs. State’s Rights
Royal Oak, MichiganA Modest Proposal for Human Limitations on Cyberdiscovery
Rick M. Esenberg
Note from the Editor: In December 2010, the Federalist Society heard from a number of...
The Nationalization and Globalization of Law Practice: Why the refusal of the legal profession to allow national law practice hurts businesses and favors lawyers' interests over clients'
Denver, ColoradoConfronting Terror: Is Fear Wagging the Post 9-11 Policy Dog?
Irvine, CaliforniaPiecing Together the Puzzle of Mexican Class Actions
William J. Crampton, Silvia Kim
After several years of debate, a long-awaited class action bill in Mexico became law. On...
POSTPONED: The Nationalization and Globalization of Law Practice: Why the refusal of the legal profession to allow national law practice
Denver, Colorado