Director and Senior Fellow, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, University of California at Berkeley
Mark Cohen heads the Asia IP Project at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at Berkeley Law School. He is also responsible for teaching international trade law and research and writing on IP issues. Previously, Cohen was Senior Counsel, China in the Office of Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, after serving as a visiting professor at Fordham Law School (2011-2012). Prior to that time, he served in such functions as: Director, International Intellectual Property at Microsoft Corporation; Of Counsel to Jones Day’s Beijing office; and Senior Intellectual Property Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing (2004- 2008). In total, he has over 30 years private, public sector, in-house and academic experience in China and transition economies, with a focus on technology trade and intellectual property.
Cohen was the first IPR Attaché posted by USPTO to handle IPR issues in a foreign country. In addition, he launched the annual “Ambassador’s IPR Roundtable” which he co-chaired for five years, devised IPR “toolkits”, “road shows”, pro-bono programs, internal training programs for the US government and external training programs, and worked with USPTO and other US agencies to engage China and Chinese IP agencies. Cohen led a China team at USPTO consisting of 21 individuals in DC, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, China on all aspects of USPTO’s activities in China. Among his book-length publications are Antimonopoly Law and Practice in China (Oxford University Press 2011, with Steve Harris et al.). He was also the editor of Chinese Intellectual Property Law and Practice (Kluwer Law International 1999) and has edited or published a number of on-line publications, including the blog www.chinaipr.com.
Mr. Cohen has taught and lectured at numerous universities in the United States, Asia and Europe. Amongst other honors, he was the recipient of the US Chamber of Commerce’s “IP Champion” award in 2014. Mr. Cohen holds a J.D. degree from Columbia University (1984), an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Chinese Language and Literature (1979) and a B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany in Chinese Studies (1977).
Hon. William Matthew Byrne, Jr. Chair Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University
Prior to joining Loyola in 2013, Professor Justin Hughes taught at Cardozo Law School where he served as director of Cardozo’s Intellectual Property Program, 2004 through 2008, and founded the law school’s Indie Film Clinic, the first of its kind.
From 2009 through 2013, Professor Hughes also worked in the Obama Administration as Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property. In that capacity he was the United States chief negotiator for the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances (2012) and the Marrakesh Treaty for the Blind (2013).
In the 1990s, Professor Hughes did volunteer work in democracy development in Latin America, West Africa and the Balkans. He has practiced law in Paris and Los Angeles. As a Henry Luce Scholar, he clerked for the Lord President of the Malaysian Supreme Court in Kuala Lumpur.
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP, Partner
Brian is chair of Dinsmore’s IP Transactions and Licensing Group. He is a past president of the Licensing Executives Society (USA and Canada), Inc. (LES), the leading professional society devoted to commercial transactions and licensing of intangible property. He continues to serve LES as senior vice president for public policy. He has extensive experience in a wide variety of commercial transactions involving intangible property, and is known for creative licensing strategies to promote collaboration and resolve IP-related disputes.
He is a registered patent attorney with more than 30 years of experience before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in structuring global IP portfolios and strategies. He has extensive experience in contested proceedings before the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (interferences, Inter Partes Reviews and Post Grant Reviews), as well as contested matters in federal courts and the International Trade Commission. His wide-ranging experience affords a broad, informed perspective and facilitates creative approaches to intellectual property management, licensing, and enforcement.
In addition to his leadership of LES, Brian served on the LES Board of Directors 2007 – 2018. In his ongoing role as senior vice president for public policy he is responsible for coordinating the society’s public policy positions, amicus briefs, and congressional outreach. He works with legislators, the executive branch, and the courts toward consistent, reliable, and prudent IP laws and policies that advance innovation and economic development. He has also served LES as trustee for education, and has long served as an author, editor, and faculty member of LES educational programs focusing on best practices in IP licensing.
He is also active in the global society, LES International (LESI). Among his various roles in LESI, he has served as co-chair of the External Relations Committee, coordinating public policy and advocacy for effective IP laws and policies among the 33 regional LES societies, and with various non-governmental organizations such as WIPO and EPO. In 2019, he received the LES International President’s Service Recognition Award.
Brian also serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Bayh Dole Coalition, a 501(c)(4) corporation dedicated to promoting and preserving the Bayh Dole Act. He is a member of the Founding Board of Directors of the United States Intellectual Property Alliance (USIPA), an organization dedicated to raising public awareness of, and appreciation for, the role of IP in fostering innovation for the public good; and he has served on the DC Bar Intellectual Property Section Steering Committee (2013 – 2016).
In 2016, Brian testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on the effects of the America Invents Act on small business and entrepreneurs in a hearing entitled “An Examination of Changes to the U.S. Patent System & Impacts on America's Small Businesses.”
With his longstanding and diverse patent practice, in both private practice and in-house, Brian advises corporate leaders and entrepreneurs in effective IP procurement practices, and in maximizing value from IP assets. He has been retained as a testifying witness in IP and licensing disputes by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and by various private enterprises.
Brian has been acknowledged by IAM magazine as among its “IAM Strategy 300”, the world’s leading IP strategists, and among “The World's Leading Patent and Technology Licensing Lawyers.”
He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Chemistry, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY; and Juris Doctor from Syracuse University, College of Law, Syracuse, NY (1986).
Brian has served his alma mater as president of the RIT Alumni Association 2005 – 2009; and now serves on the RIT Board of Trustees as a member of its Executive Committee, chair of its Student Life Committee, and vice-chair of its Committee on Trustees. In 2013, Brian was awarded RIT’s Outstanding Alumnus Award, and in 2005 he was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by RIT’s College of Science.
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Senior Vice President and Litigation Director, Institute for Justice
Dana Berliner serves as Senior Vice President and Litigation Director at the Institute for Justice, where she has worked as a lawyer since 1994.
The focus of Dana’s litigation at IJ has been property rights. She successfully represented the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym and mentoring program for at-risk youth, which challenged the city of National City’s authorization of taking the CYAC’s property for private development; the California Court of Appeal ruled in 2013 that the authorization of eminent domain was invalid and that National City had violated California’s Public Records Act. Dana also represented the home and business owners in Norwood, Ohio, who, on July 26, 2006, secured a unanimous ruling from the Ohio Supreme Court that the city could not take their property for a privately owned shopping mall and “lifestyle center.” Along with co-counsel Scott Bullock, she represented the homeowners in Kelo v. New London, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities could condemn property because other uses may produce an increase in tax dollars and jobs. Dana, along with many others at IJ, worked to turn the nationwide outrage caused by the decision into new state statutes, constitutions and judicial decisions that cut back on eminent domain abuse. She secured a ruling that the Village of Port Chester, N.Y., violated due process in its use of eminent domain to secure waterfront property. Since 2008, Dana has been recognized every year as a “Best Lawyer” in eminent domain and condemnation law by the publication Best Lawyers in America.
On issues of free speech and economic liberty, Dana successfully defended Carla Main and Encounter Books, who wrote and published a book about eminent domain abuse in Texas and across the country, against a defamation suit brought by a developer who stood to receive property taken by eminent domain. She secured a victory in favor of two New Orleans entrepreneurs in a federal First Amendment challenge to the city of New Orleans’ ban on sidewalk book vending. As trial counsel, Dana also secured a ruling that the Nevada Transportation Services Authority violated the rights of several would-be limousine entrepreneurs by subjecting them to an onerous and arbitrary licensing process that gave undue power to existing companies opposing competition. And she successfully represented an aspiring teacher of African hair braiding in Mississippi, as well as two of her students, challenging restrictions on learning and teaching African hair braiding in Mississippi.
In 2012, Dana became IJ’s Litigation Director. She now oversees all of IJ’s litigation, helping other attorneys craft both their major legal theories and their day-to-day litigation strategies. And she helps to set the litigation directions that IJ will take. In 2016, Dana began her role as IJ’s Senior Vice President.
Dana authored Opening the Floodgates: Eminent Domain Abuse in the Post-Kelo World, a report on the use and threatened use of eminent domain for private development in the year since the Kelo decision. Dana also authored Public Power, Private Gain: A Five-Year, State-by-State Report Examining the Abuse of Eminent Domain, the first-ever nationwide study on the abuse of eminent domain, released in 2003.
Dana has been quoted in The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, NPR and The Washington Post as well as on various radio and television broadcasts, including 60 Minutes.
Dana received her law and undergraduate degrees from Yale University where she was a member of the Yale Law Journal and represented clients through the legal services program. After law school, she clerked for Judge Jerry Smith on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Dana Berliner is a member of the DC and Pennsylvania bars.
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Former Attorney General, State of Arizona
Mark Brnovich served as Arizona's 26th Attorney General from 2015 to 2023. He was first inaugurated in 2015, and again in 2019 after winning re-election. Mark has spent most of his professional life serving as a prosecutor at the local, state, and federal levels. Mark met his wife Susan while they both worked as prosecutors for the Maricopa County Attorney's office. Mark worked in the Gang/Repeat Offender Unit and prosecuted many difficult and high profile cases from 1992 to 1998. He then went on to work as an Assistant Attorney General with the Arizona Attorney General's Office from 1998 to 2003, where he developed an expertise in gambling law. Brnovich later went on to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Arizona where he prosecuted public integrity crimes, as well as crimes occurring in Indian Country.
Brnovich has also been a Judge Pro Tem of Maricopa County Superior Court, a Command Staff Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army National Guard, the Director for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, and the Director of the Arizona Department of Gaming, a law enforcement agency that investigates illegal gambling activity, as well as working with tribal regulators to ensure the integrity of tribal gaming.
Brnovich is known for restoring public confidence in the office of "Arizona's Top Cop" and for assembling some of the nation's most talented public servants for his administration. Mark argued at the United States Supreme Court in defense of the "one-person, one-vote" principle, was featured on 60 Minutes in defense of capital punishment, and has initiated national public education efforts to combat human sex trafficking.
Brnovich has been recognized by the National Federation of Independent Business as a "Champion of Small Business." and was elected by his bi-partisan colleagues to serve as the Chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General.
Mark's wife Susan was recently appointed by the United States Senate to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Arizona. He has two teenage daughters and lives in Phoenix.
Professor of Law and Christopher N. May Chair, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
After graduating from Loyola, Allan Ides served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1979-80 and then clerked for the Honorable Byron R. White, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1980-81. Professor Ides joined the Loyola Law School faculty in the fall of 1982 and served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1984-87. From 1989-97, Professor Ides was a member of the law school faculty at Washington & Lee in Lexington, Virginia. He returned to Los Angeles and to Loyola in 1997. He has written extensively in the areas of Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Federal Jurisdiction and Practice, and is actively involved in various public service projects, ranging from civil rights litigation to the representation of individuals in deportation proceedings.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Senior Vice President and Litigation Director, Institute for Justice
Dana Berliner serves as Senior Vice President and Litigation Director at the Institute for Justice, where she has worked as a lawyer since 1994.
The focus of Dana’s litigation at IJ has been property rights. She successfully represented the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym and mentoring program for at-risk youth, which challenged the city of National City’s authorization of taking the CYAC’s property for private development; the California Court of Appeal ruled in 2013 that the authorization of eminent domain was invalid and that National City had violated California’s Public Records Act. Dana also represented the home and business owners in Norwood, Ohio, who, on July 26, 2006, secured a unanimous ruling from the Ohio Supreme Court that the city could not take their property for a privately owned shopping mall and “lifestyle center.” Along with co-counsel Scott Bullock, she represented the homeowners in Kelo v. New London, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities could condemn property because other uses may produce an increase in tax dollars and jobs. Dana, along with many others at IJ, worked to turn the nationwide outrage caused by the decision into new state statutes, constitutions and judicial decisions that cut back on eminent domain abuse. She secured a ruling that the Village of Port Chester, N.Y., violated due process in its use of eminent domain to secure waterfront property. Since 2008, Dana has been recognized every year as a “Best Lawyer” in eminent domain and condemnation law by the publication Best Lawyers in America.
On issues of free speech and economic liberty, Dana successfully defended Carla Main and Encounter Books, who wrote and published a book about eminent domain abuse in Texas and across the country, against a defamation suit brought by a developer who stood to receive property taken by eminent domain. She secured a victory in favor of two New Orleans entrepreneurs in a federal First Amendment challenge to the city of New Orleans’ ban on sidewalk book vending. As trial counsel, Dana also secured a ruling that the Nevada Transportation Services Authority violated the rights of several would-be limousine entrepreneurs by subjecting them to an onerous and arbitrary licensing process that gave undue power to existing companies opposing competition. And she successfully represented an aspiring teacher of African hair braiding in Mississippi, as well as two of her students, challenging restrictions on learning and teaching African hair braiding in Mississippi.
In 2012, Dana became IJ’s Litigation Director. She now oversees all of IJ’s litigation, helping other attorneys craft both their major legal theories and their day-to-day litigation strategies. And she helps to set the litigation directions that IJ will take. In 2016, Dana began her role as IJ’s Senior Vice President.
Dana authored Opening the Floodgates: Eminent Domain Abuse in the Post-Kelo World, a report on the use and threatened use of eminent domain for private development in the year since the Kelo decision. Dana also authored Public Power, Private Gain: A Five-Year, State-by-State Report Examining the Abuse of Eminent Domain, the first-ever nationwide study on the abuse of eminent domain, released in 2003.
Dana has been quoted in The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, NPR and The Washington Post as well as on various radio and television broadcasts, including 60 Minutes.
Dana received her law and undergraduate degrees from Yale University where she was a member of the Yale Law Journal and represented clients through the legal services program. After law school, she clerked for Judge Jerry Smith on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Dana Berliner is a member of the DC and Pennsylvania bars.
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Former Attorney General, State of Arizona
Mark Brnovich served as Arizona's 26th Attorney General from 2015 to 2023. He was first inaugurated in 2015, and again in 2019 after winning re-election. Mark has spent most of his professional life serving as a prosecutor at the local, state, and federal levels. Mark met his wife Susan while they both worked as prosecutors for the Maricopa County Attorney's office. Mark worked in the Gang/Repeat Offender Unit and prosecuted many difficult and high profile cases from 1992 to 1998. He then went on to work as an Assistant Attorney General with the Arizona Attorney General's Office from 1998 to 2003, where he developed an expertise in gambling law. Brnovich later went on to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Arizona where he prosecuted public integrity crimes, as well as crimes occurring in Indian Country.
Brnovich has also been a Judge Pro Tem of Maricopa County Superior Court, a Command Staff Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army National Guard, the Director for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, and the Director of the Arizona Department of Gaming, a law enforcement agency that investigates illegal gambling activity, as well as working with tribal regulators to ensure the integrity of tribal gaming.
Brnovich is known for restoring public confidence in the office of "Arizona's Top Cop" and for assembling some of the nation's most talented public servants for his administration. Mark argued at the United States Supreme Court in defense of the "one-person, one-vote" principle, was featured on 60 Minutes in defense of capital punishment, and has initiated national public education efforts to combat human sex trafficking.
Brnovich has been recognized by the National Federation of Independent Business as a "Champion of Small Business." and was elected by his bi-partisan colleagues to serve as the Chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General.
Mark's wife Susan was recently appointed by the United States Senate to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Arizona. He has two teenage daughters and lives in Phoenix.
Professor of Law and Christopher N. May Chair, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
After graduating from Loyola, Allan Ides served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1979-80 and then clerked for the Honorable Byron R. White, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1980-81. Professor Ides joined the Loyola Law School faculty in the fall of 1982 and served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1984-87. From 1989-97, Professor Ides was a member of the law school faculty at Washington & Lee in Lexington, Virginia. He returned to Los Angeles and to Loyola in 1997. He has written extensively in the areas of Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Federal Jurisdiction and Practice, and is actively involved in various public service projects, ranging from civil rights litigation to the representation of individuals in deportation proceedings.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Professor of Law, LMU Loyola Law School (Los Angeles)
After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, Aaron Caplan clerked for the Honorable Betty Binns Fletcher, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1992 to 1998, he worked in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie, where his practice included intellectual property matters and other types of commercial litigation. He also maintained an active pro bono practice that included capital habeas corpus, asylum, death with dignity, and freedom of speech.
In 1998, Caplan became the first full-time staff attorney in more than 20 years for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, where his practice included freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gay rights, prisoner's rights, access to government documents and much more. At the ACLU, his litigation included some of the nation’s first decisions on the free speech rights of public school students on the Internet, the first challenge to the federal No Fly List, and the first decision to order the reinstatement of a gay officer discharged under the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell statute. Professor Caplan joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 2008.
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
Partner, Graves Garrett LLC
Todd Graves is a lawyer in private practice with the law firm of Graves Garrett. Todd represents individuals and businesses nationwide before federal and state courts and administrative agencies. His areas of expertise include white collar criminal defense, political speech and election law, internal investigations, regulatory compliance, and complex commercial litigation. Todd is admitted to the United States Supreme Court, the Missouri Bar, the Kansas Bar, the Texas Bar, the Iowa Bar, the Federal Courts of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the Eighth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit, and the Federal District Courts for the Western District of Missouri, Eastern District of Missouri, the District of Kansas, and the Western District of Michigan.
Todd currently serves as Executive Vice-President of the Pony Express Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Royal Association and a founding board member of the Kansas City Missouri Police Foundation.
Before forming Graves Garrett, Todd served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. As United States Attorney, Todd was responsible for prosecuting federal crimes including mail and wire fraud, money laundering, public corruption, health care fraud, child pornography, firearms violations, narcotics trafficking, pharmaceutical diversion, corporate fraud, and terrorism financing. During Graves’ tenure, felony filings doubled.
In addition, Todd was responsible for defending civil lawsuits brought against the United States, handling federal forfeiture actions, and collecting debts and restitution. Todd managed a staff of 120 with headquarters in Kansas City and two branch offices.
Todd also served as a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, advising the Attorney General on Department of Justice national priorities and policies. Todd participated in drafting Department of Justice policies in corporate investigations including charging, pre-trial diversion, and sentencing. Todd was also a member of the national Executive Working Group, which includes six Department of Justice officials, six state attorneys general, and six district attorneys.
Todd was appointed United States Attorney from his position as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, an office to which he was elected in 1994 and 1998. At the time of his election in 1994, he was the youngest full-time prosecuting attorney in Missouri. In that position, he oversaw a yearly caseload of approximately 400 felonies, 2500 misdemeanors and 14,000 traffic offenses.
As Prosecuting Attorney and as United States Attorney, Todd actively managed cases and trials under his authority and personally tried numerous jury trials to verdict, including cases of child molestation, drug distribution, murder and capital murder.
Prior to his service as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, Todd was in private practice with the Bryan Cave law firm. Before joining Bryan Cave, he was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Missouri.
In 1991, Todd received his law degree and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Missouri in 1988.
Raised on a family farm near Tarkio, Missouri, Todd has been married 24 years to his wife, Tracy. The couple has four children, and they reside on a 270 acre farm north of Kansas City that has been in the family since 1867.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Director and Senior Fellow, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, University of California at Berkeley
Mark Cohen heads the Asia IP Project at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at Berkeley Law School. He is also responsible for teaching international trade law and research and writing on IP issues. Previously, Cohen was Senior Counsel, China in the Office of Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, after serving as a visiting professor at Fordham Law School (2011-2012). Prior to that time, he served in such functions as: Director, International Intellectual Property at Microsoft Corporation; Of Counsel to Jones Day’s Beijing office; and Senior Intellectual Property Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing (2004- 2008). In total, he has over 30 years private, public sector, in-house and academic experience in China and transition economies, with a focus on technology trade and intellectual property.
Cohen was the first IPR Attaché posted by USPTO to handle IPR issues in a foreign country. In addition, he launched the annual “Ambassador’s IPR Roundtable” which he co-chaired for five years, devised IPR “toolkits”, “road shows”, pro-bono programs, internal training programs for the US government and external training programs, and worked with USPTO and other US agencies to engage China and Chinese IP agencies. Cohen led a China team at USPTO consisting of 21 individuals in DC, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, China on all aspects of USPTO’s activities in China. Among his book-length publications are Antimonopoly Law and Practice in China (Oxford University Press 2011, with Steve Harris et al.). He was also the editor of Chinese Intellectual Property Law and Practice (Kluwer Law International 1999) and has edited or published a number of on-line publications, including the blog www.chinaipr.com.
Mr. Cohen has taught and lectured at numerous universities in the United States, Asia and Europe. Amongst other honors, he was the recipient of the US Chamber of Commerce’s “IP Champion” award in 2014. Mr. Cohen holds a J.D. degree from Columbia University (1984), an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Chinese Language and Literature (1979) and a B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany in Chinese Studies (1977).
Hon. William Matthew Byrne, Jr. Chair Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University
Prior to joining Loyola in 2013, Professor Justin Hughes taught at Cardozo Law School where he served as director of Cardozo’s Intellectual Property Program, 2004 through 2008, and founded the law school’s Indie Film Clinic, the first of its kind.
From 2009 through 2013, Professor Hughes also worked in the Obama Administration as Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property. In that capacity he was the United States chief negotiator for the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances (2012) and the Marrakesh Treaty for the Blind (2013).
In the 1990s, Professor Hughes did volunteer work in democracy development in Latin America, West Africa and the Balkans. He has practiced law in Paris and Los Angeles. As a Henry Luce Scholar, he clerked for the Lord President of the Malaysian Supreme Court in Kuala Lumpur.
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP, Partner
Brian is chair of Dinsmore’s IP Transactions and Licensing Group. He is a past president of the Licensing Executives Society (USA and Canada), Inc. (LES), the leading professional society devoted to commercial transactions and licensing of intangible property. He continues to serve LES as senior vice president for public policy. He has extensive experience in a wide variety of commercial transactions involving intangible property, and is known for creative licensing strategies to promote collaboration and resolve IP-related disputes.
He is a registered patent attorney with more than 30 years of experience before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in structuring global IP portfolios and strategies. He has extensive experience in contested proceedings before the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (interferences, Inter Partes Reviews and Post Grant Reviews), as well as contested matters in federal courts and the International Trade Commission. His wide-ranging experience affords a broad, informed perspective and facilitates creative approaches to intellectual property management, licensing, and enforcement.
In addition to his leadership of LES, Brian served on the LES Board of Directors 2007 – 2018. In his ongoing role as senior vice president for public policy he is responsible for coordinating the society’s public policy positions, amicus briefs, and congressional outreach. He works with legislators, the executive branch, and the courts toward consistent, reliable, and prudent IP laws and policies that advance innovation and economic development. He has also served LES as trustee for education, and has long served as an author, editor, and faculty member of LES educational programs focusing on best practices in IP licensing.
He is also active in the global society, LES International (LESI). Among his various roles in LESI, he has served as co-chair of the External Relations Committee, coordinating public policy and advocacy for effective IP laws and policies among the 33 regional LES societies, and with various non-governmental organizations such as WIPO and EPO. In 2019, he received the LES International President’s Service Recognition Award.
Brian also serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Bayh Dole Coalition, a 501(c)(4) corporation dedicated to promoting and preserving the Bayh Dole Act. He is a member of the Founding Board of Directors of the United States Intellectual Property Alliance (USIPA), an organization dedicated to raising public awareness of, and appreciation for, the role of IP in fostering innovation for the public good; and he has served on the DC Bar Intellectual Property Section Steering Committee (2013 – 2016).
In 2016, Brian testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on the effects of the America Invents Act on small business and entrepreneurs in a hearing entitled “An Examination of Changes to the U.S. Patent System & Impacts on America's Small Businesses.”
With his longstanding and diverse patent practice, in both private practice and in-house, Brian advises corporate leaders and entrepreneurs in effective IP procurement practices, and in maximizing value from IP assets. He has been retained as a testifying witness in IP and licensing disputes by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and by various private enterprises.
Brian has been acknowledged by IAM magazine as among its “IAM Strategy 300”, the world’s leading IP strategists, and among “The World's Leading Patent and Technology Licensing Lawyers.”
He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Chemistry, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY; and Juris Doctor from Syracuse University, College of Law, Syracuse, NY (1986).
Brian has served his alma mater as president of the RIT Alumni Association 2005 – 2009; and now serves on the RIT Board of Trustees as a member of its Executive Committee, chair of its Student Life Committee, and vice-chair of its Committee on Trustees. In 2013, Brian was awarded RIT’s Outstanding Alumnus Award, and in 2005 he was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by RIT’s College of Science.
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Senior Vice President and Litigation Director, Institute for Justice
Dana Berliner serves as Senior Vice President and Litigation Director at the Institute for Justice, where she has worked as a lawyer since 1994.
The focus of Dana’s litigation at IJ has been property rights. She successfully represented the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym and mentoring program for at-risk youth, which challenged the city of National City’s authorization of taking the CYAC’s property for private development; the California Court of Appeal ruled in 2013 that the authorization of eminent domain was invalid and that National City had violated California’s Public Records Act. Dana also represented the home and business owners in Norwood, Ohio, who, on July 26, 2006, secured a unanimous ruling from the Ohio Supreme Court that the city could not take their property for a privately owned shopping mall and “lifestyle center.” Along with co-counsel Scott Bullock, she represented the homeowners in Kelo v. New London, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities could condemn property because other uses may produce an increase in tax dollars and jobs. Dana, along with many others at IJ, worked to turn the nationwide outrage caused by the decision into new state statutes, constitutions and judicial decisions that cut back on eminent domain abuse. She secured a ruling that the Village of Port Chester, N.Y., violated due process in its use of eminent domain to secure waterfront property. Since 2008, Dana has been recognized every year as a “Best Lawyer” in eminent domain and condemnation law by the publication Best Lawyers in America.
On issues of free speech and economic liberty, Dana successfully defended Carla Main and Encounter Books, who wrote and published a book about eminent domain abuse in Texas and across the country, against a defamation suit brought by a developer who stood to receive property taken by eminent domain. She secured a victory in favor of two New Orleans entrepreneurs in a federal First Amendment challenge to the city of New Orleans’ ban on sidewalk book vending. As trial counsel, Dana also secured a ruling that the Nevada Transportation Services Authority violated the rights of several would-be limousine entrepreneurs by subjecting them to an onerous and arbitrary licensing process that gave undue power to existing companies opposing competition. And she successfully represented an aspiring teacher of African hair braiding in Mississippi, as well as two of her students, challenging restrictions on learning and teaching African hair braiding in Mississippi.
In 2012, Dana became IJ’s Litigation Director. She now oversees all of IJ’s litigation, helping other attorneys craft both their major legal theories and their day-to-day litigation strategies. And she helps to set the litigation directions that IJ will take. In 2016, Dana began her role as IJ’s Senior Vice President.
Dana authored Opening the Floodgates: Eminent Domain Abuse in the Post-Kelo World, a report on the use and threatened use of eminent domain for private development in the year since the Kelo decision. Dana also authored Public Power, Private Gain: A Five-Year, State-by-State Report Examining the Abuse of Eminent Domain, the first-ever nationwide study on the abuse of eminent domain, released in 2003.
Dana has been quoted in The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, NPR and The Washington Post as well as on various radio and television broadcasts, including 60 Minutes.
Dana received her law and undergraduate degrees from Yale University where she was a member of the Yale Law Journal and represented clients through the legal services program. After law school, she clerked for Judge Jerry Smith on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Dana Berliner is a member of the DC and Pennsylvania bars.
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Former Attorney General, State of Arizona
Mark Brnovich served as Arizona's 26th Attorney General from 2015 to 2023. He was first inaugurated in 2015, and again in 2019 after winning re-election. Mark has spent most of his professional life serving as a prosecutor at the local, state, and federal levels. Mark met his wife Susan while they both worked as prosecutors for the Maricopa County Attorney's office. Mark worked in the Gang/Repeat Offender Unit and prosecuted many difficult and high profile cases from 1992 to 1998. He then went on to work as an Assistant Attorney General with the Arizona Attorney General's Office from 1998 to 2003, where he developed an expertise in gambling law. Brnovich later went on to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Arizona where he prosecuted public integrity crimes, as well as crimes occurring in Indian Country.
Brnovich has also been a Judge Pro Tem of Maricopa County Superior Court, a Command Staff Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army National Guard, the Director for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, and the Director of the Arizona Department of Gaming, a law enforcement agency that investigates illegal gambling activity, as well as working with tribal regulators to ensure the integrity of tribal gaming.
Brnovich is known for restoring public confidence in the office of "Arizona's Top Cop" and for assembling some of the nation's most talented public servants for his administration. Mark argued at the United States Supreme Court in defense of the "one-person, one-vote" principle, was featured on 60 Minutes in defense of capital punishment, and has initiated national public education efforts to combat human sex trafficking.
Brnovich has been recognized by the National Federation of Independent Business as a "Champion of Small Business." and was elected by his bi-partisan colleagues to serve as the Chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General.
Mark's wife Susan was recently appointed by the United States Senate to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Arizona. He has two teenage daughters and lives in Phoenix.
Professor of Law and Christopher N. May Chair, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
After graduating from Loyola, Allan Ides served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1979-80 and then clerked for the Honorable Byron R. White, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1980-81. Professor Ides joined the Loyola Law School faculty in the fall of 1982 and served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1984-87. From 1989-97, Professor Ides was a member of the law school faculty at Washington & Lee in Lexington, Virginia. He returned to Los Angeles and to Loyola in 1997. He has written extensively in the areas of Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Federal Jurisdiction and Practice, and is actively involved in various public service projects, ranging from civil rights litigation to the representation of individuals in deportation proceedings.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
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.
Professor of Law, LMU Loyola Law School (Los Angeles)
After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, Aaron Caplan clerked for the Honorable Betty Binns Fletcher, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1992 to 1998, he worked in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie, where his practice included intellectual property matters and other types of commercial litigation. He also maintained an active pro bono practice that included capital habeas corpus, asylum, death with dignity, and freedom of speech.
In 1998, Caplan became the first full-time staff attorney in more than 20 years for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, where his practice included freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gay rights, prisoner's rights, access to government documents and much more. At the ACLU, his litigation included some of the nation’s first decisions on the free speech rights of public school students on the Internet, the first challenge to the federal No Fly List, and the first decision to order the reinstatement of a gay officer discharged under the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell statute. Professor Caplan joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 2008.
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
Partner, Graves Garrett LLC
Todd Graves is a lawyer in private practice with the law firm of Graves Garrett. Todd represents individuals and businesses nationwide before federal and state courts and administrative agencies. His areas of expertise include white collar criminal defense, political speech and election law, internal investigations, regulatory compliance, and complex commercial litigation. Todd is admitted to the United States Supreme Court, the Missouri Bar, the Kansas Bar, the Texas Bar, the Iowa Bar, the Federal Courts of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the Eighth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit, and the Federal District Courts for the Western District of Missouri, Eastern District of Missouri, the District of Kansas, and the Western District of Michigan.
Todd currently serves as Executive Vice-President of the Pony Express Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Royal Association and a founding board member of the Kansas City Missouri Police Foundation.
Before forming Graves Garrett, Todd served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. As United States Attorney, Todd was responsible for prosecuting federal crimes including mail and wire fraud, money laundering, public corruption, health care fraud, child pornography, firearms violations, narcotics trafficking, pharmaceutical diversion, corporate fraud, and terrorism financing. During Graves’ tenure, felony filings doubled.
In addition, Todd was responsible for defending civil lawsuits brought against the United States, handling federal forfeiture actions, and collecting debts and restitution. Todd managed a staff of 120 with headquarters in Kansas City and two branch offices.
Todd also served as a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, advising the Attorney General on Department of Justice national priorities and policies. Todd participated in drafting Department of Justice policies in corporate investigations including charging, pre-trial diversion, and sentencing. Todd was also a member of the national Executive Working Group, which includes six Department of Justice officials, six state attorneys general, and six district attorneys.
Todd was appointed United States Attorney from his position as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, an office to which he was elected in 1994 and 1998. At the time of his election in 1994, he was the youngest full-time prosecuting attorney in Missouri. In that position, he oversaw a yearly caseload of approximately 400 felonies, 2500 misdemeanors and 14,000 traffic offenses.
As Prosecuting Attorney and as United States Attorney, Todd actively managed cases and trials under his authority and personally tried numerous jury trials to verdict, including cases of child molestation, drug distribution, murder and capital murder.
Prior to his service as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, Todd was in private practice with the Bryan Cave law firm. Before joining Bryan Cave, he was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Missouri.
In 1991, Todd received his law degree and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Missouri in 1988.
Raised on a family farm near Tarkio, Missouri, Todd has been married 24 years to his wife, Tracy. The couple has four children, and they reside on a 270 acre farm north of Kansas City that has been in the family since 1867.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Owner and Chief Executive Officer, Coalmont Electrical Developme, Outsider Inside the Supreme Court: A Decisive First Amendment Battle
Shaun McCutcheon grew up in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, and received his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1989. Shaun is a registered Professional Engineer in Alabama and still attending Georgia Tech occasionally for continuing education in order to obtain a Power Systems Certificate. After graduation, he worked for an electrical controls company, heading up a number of heavy industrial projects for paper, steel other process industries.
Mr. McCutcheon traveled extensively for 15 years installing motor drives and controls. In 1996, Shaun started his own electrical engineering company, Coalmont, in order to develop custom systems for customers needing upgrades and production improvements. Coalmont is now located in Tuscaloosa County and focuses primarily on difficult projects for the coal mining industry. Mr. McCutcheon’s group is also working on some new energy projects in Alabama for clean coal liquefaction and alternate energy conversion. Shaun specializes in controls and large horsepower energy conversion, both AC and DC.
Mr. McCutcheon is a member of IEEE and the NFIB and hopes to help create additional Alabama jobs with new mines and associated heavy industries such as wood products and automotive. He is a sponsor of the Young Republicans and Finance Director and an elected member of the Jefferson County Republican Executive Committee. He was elected to the Jefferson County Steering Committee, and is He is the chairman of Conservative Action Fund PAC. Mr. McCutcheon also sponsors several charities including Feed the Children.
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