Partner, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP; Special Professor of Law, Maurice A. Dean School of Law, Hofstra University
Gary E. Kalbaugh is a nationally recognized leader in commodities, futures, and derivatives law.
Gary is a partner in the New York office of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP as well as a Special Professor of Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where he teaches derivatives law and banking law.
A preeminent authority in the derivatives field, Gary is the author of the principal treatise Derivatives Law and Regulation (3rd ed. 2021) and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Futures and Derivatives Law Report, the foremost industry publication. He is a past chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on the Regulation of Futures and Derivatives and has over 15 years of experience as a professor teaching derivatives and banking law.
Gary is the leading derivatives lawyer in the digital assets space, and one of few to truly understand the technical side of emerging financial technology. He serves on the CFTC’s Future of Finance Subcommittee, reflecting his recognized leadership at the intersection of financial regulation and emerging technologies. A frequent speaker, writer, and commentator on derivatives, banking law, artificial intelligence, and digital assets regulation, he has served as conference co-chair for the American Bar Association’s “Artificial Intelligence and Derivatives Market” conference and regularly speaks at major industry conferences on cutting-edge issues in financial regulation and technology. Gary is sought after as a thought leader on the evolving landscape of digital asset regulation and the regulatory implications of AI in financial markets.
At ING, Gary served as Deputy General Counsel and Director, where he chaired swap dealer and security-based swap dealer regulatory committees and provided strategic leadership on U.S., European, and other regulations impacting the organization. He had global responsibility for U.S. derivatives regulatory issues and maintained strong relationships with regulators. Gary also co-developed ING legal’s global artificial intelligence training program and was responsible for U.S. regulatory issues relating to ING’s blockchain-based pilot programs and crypto initiatives.
Previously, Gary served as a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School and held senior roles at WestLB, where he was executive director, counsel, and chief U.S. data protection officer and chaired the global Dodd-Frank and underwriting committees. He began his career as an associate at a notable international firm.
Senior Adviser, Crito Capital
Dr. Oonagh McDonald, CBE is currently a senior adviser to Crito Capital, a private placement company based in New York.
A former British Member of Parliament, she became an international expert in financial regulation, after losing her seat in the General Election, 1987. She worked with the Asian Development Bank, advising regulatory authorities in a number of countries, including Sri Lanka and Indonesia. More recently, she has worked with USAID in Ukraine and Moldova. She has served as a non-executive director on the board of both financial services companies and regulatory authorities. In 1998, she was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire), a national honor by the Queen for her work in financial regulation.
She is the author of numerous articles and seven books, of which the most recent are: “Holding bankers to account: A decade of market manipulation, regulatory failures and regulatory reforms” (Manchester University Press, 2019) and “Cryptocurrencies: Money, Trust and Regulation” (Agenda Publishing, 2021).
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Dean & Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism, Columbia Journalis, The New Yorker
Dean Steve Coll is a staff writer at The New Yorker, the author of seven books of nonfiction, and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Between 1985 and 2005, he was a reporter, foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Washington Post. There he covered Wall Street, served as the paper’s South Asia correspondent in New Delhi, and was the Post’s first international investigative correspondent, based in London. He served as managing editor of the Post between 1998 and 2004. The following year, he joined The New Yorker, where he has written on international politics, American politics and national security, intelligence controversies and the media.
Coll is the author of “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001(link is external),” published in 2004, for which he received an Overseas Press Club Award and a Pulitzer Prize. His 2008 book, “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century(link is external),” won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction in 2009 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. His most recent book is “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power(link is external),” which won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Award as the best business book of 2012.
He has four children and is married to Eliza Griswold, the journalist and poet. He has a B.A. in English and history from Occidental College.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Founding Director, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
Jameel Jaffer is the founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which works to protect and expand the freedoms of speech and the press through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Until recently, Jaffer was deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, in which role he oversaw the ACLU’s work relating to free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights.
Jaffer has litigated some of the most significant post-9/11 cases relating to national security and civil liberties, including cases concerning detention, interrogation, surveillance, targeted killing, and government secrecy. He co-led the litigation that resulted in the publication of the Bush administration’s “torture memos”—a lawsuit the New York Times described as “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure.” More recently, he led the ACLU’s litigation that resulted in the publication of the Obama administration’s “drone memos.”
Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Gillian Lester is Dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.
She is a nationally recognized authority on employment law and policy whose research has explored workplace intellectual property law, public finance policy, and the design of social insurance laws and regulations. Dean Lester is the author of numerous books and articles and is co-author of one of the leading casebooks on employment law, Employment Law Cases and Materials. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and was an adviser to the ALI Restatement of Employment Law.
Dean Lester began her teaching career in 1994 at UCLA School of Law, becoming a full professor in 1999, and joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2006. At Berkeley, she was the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law and Mimi Wolfen Research Professor, and also served as co-director of the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic and Family Security; Associate Dean for the J.D. Program and Curricular Planning; and, most recently, Acting Dean (2012-2014).
She has held external appointments as the Sidley Austin Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Sloan Fellow and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Dean Lester also held short-term visiting appointments at USC Gould School of Law, University of Chicago Law School, and Radzyner School of Law Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
Dean Lester, Columbia Law School’s 15th dean, holds degrees from Stanford Law School and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the law review. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia.
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Professor Manta teaches intellectual property law subjects. Her research examines the intersection between intellectual property law and social science, with a focus on psychology. She has most recently written about the hedonic value of trademarks and its legal implications, the problem of cognitive bias in copyright infringement litigation, price discrimination through software licensing in the age of the Internet of Things, and the role of criminal sanctions in intellectual property. Professor Manta has published or has forthcoming work in the Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Stanford Technology Law Review, Florida Law Review, Arizona Law Review, and Cornell Law Review Online, among others. She is also a co-author for a forthcoming textbook on criminal law issues in intellectual property. Professor Manta has further been a guest blogger for PrawfsBlawg and for Concurring Opinions. In 2014, she received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publications, which is awarded to two junior faculty members across all disciplines at Hofstra University.
Before joining the law school faculty in 2012, Professor Manta was an Assistant Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2007 to 2009. Professor Manta has also served on the faculties of Brooklyn Law School, The George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for the 2006-2007 term.
While earning her J.D. at Yale Law School, Professor Manta was the grand prize winner of the Foley & Lardner LLP Intellectual Property Writing Competition. She also served as tributes editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in psychology.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Reena Raggi is a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of her appointment in 2002, she was a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
Judge Raggi earned her B.A. degree in 1973 from Wellesley College and her J.D. degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1976.
She was law clerk to Judge Thomas E. Fairchild of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1976 to 1977. From 1977 to 1979 she was in private law practice as an associate with the New York law firm of Cahill, Gordon & Reindel. She served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1979 to 1986, including assignments as Chief of the Narcotics Division (1982 to 1984), and Chief of the Special Prosecutions Division (1984 to 1986). Also in 1986, she served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York under an interim court appointment. Later that year, she resumed the private practice of law as a partner in the New York firm of Windels, Marx, Davies & Ives. She remained there until her appointment in 1987 as a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
Dean & Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism, Columbia Journalis, The New Yorker
Dean Steve Coll is a staff writer at The New Yorker, the author of seven books of nonfiction, and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Between 1985 and 2005, he was a reporter, foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Washington Post. There he covered Wall Street, served as the paper’s South Asia correspondent in New Delhi, and was the Post’s first international investigative correspondent, based in London. He served as managing editor of the Post between 1998 and 2004. The following year, he joined The New Yorker, where he has written on international politics, American politics and national security, intelligence controversies and the media.
Coll is the author of “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001(link is external),” published in 2004, for which he received an Overseas Press Club Award and a Pulitzer Prize. His 2008 book, “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century(link is external),” won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction in 2009 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. His most recent book is “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power(link is external),” which won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Award as the best business book of 2012.
He has four children and is married to Eliza Griswold, the journalist and poet. He has a B.A. in English and history from Occidental College.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Founding Director, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
Jameel Jaffer is the founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which works to protect and expand the freedoms of speech and the press through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Until recently, Jaffer was deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, in which role he oversaw the ACLU’s work relating to free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights.
Jaffer has litigated some of the most significant post-9/11 cases relating to national security and civil liberties, including cases concerning detention, interrogation, surveillance, targeted killing, and government secrecy. He co-led the litigation that resulted in the publication of the Bush administration’s “torture memos”—a lawsuit the New York Times described as “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure.” More recently, he led the ACLU’s litigation that resulted in the publication of the Obama administration’s “drone memos.”
Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Gillian Lester is Dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.
She is a nationally recognized authority on employment law and policy whose research has explored workplace intellectual property law, public finance policy, and the design of social insurance laws and regulations. Dean Lester is the author of numerous books and articles and is co-author of one of the leading casebooks on employment law, Employment Law Cases and Materials. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and was an adviser to the ALI Restatement of Employment Law.
Dean Lester began her teaching career in 1994 at UCLA School of Law, becoming a full professor in 1999, and joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2006. At Berkeley, she was the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law and Mimi Wolfen Research Professor, and also served as co-director of the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic and Family Security; Associate Dean for the J.D. Program and Curricular Planning; and, most recently, Acting Dean (2012-2014).
She has held external appointments as the Sidley Austin Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Sloan Fellow and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Dean Lester also held short-term visiting appointments at USC Gould School of Law, University of Chicago Law School, and Radzyner School of Law Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
Dean Lester, Columbia Law School’s 15th dean, holds degrees from Stanford Law School and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the law review. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia.
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Professor Manta teaches intellectual property law subjects. Her research examines the intersection between intellectual property law and social science, with a focus on psychology. She has most recently written about the hedonic value of trademarks and its legal implications, the problem of cognitive bias in copyright infringement litigation, price discrimination through software licensing in the age of the Internet of Things, and the role of criminal sanctions in intellectual property. Professor Manta has published or has forthcoming work in the Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Stanford Technology Law Review, Florida Law Review, Arizona Law Review, and Cornell Law Review Online, among others. She is also a co-author for a forthcoming textbook on criminal law issues in intellectual property. Professor Manta has further been a guest blogger for PrawfsBlawg and for Concurring Opinions. In 2014, she received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publications, which is awarded to two junior faculty members across all disciplines at Hofstra University.
Before joining the law school faculty in 2012, Professor Manta was an Assistant Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2007 to 2009. Professor Manta has also served on the faculties of Brooklyn Law School, The George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for the 2006-2007 term.
While earning her J.D. at Yale Law School, Professor Manta was the grand prize winner of the Foley & Lardner LLP Intellectual Property Writing Competition. She also served as tributes editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in psychology.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Reena Raggi is a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of her appointment in 2002, she was a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
Judge Raggi earned her B.A. degree in 1973 from Wellesley College and her J.D. degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1976.
She was law clerk to Judge Thomas E. Fairchild of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1976 to 1977. From 1977 to 1979 she was in private law practice as an associate with the New York law firm of Cahill, Gordon & Reindel. She served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1979 to 1986, including assignments as Chief of the Narcotics Division (1982 to 1984), and Chief of the Special Prosecutions Division (1984 to 1986). Also in 1986, she served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York under an interim court appointment. Later that year, she resumed the private practice of law as a partner in the New York firm of Windels, Marx, Davies & Ives. She remained there until her appointment in 1987 as a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
Partner, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP; Special Professor of Law, Maurice A. Dean School of Law, Hofstra University
Gary E. Kalbaugh is a nationally recognized leader in commodities, futures, and derivatives law.
Gary is a partner in the New York office of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP as well as a Special Professor of Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where he teaches derivatives law and banking law.
A preeminent authority in the derivatives field, Gary is the author of the principal treatise Derivatives Law and Regulation (3rd ed. 2021) and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Futures and Derivatives Law Report, the foremost industry publication. He is a past chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on the Regulation of Futures and Derivatives and has over 15 years of experience as a professor teaching derivatives and banking law.
Gary is the leading derivatives lawyer in the digital assets space, and one of few to truly understand the technical side of emerging financial technology. He serves on the CFTC’s Future of Finance Subcommittee, reflecting his recognized leadership at the intersection of financial regulation and emerging technologies. A frequent speaker, writer, and commentator on derivatives, banking law, artificial intelligence, and digital assets regulation, he has served as conference co-chair for the American Bar Association’s “Artificial Intelligence and Derivatives Market” conference and regularly speaks at major industry conferences on cutting-edge issues in financial regulation and technology. Gary is sought after as a thought leader on the evolving landscape of digital asset regulation and the regulatory implications of AI in financial markets.
At ING, Gary served as Deputy General Counsel and Director, where he chaired swap dealer and security-based swap dealer regulatory committees and provided strategic leadership on U.S., European, and other regulations impacting the organization. He had global responsibility for U.S. derivatives regulatory issues and maintained strong relationships with regulators. Gary also co-developed ING legal’s global artificial intelligence training program and was responsible for U.S. regulatory issues relating to ING’s blockchain-based pilot programs and crypto initiatives.
Previously, Gary served as a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School and held senior roles at WestLB, where he was executive director, counsel, and chief U.S. data protection officer and chaired the global Dodd-Frank and underwriting committees. He began his career as an associate at a notable international firm.
Senior Adviser, Crito Capital
Dr. Oonagh McDonald, CBE is currently a senior adviser to Crito Capital, a private placement company based in New York.
A former British Member of Parliament, she became an international expert in financial regulation, after losing her seat in the General Election, 1987. She worked with the Asian Development Bank, advising regulatory authorities in a number of countries, including Sri Lanka and Indonesia. More recently, she has worked with USAID in Ukraine and Moldova. She has served as a non-executive director on the board of both financial services companies and regulatory authorities. In 1998, she was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire), a national honor by the Queen for her work in financial regulation.
She is the author of numerous articles and seven books, of which the most recent are: “Holding bankers to account: A decade of market manipulation, regulatory failures and regulatory reforms” (Manchester University Press, 2019) and “Cryptocurrencies: Money, Trust and Regulation” (Agenda Publishing, 2021).
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Professor Samuel L. Bray joined the Notre Dame Law School faculty in 2018. Before coming to Notre Dame, he was an assistant professor of law at UCLA from 2011 to 2016, and a professor of law from 2016 to 2018. In addition, he was a Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas-Austin for the 2016-2017 academic year.
Bray is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, and he clerked for then-Judge Michael W. McConnell on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. After clerking, he practiced law at Mayer Brown LLP, was an associate-in-law at Columbia Law School, and was executive director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School.
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Professor Manta teaches intellectual property law subjects. Her research examines the intersection between intellectual property law and social science, with a focus on psychology. She has most recently written about the hedonic value of trademarks and its legal implications, the problem of cognitive bias in copyright infringement litigation, price discrimination through software licensing in the age of the Internet of Things, and the role of criminal sanctions in intellectual property. Professor Manta has published or has forthcoming work in the Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Stanford Technology Law Review, Florida Law Review, Arizona Law Review, and Cornell Law Review Online, among others. She is also a co-author for a forthcoming textbook on criminal law issues in intellectual property. Professor Manta has further been a guest blogger for PrawfsBlawg and for Concurring Opinions. In 2014, she received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publications, which is awarded to two junior faculty members across all disciplines at Hofstra University.
Before joining the law school faculty in 2012, Professor Manta was an Assistant Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2007 to 2009. Professor Manta has also served on the faculties of Brooklyn Law School, The George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for the 2006-2007 term.
While earning her J.D. at Yale Law School, Professor Manta was the grand prize winner of the Foley & Lardner LLP Intellectual Property Writing Competition. She also served as tributes editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in psychology.
Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Professor Mulligan teaches Internet law, intellectual property law, and trusts & estates. Her research addresses efforts to adapt intellectual property law for the digital age, the relationship between law and technology, and theories of constitutional interpretation. Recently, she has written about the Internet of Things, robot punishment, and early translations of the Constitution.
While at Brooklyn, Professor Mulligan researched as a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and taught as a visiting associate professor at Yale Law School. Previously, she taught at the University of Georgia and was a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Her scholarship has been published in a variety of journals and law reviews, including Georgia Law Review, SMU Law Review, and Constitutional Commentary.
Professor Mulligan earned her bachelor’s degree cum laude and her law degree cum laude from Harvard University, where she worked as a production and article editor for the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Before entering academia, she served as a law clerk for Judge Charles F. Lettow of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Stephen E. Sachs is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches civil procedure, conflict of laws, and seminars on constitutional law. His research focuses on the law and theory of constitutional interpretation, the jurisdiction of state and federal courts, the history of procedure and private law, and the role of the general common law in the U.S. legal system.
Sachs has authored numerous articles, essays, and book chapters. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an adviser to the ALI’s project on the Restatement of the Law (Third), Conflict of Laws, a former member of the Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance.
In 2020, Sachs received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic who has demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society.
Sachs previously taught at Duke University School of Law and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering academia, he practiced in the Washington, D.C., litigation group of Mayer Brown LLP, and he clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as well as for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Sachs received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and served both as executive editor and articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Oxford University with a first-class BA (Hons) degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in history from Harvard University, earning the Sophia Freund Prize.
Sachs is a licensed attorney in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and he is authorized to practice before the D.C. Circuit, the Second Circuit, the Seventh Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Professor Manta teaches intellectual property law subjects. Her research examines the intersection between intellectual property law and social science, with a focus on psychology. She has most recently written about the hedonic value of trademarks and its legal implications, the problem of cognitive bias in copyright infringement litigation, price discrimination through software licensing in the age of the Internet of Things, and the role of criminal sanctions in intellectual property. Professor Manta has published or has forthcoming work in the Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Stanford Technology Law Review, Florida Law Review, Arizona Law Review, and Cornell Law Review Online, among others. She is also a co-author for a forthcoming textbook on criminal law issues in intellectual property. Professor Manta has further been a guest blogger for PrawfsBlawg and for Concurring Opinions. In 2014, she received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publications, which is awarded to two junior faculty members across all disciplines at Hofstra University.
Before joining the law school faculty in 2012, Professor Manta was an Assistant Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2007 to 2009. Professor Manta has also served on the faculties of Brooklyn Law School, The George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for the 2006-2007 term.
While earning her J.D. at Yale Law School, Professor Manta was the grand prize winner of the Foley & Lardner LLP Intellectual Property Writing Competition. She also served as tributes editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in psychology.
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Professor Manta teaches intellectual property law subjects. Her research examines the intersection between intellectual property law and social science, with a focus on psychology. She has most recently written about the hedonic value of trademarks and its legal implications, the problem of cognitive bias in copyright infringement litigation, price discrimination through software licensing in the age of the Internet of Things, and the role of criminal sanctions in intellectual property. Professor Manta has published or has forthcoming work in the Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Stanford Technology Law Review, Florida Law Review, Arizona Law Review, and Cornell Law Review Online, among others. She is also a co-author for a forthcoming textbook on criminal law issues in intellectual property. Professor Manta has further been a guest blogger for PrawfsBlawg and for Concurring Opinions. In 2014, she received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publications, which is awarded to two junior faculty members across all disciplines at Hofstra University.
Before joining the law school faculty in 2012, Professor Manta was an Assistant Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2007 to 2009. Professor Manta has also served on the faculties of Brooklyn Law School, The George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for the 2006-2007 term.
While earning her J.D. at Yale Law School, Professor Manta was the grand prize winner of the Foley & Lardner LLP Intellectual Property Writing Competition. She also served as tributes editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in psychology.
District Court Judge, United States Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit
Bianco has served as a United States District Court judge for the Eastern District of New York since 2006. Most notably, he presided over several cases involving the MS-13 gang.
Prior to his confirmation to the bench, he spent portions of his career working in government, as both senior counsel/deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Criminal Division from 2004 to 2006, and as an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1994 to 2003. Bianco also worked in private practice as counsel at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP from 2003 to 2004, and as an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP from 1991 to 1992 and 1993 to 1994.
Bianco clerked for Judge Peter K. Leisure on the District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1992 to 1993. He received his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law in 1991 and his B.A. from Georgetown University in 1988.
Bianco has been a member of the Federalist Society since 2004.
Professor of Law, Hofstra University School of Law
Professor Colombo joined the Hofstra University School of Law faculty in the Fall of 2006. He teaches courses in corporate, securities, and contract law. His research and scholarship focuses primarily on corporate and securities law and, more specifically, the application of non-economic principles and norms to these fields.
Before coming to Hofstra, Professor Colombo served in the Complex Global Litigation Group of Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., as vice president and counsel. In this position, Professor Colombo supervised investigations, litigations, and regulatory inquiries affecting Morgan Stanley's investment banking franchise. Prior to that, Professor Colombo practiced as a litigation associate at the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell, where, among other things, he represented corporate and banking clients in civil and criminal investigations conducted by the S.E.C., the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the Federal Reserve Bank; in matters before state courts, federal courts, and arbitration panels; and in appeals before the Third Circuit, the D.C. Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. From 2000-2003, Professor Colombo also served on the Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
Dean & Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism, Columbia Journalis, The New Yorker
Dean Steve Coll is a staff writer at The New Yorker, the author of seven books of nonfiction, and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Between 1985 and 2005, he was a reporter, foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Washington Post. There he covered Wall Street, served as the paper’s South Asia correspondent in New Delhi, and was the Post’s first international investigative correspondent, based in London. He served as managing editor of the Post between 1998 and 2004. The following year, he joined The New Yorker, where he has written on international politics, American politics and national security, intelligence controversies and the media.
Coll is the author of “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001(link is external),” published in 2004, for which he received an Overseas Press Club Award and a Pulitzer Prize. His 2008 book, “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century(link is external),” won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction in 2009 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. His most recent book is “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power(link is external),” which won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Award as the best business book of 2012.
He has four children and is married to Eliza Griswold, the journalist and poet. He has a B.A. in English and history from Occidental College.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Founding Director, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
Jameel Jaffer is the founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which works to protect and expand the freedoms of speech and the press through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Until recently, Jaffer was deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, in which role he oversaw the ACLU’s work relating to free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights.
Jaffer has litigated some of the most significant post-9/11 cases relating to national security and civil liberties, including cases concerning detention, interrogation, surveillance, targeted killing, and government secrecy. He co-led the litigation that resulted in the publication of the Bush administration’s “torture memos”—a lawsuit the New York Times described as “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure.” More recently, he led the ACLU’s litigation that resulted in the publication of the Obama administration’s “drone memos.”
Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Gillian Lester is Dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.
She is a nationally recognized authority on employment law and policy whose research has explored workplace intellectual property law, public finance policy, and the design of social insurance laws and regulations. Dean Lester is the author of numerous books and articles and is co-author of one of the leading casebooks on employment law, Employment Law Cases and Materials. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and was an adviser to the ALI Restatement of Employment Law.
Dean Lester began her teaching career in 1994 at UCLA School of Law, becoming a full professor in 1999, and joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2006. At Berkeley, she was the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law and Mimi Wolfen Research Professor, and also served as co-director of the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic and Family Security; Associate Dean for the J.D. Program and Curricular Planning; and, most recently, Acting Dean (2012-2014).
She has held external appointments as the Sidley Austin Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Sloan Fellow and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Dean Lester also held short-term visiting appointments at USC Gould School of Law, University of Chicago Law School, and Radzyner School of Law Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
Dean Lester, Columbia Law School’s 15th dean, holds degrees from Stanford Law School and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the law review. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia.
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Professor Manta teaches intellectual property law subjects. Her research examines the intersection between intellectual property law and social science, with a focus on psychology. She has most recently written about the hedonic value of trademarks and its legal implications, the problem of cognitive bias in copyright infringement litigation, price discrimination through software licensing in the age of the Internet of Things, and the role of criminal sanctions in intellectual property. Professor Manta has published or has forthcoming work in the Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Stanford Technology Law Review, Florida Law Review, Arizona Law Review, and Cornell Law Review Online, among others. She is also a co-author for a forthcoming textbook on criminal law issues in intellectual property. Professor Manta has further been a guest blogger for PrawfsBlawg and for Concurring Opinions. In 2014, she received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publications, which is awarded to two junior faculty members across all disciplines at Hofstra University.
Before joining the law school faculty in 2012, Professor Manta was an Assistant Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2007 to 2009. Professor Manta has also served on the faculties of Brooklyn Law School, The George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for the 2006-2007 term.
While earning her J.D. at Yale Law School, Professor Manta was the grand prize winner of the Foley & Lardner LLP Intellectual Property Writing Competition. She also served as tributes editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in psychology.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Reena Raggi is a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of her appointment in 2002, she was a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
Judge Raggi earned her B.A. degree in 1973 from Wellesley College and her J.D. degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1976.
She was law clerk to Judge Thomas E. Fairchild of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1976 to 1977. From 1977 to 1979 she was in private law practice as an associate with the New York law firm of Cahill, Gordon & Reindel. She served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1979 to 1986, including assignments as Chief of the Narcotics Division (1982 to 1984), and Chief of the Special Prosecutions Division (1984 to 1986). Also in 1986, she served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York under an interim court appointment. Later that year, she resumed the private practice of law as a partner in the New York firm of Windels, Marx, Davies & Ives. She remained there until her appointment in 1987 as a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
Professor of Law, Hofstra University School of Law
Professor Colombo joined the Hofstra University School of Law faculty in the Fall of 2006. He teaches courses in corporate, securities, and contract law. His research and scholarship focuses primarily on corporate and securities law and, more specifically, the application of non-economic principles and norms to these fields.
Before coming to Hofstra, Professor Colombo served in the Complex Global Litigation Group of Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., as vice president and counsel. In this position, Professor Colombo supervised investigations, litigations, and regulatory inquiries affecting Morgan Stanley's investment banking franchise. Prior to that, Professor Colombo practiced as a litigation associate at the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell, where, among other things, he represented corporate and banking clients in civil and criminal investigations conducted by the S.E.C., the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the Federal Reserve Bank; in matters before state courts, federal courts, and arbitration panels; and in appeals before the Third Circuit, the D.C. Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. From 2000-2003, Professor Colombo also served on the Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
LIBOR – Will a $200 Trillion Global Benchmark Disappear – or Not?
Gary Kalbaugh, Oonagh Ann McDonald, Alex J. Pollock
LIBOR is a hugely important interest rate benchmark, used globally and embedded in over $200...
LIBOR – Will a $200 Trillion Global Benchmark Disappear – or Not?
Financial Services Practice Groups and Regulatory Transparency Project Teleforum
TeleforumThe Constitution and Campus Politics: A Conversation for Young and Nearly Young Law Professors
20th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
San Diego, CATrademarks as Speech & Property in a World of Brands
The Newsworthiness Doctrine in the Age of Internet Scandals
Reflections on the Jurisprudence of Justice Antonin Scalia
Mineola, New YorkPanel 1: Privacy and Freedom of the Press
Steve Coll, Richard A. Epstein, Jameel Jaffer, Gillian Lester, Irina D. Manta, Reena Raggi
The Internet has made information not only much more accessible, it has allowed almost anyone...
Panel 1: Privacy and Freedom of the Press
Steve Coll, Richard A. Epstein, Jameel Jaffer, Gillian Lester, Irina D. Manta, Reena Raggi
The Internet has made information not only much more accessible, it has allowed almost anyone...
Panel 1: Privacy and Freedom of the Press
2017 National Student Symposium
New York, NYReligious Liberty Under The Trump Administration
Mineola, New York