Executive Vice President of Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Walmart Inc.
Rachel Brand is Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary. She oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, ethics, corporate governance, digital citizenship, aviation, investigative, and corporate security functions, including Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center.
Immediately before joining Walmart, Rachel served as the United States Associate Attorney General and holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in this role. She had previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy during President George W. Bush’s administration. Her other government service includes an appointment by President Obama to serve as a Member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, service as an Associate Counsel to the President at the White House, and judicial clerkships with Justice Charles Fried of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. In the private sector, Rachel was a lawyer in private practice at two law firms in Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President and Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center.
Rachel serves on the board of directors for the Walmart Foundation and is the executive sponsor for Walmart’s Tribal Voices Associate Resource Group. Outside of Walmart, she serves on the board of directors for the International Justice Mission and is a member of The American Law Institute.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Galle arrives at the Law Center from Boston College Law School. Before that, he was on the faculty at Florida State University College of Law. His research and teaching interests include taxation, nonprofit organizations, behavioral law and economics, federalism, and public finance economics. He was a visiting professor at the Law Center in the 2008-2009 academic year and has been a visitor at George Washington University Law School and a visiting fellow at the Urban/Brookings Tax Policy Center. He practiced for three years as an attorney in the Criminal Appeals and Tax Enforcement Policy Section of the Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. He also clerked for Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and Judge Stephen M. Orlofsky of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. A graduate of Harvard College, he received a J.D. from Columbia and an LL.M. from Georgetown.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Professor of Law Michael S. Greve joined the faculty of the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University in fall 2012 after having served as John G. Searle Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specialized in constitutional law, courts, and business regulation and served as chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI, Greve was founder and co-director of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm specializing in constitutional litigation.
Greve has served previously as an adjunct professor at a number of universities, including Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities, and has been a visiting professor at Boston College since 2004. He was awarded a PhD and an MA in government by Cornell University. Greve also earned a Diploma from the University of Hamburg in Germany.
A prolific writer, Greve is the author of nine books and a multitude of articles appearing in scholarly publications, as well as numerous editorials, short articles, and book reviews. He is a frequent speaker for professional and scholarly organizations and has made many appearances on radio and television.
In addition Greve has provided congressional and state legislative testimony, has lobbied and consulted in federal agency proceedings, and has provided litigation services and management in over 30 cases, including matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
Executive Vice President of Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Walmart Inc.
Rachel Brand is Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary. She oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, ethics, corporate governance, digital citizenship, aviation, investigative, and corporate security functions, including Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center.
Immediately before joining Walmart, Rachel served as the United States Associate Attorney General and holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in this role. She had previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy during President George W. Bush’s administration. Her other government service includes an appointment by President Obama to serve as a Member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, service as an Associate Counsel to the President at the White House, and judicial clerkships with Justice Charles Fried of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. In the private sector, Rachel was a lawyer in private practice at two law firms in Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President and Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center.
Rachel serves on the board of directors for the Walmart Foundation and is the executive sponsor for Walmart’s Tribal Voices Associate Resource Group. Outside of Walmart, she serves on the board of directors for the International Justice Mission and is a member of The American Law Institute.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Galle arrives at the Law Center from Boston College Law School. Before that, he was on the faculty at Florida State University College of Law. His research and teaching interests include taxation, nonprofit organizations, behavioral law and economics, federalism, and public finance economics. He was a visiting professor at the Law Center in the 2008-2009 academic year and has been a visitor at George Washington University Law School and a visiting fellow at the Urban/Brookings Tax Policy Center. He practiced for three years as an attorney in the Criminal Appeals and Tax Enforcement Policy Section of the Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. He also clerked for Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and Judge Stephen M. Orlofsky of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. A graduate of Harvard College, he received a J.D. from Columbia and an LL.M. from Georgetown.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Professor of Law Michael S. Greve joined the faculty of the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University in fall 2012 after having served as John G. Searle Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specialized in constitutional law, courts, and business regulation and served as chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI, Greve was founder and co-director of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm specializing in constitutional litigation.
Greve has served previously as an adjunct professor at a number of universities, including Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities, and has been a visiting professor at Boston College since 2004. He was awarded a PhD and an MA in government by Cornell University. Greve also earned a Diploma from the University of Hamburg in Germany.
A prolific writer, Greve is the author of nine books and a multitude of articles appearing in scholarly publications, as well as numerous editorials, short articles, and book reviews. He is a frequent speaker for professional and scholarly organizations and has made many appearances on radio and television.
In addition Greve has provided congressional and state legislative testimony, has lobbied and consulted in federal agency proceedings, and has provided litigation services and management in over 30 cases, including matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
H. Ross & Helen Workman Research Scholar, Director, Program in I, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Jay P. Kesan's academic interests are in the areas of technology, law, and business. Specifically, his work focuses on patent law, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, cyberlaw, digital government (e-gov), agricultural biotechnology law, and biofuels regulation. His recent publications can be found on SSRN (Social Science Research Network).
At the University of Illinois, Professor Kesan is appointed in the College of Law, the Institute of Genomic Biology, the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the Information Trust Institute, the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the College of Business, and the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics.
He directs the Program in Intellectual Property & Technology Law at the College of Law. At the Institute of Genomic Biology (IGB), he is group leader of the Business, Economics & Law of Genomic Biology (BioBEL) theme, and he directs research on biofuel law & regulation at the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI).
Most recently, he served as a Thomas A. Edison Scholar at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
His recent awards include: Honorable Mention ($1,000 Award), Competition on Cyberdeterrence conducted by the National Research Council for work on “Thinking Through Active Defense in Cyberspace,” 2011; Microsoft Research Awards in 2011 and 2012 for work on technology standards and patent policy; Best Paper Award for Contributions to Foundations of Electronic Governance at the 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV), Beijing, China, Oct. 25-28, 2010; Best Paper Award for "An Empirical Examination of Open Standards Development" (with R. Shah), 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2008; Best Paper Award for "An Empirical Study of Open Standards" (with R. Shah) published in the Proceedings of the 8th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 2007; and IBM Faculty Award in 2006.
His books include: Adopting Open Source Software, A Practical Guide (with Fitzgerald, Russo, Shaikh and Succi), MIT Press (2011); The Commercial Law of Intellectual Property (with Alces, Frisch and See), Aspen Publishing Co. (2003-2014 Cumm. Supp.) (treatise); Intellectual Property in Business Organizations (with Ghosh and Gruner), Lexis-Nexis Publishing Co. (2d ed. 2012) (unique and first-of-its-kind casebook on transactional IP); Defining Values for Research & Technology(Greenough, McConnaughay and Kesan (eds.)), Rowman & Littlefield Publishing (Fall 2006); Intellectual Property: Private Rights, the Public Interest, and the Regulation of Creative Activity (with Ghosh, Gruner & Reis), West Publishing Co. (2d ed. 2010) (casebook); Agricultural Biotechnology and Intellectual Property: Seeds of Change, Kesan (ed.), CABI Publishing Co., Oxford (2007).
He has received numerous, multi-year research grants/awards for his work in the areas of intellectual property and technology regulation from the National Science Foundation, The National Academy of Sciences—Board of Science, Technology and Economic Policy (STEP), the private sector, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Energy Biosciences Institute, the Federal Judicial Center, the Net Institute, the Coleman Foundation, and the University of Illinois Campus Research Board.
Professor Kesan continues to be professionally active in the areas of patent litigation and technology entrepreneurship. He was appointed by federal judges to serve as a special master in patent litigations, and has served as a technical and legal expert and/or counsel in patent matters. He also serves on the boards of directors/advisors of start-up technology companies.
He participated twice in panels at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Hearings on the Implications of Competition and Patent Law and Policy. He testified about biofuel regulation issues before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He has also worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation on their intellectual property protection and technology commercialization activities in the former Soviet Union countries.
He is regular radio commentator for “Legal Issues in the News,” WILL-AM-FM Illinois Public Radio.
Professor Kesan was a JSPS Invited Fellow and visiting associate professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan and has also served as a Foreign Research Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual Property (IIP) in Tokyo, Japan. He has also taught as a visiting faculty at Georgetown University, DePaul University, Florida State University, and Seattle University.
He serves as faculty editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, which published its inaugural issue in Spring 2001. He has also developed an online course on "Legal Issues in Technology Entrepreneurship," supported by a grant from the Coleman Foundation.
Professor Kesan received his J.D. summa cum laude from Georgetown University, where he received several awards including Order of the Coif and served as associate editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Prior to attending law school, Jay Kesan – who also holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering – worked as a research scientist at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York. He is a registered patent attorney and practiced at the former firm of Pennie & Edmonds LLP in the areas of patent litigation and patent prosecution. In addition, he has published numerous scientific papers, and he has obtained several patents in the U.S. and abroad.
Chief Economist, Abundance Institute
Executive Vice President of Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Walmart Inc.
Rachel Brand is Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary. She oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, ethics, corporate governance, digital citizenship, aviation, investigative, and corporate security functions, including Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center.
Immediately before joining Walmart, Rachel served as the United States Associate Attorney General and holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in this role. She had previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy during President George W. Bush’s administration. Her other government service includes an appointment by President Obama to serve as a Member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, service as an Associate Counsel to the President at the White House, and judicial clerkships with Justice Charles Fried of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. In the private sector, Rachel was a lawyer in private practice at two law firms in Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President and Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center.
Rachel serves on the board of directors for the Walmart Foundation and is the executive sponsor for Walmart’s Tribal Voices Associate Resource Group. Outside of Walmart, she serves on the board of directors for the International Justice Mission and is a member of The American Law Institute.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Galle arrives at the Law Center from Boston College Law School. Before that, he was on the faculty at Florida State University College of Law. His research and teaching interests include taxation, nonprofit organizations, behavioral law and economics, federalism, and public finance economics. He was a visiting professor at the Law Center in the 2008-2009 academic year and has been a visitor at George Washington University Law School and a visiting fellow at the Urban/Brookings Tax Policy Center. He practiced for three years as an attorney in the Criminal Appeals and Tax Enforcement Policy Section of the Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. He also clerked for Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and Judge Stephen M. Orlofsky of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. A graduate of Harvard College, he received a J.D. from Columbia and an LL.M. from Georgetown.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Professor of Law Michael S. Greve joined the faculty of the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University in fall 2012 after having served as John G. Searle Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specialized in constitutional law, courts, and business regulation and served as chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI, Greve was founder and co-director of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm specializing in constitutional litigation.
Greve has served previously as an adjunct professor at a number of universities, including Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities, and has been a visiting professor at Boston College since 2004. He was awarded a PhD and an MA in government by Cornell University. Greve also earned a Diploma from the University of Hamburg in Germany.
A prolific writer, Greve is the author of nine books and a multitude of articles appearing in scholarly publications, as well as numerous editorials, short articles, and book reviews. He is a frequent speaker for professional and scholarly organizations and has made many appearances on radio and television.
In addition Greve has provided congressional and state legislative testimony, has lobbied and consulted in federal agency proceedings, and has provided litigation services and management in over 30 cases, including matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
Chief Economist, Abundance Institute
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.
Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Jim Harper is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on privacy issues, and select legal and constitutional law issues.
A lawyer by training, Mr. Harper has served as counsel for the Subcommittee on Commercial, and Administrative Law of the US House Committee on the Judiciary and as counsel for the Senate Committee on Government Affairs. More recently, he worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, where he wrote on the intersection of business, technology, and public policy, including privacy, surveillance, data security, telecommunications, and cryptocurrencies. He also served as global policy counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation. Mr. Harper was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Early in his post-Hill career, he represented companies such as PayPal and Verisign before Congress.
Mr. Harper is the co-editor of “Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It” (Cato Institute, 2010) and the author of “Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood” (Cato Institute, 2006). He has written several amicus briefs in Fourth Amendment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has published scholarly articles in a variety of law journals. In the popular press, Mr. Harper has been published in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.
Mr. Harper has a law degree from the U.C. Hastings College of the Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, and a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
President, The Free State Foundation
Randolph J. May is Founder and President of The Free State Foundation. The Free State Foundation is an independent, non-profit free market-oriented think tank founded in 2006.
From October 1999-May 2006, May was a Senior Fellow and Director of Communications Policy Studies at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. Prior to joining PFF, he practiced communications, administrative, and regulatory law as a partner at major national law firms. From 1978 to 1981, May served as Assistant General Counsel and Associate General Counsel at the Federal Communication Commission.
May has held numerous leadership positions in bar associations. He is a past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Mr. May also has served as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and currently is a Senior Fellow at ACUS.
Mr. May has published more than two hundred articles and essays on communications, administrative and constitutional law topics. He is author of A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform, and co-author of #CommActUpdate: A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age and The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property. Mr. May is editor of two books, Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age: The Next Five Years and New Directions in Communications Policy. In addition, he is the co-editor of two other books, Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated? and Communications Deregulation and FCC Reform. In the past, Mr. May has written regular columns on legal and regulatory affairs for Legal Times and the National Law Journal, leading national legal periodicals.
He received his A.B. from Duke University and his J.D. from Duke Law School, where he serves as a member of the Board of Visitors.
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
Chief Economist, Abundance Institute
H. Ross & Helen Workman Research Scholar, Director, Program in I, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Jay P. Kesan's academic interests are in the areas of technology, law, and business. Specifically, his work focuses on patent law, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, cyberlaw, digital government (e-gov), agricultural biotechnology law, and biofuels regulation. His recent publications can be found on SSRN (Social Science Research Network).
At the University of Illinois, Professor Kesan is appointed in the College of Law, the Institute of Genomic Biology, the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the Information Trust Institute, the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the College of Business, and the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics.
He directs the Program in Intellectual Property & Technology Law at the College of Law. At the Institute of Genomic Biology (IGB), he is group leader of the Business, Economics & Law of Genomic Biology (BioBEL) theme, and he directs research on biofuel law & regulation at the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI).
Most recently, he served as a Thomas A. Edison Scholar at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
His recent awards include: Honorable Mention ($1,000 Award), Competition on Cyberdeterrence conducted by the National Research Council for work on “Thinking Through Active Defense in Cyberspace,” 2011; Microsoft Research Awards in 2011 and 2012 for work on technology standards and patent policy; Best Paper Award for Contributions to Foundations of Electronic Governance at the 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV), Beijing, China, Oct. 25-28, 2010; Best Paper Award for "An Empirical Examination of Open Standards Development" (with R. Shah), 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2008; Best Paper Award for "An Empirical Study of Open Standards" (with R. Shah) published in the Proceedings of the 8th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 2007; and IBM Faculty Award in 2006.
His books include: Adopting Open Source Software, A Practical Guide (with Fitzgerald, Russo, Shaikh and Succi), MIT Press (2011); The Commercial Law of Intellectual Property (with Alces, Frisch and See), Aspen Publishing Co. (2003-2014 Cumm. Supp.) (treatise); Intellectual Property in Business Organizations (with Ghosh and Gruner), Lexis-Nexis Publishing Co. (2d ed. 2012) (unique and first-of-its-kind casebook on transactional IP); Defining Values for Research & Technology(Greenough, McConnaughay and Kesan (eds.)), Rowman & Littlefield Publishing (Fall 2006); Intellectual Property: Private Rights, the Public Interest, and the Regulation of Creative Activity (with Ghosh, Gruner & Reis), West Publishing Co. (2d ed. 2010) (casebook); Agricultural Biotechnology and Intellectual Property: Seeds of Change, Kesan (ed.), CABI Publishing Co., Oxford (2007).
He has received numerous, multi-year research grants/awards for his work in the areas of intellectual property and technology regulation from the National Science Foundation, The National Academy of Sciences—Board of Science, Technology and Economic Policy (STEP), the private sector, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Energy Biosciences Institute, the Federal Judicial Center, the Net Institute, the Coleman Foundation, and the University of Illinois Campus Research Board.
Professor Kesan continues to be professionally active in the areas of patent litigation and technology entrepreneurship. He was appointed by federal judges to serve as a special master in patent litigations, and has served as a technical and legal expert and/or counsel in patent matters. He also serves on the boards of directors/advisors of start-up technology companies.
He participated twice in panels at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Hearings on the Implications of Competition and Patent Law and Policy. He testified about biofuel regulation issues before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He has also worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation on their intellectual property protection and technology commercialization activities in the former Soviet Union countries.
He is regular radio commentator for “Legal Issues in the News,” WILL-AM-FM Illinois Public Radio.
Professor Kesan was a JSPS Invited Fellow and visiting associate professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan and has also served as a Foreign Research Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual Property (IIP) in Tokyo, Japan. He has also taught as a visiting faculty at Georgetown University, DePaul University, Florida State University, and Seattle University.
He serves as faculty editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, which published its inaugural issue in Spring 2001. He has also developed an online course on "Legal Issues in Technology Entrepreneurship," supported by a grant from the Coleman Foundation.
Professor Kesan received his J.D. summa cum laude from Georgetown University, where he received several awards including Order of the Coif and served as associate editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Prior to attending law school, Jay Kesan – who also holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering – worked as a research scientist at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York. He is a registered patent attorney and practiced at the former firm of Pennie & Edmonds LLP in the areas of patent litigation and patent prosecution. In addition, he has published numerous scientific papers, and he has obtained several patents in the U.S. and abroad.
Chief Economist, Abundance Institute
H. Ross & Helen Workman Research Scholar, Director, Program in I, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Jay P. Kesan's academic interests are in the areas of technology, law, and business. Specifically, his work focuses on patent law, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, cyberlaw, digital government (e-gov), agricultural biotechnology law, and biofuels regulation. His recent publications can be found on SSRN (Social Science Research Network).
At the University of Illinois, Professor Kesan is appointed in the College of Law, the Institute of Genomic Biology, the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the Information Trust Institute, the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the College of Business, and the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics.
He directs the Program in Intellectual Property & Technology Law at the College of Law. At the Institute of Genomic Biology (IGB), he is group leader of the Business, Economics & Law of Genomic Biology (BioBEL) theme, and he directs research on biofuel law & regulation at the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI).
Most recently, he served as a Thomas A. Edison Scholar at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
His recent awards include: Honorable Mention ($1,000 Award), Competition on Cyberdeterrence conducted by the National Research Council for work on “Thinking Through Active Defense in Cyberspace,” 2011; Microsoft Research Awards in 2011 and 2012 for work on technology standards and patent policy; Best Paper Award for Contributions to Foundations of Electronic Governance at the 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV), Beijing, China, Oct. 25-28, 2010; Best Paper Award for "An Empirical Examination of Open Standards Development" (with R. Shah), 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2008; Best Paper Award for "An Empirical Study of Open Standards" (with R. Shah) published in the Proceedings of the 8th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 2007; and IBM Faculty Award in 2006.
His books include: Adopting Open Source Software, A Practical Guide (with Fitzgerald, Russo, Shaikh and Succi), MIT Press (2011); The Commercial Law of Intellectual Property (with Alces, Frisch and See), Aspen Publishing Co. (2003-2014 Cumm. Supp.) (treatise); Intellectual Property in Business Organizations (with Ghosh and Gruner), Lexis-Nexis Publishing Co. (2d ed. 2012) (unique and first-of-its-kind casebook on transactional IP); Defining Values for Research & Technology(Greenough, McConnaughay and Kesan (eds.)), Rowman & Littlefield Publishing (Fall 2006); Intellectual Property: Private Rights, the Public Interest, and the Regulation of Creative Activity (with Ghosh, Gruner & Reis), West Publishing Co. (2d ed. 2010) (casebook); Agricultural Biotechnology and Intellectual Property: Seeds of Change, Kesan (ed.), CABI Publishing Co., Oxford (2007).
He has received numerous, multi-year research grants/awards for his work in the areas of intellectual property and technology regulation from the National Science Foundation, The National Academy of Sciences—Board of Science, Technology and Economic Policy (STEP), the private sector, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Energy Biosciences Institute, the Federal Judicial Center, the Net Institute, the Coleman Foundation, and the University of Illinois Campus Research Board.
Professor Kesan continues to be professionally active in the areas of patent litigation and technology entrepreneurship. He was appointed by federal judges to serve as a special master in patent litigations, and has served as a technical and legal expert and/or counsel in patent matters. He also serves on the boards of directors/advisors of start-up technology companies.
He participated twice in panels at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Hearings on the Implications of Competition and Patent Law and Policy. He testified about biofuel regulation issues before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He has also worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation on their intellectual property protection and technology commercialization activities in the former Soviet Union countries.
He is regular radio commentator for “Legal Issues in the News,” WILL-AM-FM Illinois Public Radio.
Professor Kesan was a JSPS Invited Fellow and visiting associate professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan and has also served as a Foreign Research Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual Property (IIP) in Tokyo, Japan. He has also taught as a visiting faculty at Georgetown University, DePaul University, Florida State University, and Seattle University.
He serves as faculty editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, which published its inaugural issue in Spring 2001. He has also developed an online course on "Legal Issues in Technology Entrepreneurship," supported by a grant from the Coleman Foundation.
Professor Kesan received his J.D. summa cum laude from Georgetown University, where he received several awards including Order of the Coif and served as associate editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Prior to attending law school, Jay Kesan – who also holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering – worked as a research scientist at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York. He is a registered patent attorney and practiced at the former firm of Pennie & Edmonds LLP in the areas of patent litigation and patent prosecution. In addition, he has published numerous scientific papers, and he has obtained several patents in the U.S. and abroad.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Austin E. Owen Research Scholar & Professor of Law, The University of Richmond School of Law
Dean Kristen Jakobsen Osenga teaches and writes in the areas of patent law, antitrust, and legislation and regulation. Some of her recent scholarship focuses on standard development organizations, patent eligible subject matter, patent licensing firms, litigation and remedies for patent infringement, and patent law reform. She has written numerous law review articles on these and other topics, as well as book chapters and op eds on various aspects of patent law. Additionally, she has spoken on these issues at many academic conferences and bar events. Dean Osenga is Chief Policy Counselor for the Inventors Defense Alliance, as well as an active member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
Dean Osenga received a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, and a J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she graduated magna cum laude. After law school, she practiced at the law firm of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, & Dunner LLP, (now Finnegan) where she did patent prosecution and litigation. She then clerked for the Judge Richard Linn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. After clerking, she entered academia, teaching first at Chicago-Kent College of Law and then at the University of Richmond, where she has been since 2006. She has also been a Visiting Professor at Emory University School of Law and at William & Mary School of Law.
Professor, Dale E. Fowler School of Law, Chapman University
Professor Bell joined the faculty of Fowler School of Law in 1998. Professor Bell specializes in high-tech legal issues and has written a variety of works on intellectual property and Internet law, including the book, Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good (2014). He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1993, where he served both as a member of the University of Chicago Law Review and as Articles Editor and cofounder of the University of Chicago Legal Roundtable. After graduating from law school, Professor Bell joined the Silicon Valley law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He entered teaching in 1995, when he became an Assistant Professor of Law in the Law and Technology Program at the University of Dayton School of Law. During a one year leave of absence from that school, and just prior to joining the Fowler School of Law faculty, he served as Director of Telecommunications and Technology Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Professor Bell joined the faculty of Fowler School of Law in 1998. In addition to writing a steady stream of scholarly works, Professor Bell has appeared on or been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Economist, Los Angeles Times, and many other news sources, and starred in several online videos addressing timely legal issues.
Assistant Professor, George Mason University School of Law
Assistant Professor Christopher M. Newman graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School in 1999, where he served as book review editor for the Michigan Law Review and received Michigan's highest law school award, the Henry M. Bates Memorial Scholarship. He also holds a BA in classical liberal arts awarded by St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.
Following law school, Professor Newman was a clerk for the Honorable Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with whom he co-published What's So Fair About Fair Use?, 46 J. Copyright Soc'y 513 (1999). From 2000-2007, he was a litigation associate with Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, where he represented clients in disputes involving contracts, business torts, intellectual property, corporate and securities litigation, and appellate matters, as well as pro bono family and criminal law matters. Professor Newman left practice at the beginning of 2007 to serve an Olin/Searle Fellowship in Law at the UCLA School of Law, where he focused on his research and writing in the areas of property theory and intellectual property, and from January 2008 until his arrival at Mason Law served as a research fellow of UCLA's Intellectual Property Project.
Regulatory Theory: Preemptive Rule-making vs. Common Law Redress
Rachel L. Brand, Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Brian Galle, Michael S. Greve, Adam Thierer
What regulatory approach best fosters commercial innovation? Traditionally, it had been thought that ex post,...
Regulatory Theory: Preemptive Rule-making vs. Common Law Redress
Rachel L. Brand, Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Brian Galle, Michael S. Greve, Adam Thierer
What regulatory approach best fosters commercial innovation? Traditionally, it had been thought that ex post,...
Regulatory Theory: Preemptive Rule-making vs. Common Law Redress
Fourth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
Washington, DCTopics
Executive Branch Review Conference Live Streams
The Fourth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference was live streamed on May 17. The theme...
Intellectual Property and First Principles
Hosted by The Federalist Society's Intellectual Property Practice Group and The Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies
Washington, DCThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Return of Paternalistic Command-and-Control Regulation
Todd J. Zywicki
Note from the Editor: This article examines and critiques the regulatory strategies employed by the...
Does Patent Litigation Need a Federal Solution? - Podcast
Jay Kesan, Eli Dourado
The America Invents Act, the first substantial legislative changes to patent law, took effect two...
Does Patent Litigation Need a Federal Solution?
TeleforumPatent Reform Update: Studying the Studies on Patent Litigation
Washington, District of ColumbiaCopyright Originalism
Teleforum