Executive Director, Ohio Dental Association
David J. Owsiany is the executive director of the Ohio Dental Association and a past president of the Columbus Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society.
He has served as CEO of a statewide health care association, president of the Buckeye Institute, chief of policy for the Ohio Department of Insurance, judicial law clerk for the Illinois Appellate Court, and staffer on the United State Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Owsiany has written dozens of articles on legal and public policy issues for various publications, including the University of Toledo Law Review, the Federalist Society's State Court Docket Watch, Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Crain’s Cleveland Business, and Akron Beacon Journal.
Owsiany received his J.D. from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and B.A. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Justice in Residence and Visiting Professor of Law, Ave Maria School of Law
Professor Taylor is a retired Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and served over 16 years as an appellate judge in Michigan. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and received his J.D. from George Washington University Law School. After service as an officer in the US Navy, he began his legal career as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Michigan and then practiced in a Lansing, Michigan, law firm, Denfield, Timmer and Taylor, for 19 years earning the highest ratings as to competence and character. He has lectured at law schools across the United States, been published in numerous law reviews and was the co-author of a three volume Michigan Practice Guide on Torts. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Conference of Chief Justices, was a member, and then President, of the Michigan State Board of Law Examiners and served on the Board of Directors of the George Mason University Law School's Law and Economics Center.
Justice in Residence and Visiting Professor of Law, Ave Maria School of Law
Professor Taylor is a retired Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and served over 16 years as an appellate judge in Michigan. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and received his J.D. from George Washington University Law School. After service as an officer in the US Navy, he began his legal career as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Michigan and then practiced in a Lansing, Michigan, law firm, Denfield, Timmer and Taylor, for 19 years earning the highest ratings as to competence and character. He has lectured at law schools across the United States, been published in numerous law reviews and was the co-author of a three volume Michigan Practice Guide on Torts. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Conference of Chief Justices, was a member, and then President, of the Michigan State Board of Law Examiners and served on the Board of Directors of the George Mason University Law School's Law and Economics Center.
Professor, Cumberland School of Law, Samford University
Michael DeBow joined the Cumberland faculty in 1988. He regularly teaches courses in Property, Business Organizations, Administrative Law, Legislation, and Local Government.
Professor DeBow is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Alabama (1976, 1978). He graduated from the Yale Law School in 1980, and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
DeBow's career included a stint in private practice in Washington, D.C., followed by a judicial clerkship with Judge Kenneth W. Starr of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1983-84. DeBow then served as an attorney-advisor to Federal Trade Commission chairman James C. Miller III (1984-85), and a special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Douglas Ginsburg, in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (1985-86). He began his teaching career at the University of Georgia business school, where he taught for two years prior to coming to Samford.
From 2000 to 2004, DeBow also acted in a part-time capacity as special assistant for legal policy to Alabama attorney general Bill Pryor. He was a visiting professor of law at George Mason University in 1999. He was a (nonresident) Salvatori Fellow of The Heritage Foundation during 1993-95, and a member of the executive committee of the Association of Private Enterprise Education during 1995-99. DeBow attended summer institutes in quantitative methods for law professors (George Mason Law & Economics Center, 1990), Austrian economics (NYU Department of Economics, 1997), and the study of freedom (Templeton Foundation Freedom Project, 2000). In 2008 he was named an Adjunct Fellow of the Alabama Policy Institute.
Professor DeBow has taught several undergraduate courses at Samford, including one which received a supporting grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Most recently, he taught an undergraduate course in law and economics for the Samford's Brock School of Business. He has also taught public health law for the UAB School of Public Health on several occasions.
DeBow's articles have appeared in such journals as the Texas Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Regulation, Policy Review, The Freeman, and the Journal of Law & Politics. He co-edits the Federalist Society's Pre-Law Reading List and its annotated bibliography of conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.
Frances and George Skestos Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Adam C. Pritchard, the Frances and George Skestos Professor of Law, teaches corporate and securities law. He is the author, with Stephen J. Choi, of Securities Regulation: Cases and Analysis, currently in its fifth edition. His research focuses on securities class actions, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement, and the history of securities law in the U.S. Supreme Court. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Law and Economics, American Law and Economics Review, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, and various law reviews. Professor Pritchard holds BA and JD degrees from the University of Virginia, as well as an MPP from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. While at Virginia, he was an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics and served as articles development editor of the Virginia Law Review. After graduation, he clerked for the Hon. J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice. After working in private practice, Professor Pritchard served as senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel of the SEC, where he wrote appellate briefs and studied the effect of recent reforms in the areas of securities fraud litigation. He received the SEC's Law and Policy Award for his work in United States v. O'Hagan, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the misappropriation theory of insider trading. Professor Pritchard has been a visiting professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Iowa School of Law. He also has been a visiting scholar at the SEC and a visiting fellow in capital market studies at the Cato Institute. He was previously a member of the FINRA National Adjudicatory Council and the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel.
Former Adjunct Professor of Law; former Special Counsel to the President; former federal prosecutor, Georgetown Law (ret.)
Bill Otis is a former Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, a one-time federal prosecutor, and a former Special White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he started his career in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, then became chief of appeals for the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. In the 1980's he served on the Department's "Train the Trainer" team, which taught US Attorneys Offices across the county how to implement the then-new Sentencing Reform Act. He has held several posts in the federal government, including Special Assistant to the Secretary of Energy and Counselor to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in addition to the White House post. He has testified before Congress on issues in criminal procedure, illegal drugs, the US Sentencing Commission, and the death penalty, and has given numerous media interviews on those and other subjects. He currently teaches a seminar at Georgetown Law titled "Conservatism in Law in America" with his wife, Federalist Society co-founder Lee Liberman Otis.
Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
Stephen Markman was appointed Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court on October 1, 1999. He served as the Chief Justice from 2017-2019. Before his appointment, he served as Judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals from 1995-1999. Prior to this, he practiced law with the firm of Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone in Detroit.
From 1989-1993, Justice Markman served as United States Attorney, or federal prosecutor, in Michigan, after having been nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate. From 1985-1989, he served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States, after having been nominated by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the United States Senate. In that position, he headed the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, which served as the principal policy development office within the Department, and which coordinated the federal judicial selection process. Prior to this, he served for seven years as Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, and as Deputy Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Justice Markman has authored articles for such publications as the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, the Detroit College of Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the American Criminal Justice Law Review, the Barrister’s Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the American University Law Review. He has also served as a contributing editor of National Review magazine, and has authored chapters in such books as “In the Name of Justice: The Aims of the Criminal Law,” “Still the Law of the Land,” and “Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate.”
Justice Markman has taught constitutional law at Hillsdale College since 1993. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He traveled to Ukraine on two occasions on behalf of the State Department, to provide assistance in the development of that nation’s post-Soviet constitution. He is a Fellow of the Michigan Bar Foundation, a Master of the Bench of the Inns of Court, and a member of the One Hundred Club. He has spoken before hundreds of youth, civic, charitable, and legal groups throughout Michigan and nationally, and has coached Little League baseball and basketball. He lives with his wife Mary Kathleen in Mason, and has two sons, James and Charles.
Justice Markman was re-elected to the Supreme Court in 2000, 2004, and 2012. His present term expires January 1, 2021.
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.
Professor of Law, High Point School of Law
Scott Gaylord directs High Point Law’s Appellate Litigation Clinic and serves as a Professor of Law, teaching Constitutional Law and related upper-level elective courses. The Appellate Clinic works with students to write and file briefs in significant court cases, including appeals before the United States Supreme Court.
Professor Gaylord is a prominent Constitutional Law scholar with an impressive background in both academia and legal practice. He has authored or co-authored 18 substantial law review articles, co-authored a Constitutional Law casebook, and has written more than 35 amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and federal circuit courts on prominent national cases involving religious liberty and free speech. He is a frequent speaker on constitutional law and First Amendment topics at law schools across the country and has regularly provided commentary on ongoing constitutional issues to national media outlets, including th eNew York Times, USA Today, the Diane Rehm Show, NPR, The National Constitution Center, and Bloomberg Law.
Professor Gaylord also started an appellate advocacy clinic at his former law school and currently serves on the North Carolina Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, along with holding many other service and leadership roles. Prior to joining the academy in 2007, he practiced complex civil and commercial litigation with the Charlotte firm of Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson, and he clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Professor Gaylord earned his B.A. in philosophy and English, summa cum laude, from Colgate University, his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his J.D. from Notre Dame Law School, where he also graduated summa cum laude.
Executive Vice President, Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Michael J. Reitz is executive vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, where he oversees execution of the Center's strategic plan. The Mackinac Center is an independent, nonprofit research and educational institute based in Midland, Michigan, with the mission of improving the quality of life for all Michigan citizens by promoting sound solutions to state and local policy questions.
Prior to joining the Mackinac Center in 2012, Reitz spent eight years with the Freedom Foundation in Washington state as its general counsel and director of labor policy. Reitz established the Freedom Foundation’s Theodore L. Stiles Center for Liberty, where he litigated for accurate elections, defended the First Amendment rights of individuals, fought against governmental abuses of power and wrote extensively on constitutional law. Reitz championed a number of reforms to modify public-sector collective bargaining and to protect workers from coercive union monopolies.
An advocate of accountable government, Reitz has worked actively to promote transparency in state and local government, serving on the board of the Michigan Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit organization that educates citizens about their rights to access public records and attend public meetings. While in Washington state, Reitz led a research and litigation effort to expose the governor's secretive practice of withholding records under claims of executive privilege.
Reitz frequently comments on public policy issues and has been cited by The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times and other publications. He is a co-author of "To Protect and Maintain Individual Rights," a reference guide to the Declaration of Rights in the Washington Constitution. Reitz received his law degree from Oak Brook College of Law and Government Policy. He is a member of the Washington bar and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Legal Scholar and Solo Practitioner
Jack received his B.A. in History from the University of Virginia in 1977, graduating with Highest Distinction. After graduating Yale Law School in 1980, he served active duty in the U.S. Army's JAG Corps, rising to the rank of Major, where he represented the United States in more than 250 cases.
He practiced for a decade as an Associate for Bradley Arant in Birmingham, Alabama. He proudly served the State of Alabama in the Office of the Attorney General, both as Deputy and Assistant Attorney General, handling complex civil and criminal litigation cases for the people of Alabama. In 2000, he won the "Best Brief Award" from the National Association of Attorneys General for his brief in a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, James Alexander v. Martha Sandoval – a case he won. He was Special Assistant to the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service, Visiting Legal Fellow for the Center for Judicial and Legal Studies for the Heritage Foundation, Of Counsel at Strickland Brockington Lewis, a solo practitioner, and General Counsel for Indigo Energy.
Most recently, he "re-upped" for military service, volunteering his legal services to the Georgia State Defense Force where twice each month he provided legal services for National Guardsmen who were being deployed. He wore his military uniform for the last time in October 2024.
Jack Park passed away on March 16, 2026.
Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP
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