Partner, Johns & Counsel PLLC
Chris Johns advocates for people and causes he believes in. He represents individuals and businesses as they confront powerful interests on the other side: property owners in eminent-domain cases, people and organizations seeking to exercise constitutional rights, and others with a just cause in a civil trial or appeal.
Chris has won cases for clients in courts across the country—from state and federal trial and appellate courts to the United States Supreme Court. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches the course on eminent domain and private-property rights.
Chris grew up and attended public schools in Buckhannon, West Virginia. He went to Brigham Young University on academic and piano scholarships and, after his first year of college, served for two years as a full-time volunteer for his church in Oakland and San Francisco. Chris spent most of his time in neighborhoods unlike anything he’d ever seen in rural West Virginia. Still, he can’t imagine a better education: speaking with thousands of people about life, hopes, fears, and spiritual paths; becoming fluent in Spanish; observing communities that thrived and others that failed; and making friends with individuals from many countries and many walks of life, from gang members to high-level government officials. Chris decided during his volunteer service that he eventually wanted to become a lawyer and advocate. He studied English upon return to BYU, graduating magna cum laude in 1997.
Chris received his J.D. with high honors from the University of Texas School of Law. There, he was editor in chief of the Texas Law Review, a member of the Chancellors honor society, and a member of the Order of the Coif. He received Dean’s Achievement Awards in several of his classes. After graduation, Chris clerked for the Honorable Phyllis A. Kravitch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
He then attended the University of Oxford, where he received a postgraduate law degree and authored a frequently cited dissertation analyzing the relationship between property and the law of obligations.
Chris entered private practice at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, where he worked with former Texas Solicitor General Greg Coleman in the firm’s national Supreme Court and appellate practice. He and three of his law-school classmates founded Johns Marrs Ellis & Hodge LLP, a trial and appellate boutique, and practiced together for nearly nine years.
In March 2018, Chris opened Johns & Counsel PLLC with a small, elite team dedicated to the clients and causes that mean most to him and the other members of the firm.
Chris appears on the 2018 and 2019 list of The Best Lawyers in America, a peer-selected honor. Texas Super Lawyers Magazine named him to its 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 lists of “Super Lawyers” and to its 2013 and 2014 lists of “Rising Stars.” He is also a barrister in the Lloyd Lochridge American Inn of Court. Chris has testified about property rights on invitation from the Texas Legislature, is a regular speaker at national and state CLE conferences, has received multiple pro bono service awards, helped train UT’s moot-court teams, and has appeared as a legal commentator on television news programs.
Chris is licensed in Texas and New York and is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, and Federal Circuits, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Southern, and Western Districts of Texas, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, several other federal courts across the country, and all state courts in Texas.
Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP
Jeffrey A. Simmons is a partner and member of Foley & Lardner’s Business Litigation & Dispute Resolution Practice, where he focuses on complex litigation matters. Mr. Simmons was lead counsel in one of the largest insurance rehabilitations in U.S. history, In the Matter of the Rehabilitation of Segregated Account of Ambac Assurance Corporation, Case No. 10-cv-1576 (Dane Co., Wis.). A large portion of his practice is also devoted to trademark, copyright, patent and trade secret disputes. He currently serves on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ subcommittee responsible for rewriting the circuit’s pattern jury instructions for trademark and copyright cases.
Prior to joining Foley, Mr. Simmons served as a law clerk to the Hon. John W. Reynolds, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Director of Property Rights Litigation, Pacific Legal Foundation
Robert Thomas is Pacific Legal Foundation’s director of its Property Rights practice group. He is an expert on property rights, takings, land use, and eminent domain issues.
After more than three decades in private practice in Hawaii and California representing property owners in takings, eminent domain, and land use cases, Robert joined PLF’s team of freedom fighters in 2021.
He has litigated cases in both state and federal court. As counsel for the property owners in County of Hawaii v. C&J Coupe Family Limited Partnership, he helped establish the rule that courts are not mere “rubber stamps” when a local government is taking property by eminent domain. Another case, Hamilton ex rel. Lethem v. Lethem, held that a parent’s liberty interest in raising and disciplining his child included a right to fair procedures, including notice and a judicial hearing before the family court could restrict parent-child contact.
Robert is a frequent speaker on property rights, takings, land use, and eminent domain issues nationwide. He also regularly publishes scholarly and practical articles in his area of practice, most recently including, “Hoist the Yellow Flag and Spam® Up: The Separation of Powers Limitation on Hawaii’s Emergency Authority”, 43 U. Haw. L. Rev. 71 (2020) and “Evaluating Emergency Takings: Flattening the Economic Curve”, 29 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1145 (2021).
An elected member of the American Law Institute, Robert received his LLM, with honors, from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and his JD from the University of Hawaii School of Law, where he served as editor of the Law Review. He also serves as the inaugural Joseph T. Waldo Visiting Chair in Property Rights Law at William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he teaches upper-division courses in eminent domain, land use, property rights, and property law.
When he’s not working, you might find Robert writing and publishing his blog on land use, property, and takings law, inversecondemnation.com, one of the most widely read blogs on those subjects.
Deputy Litigation Director, Institute for Justice
Robert McNamara serves as Deputy Litigation Director with the Institute for Justice. He joined the Institute in August 2006 and litigates cutting-edge constitutional cases protecting free speech, property rights, economic liberty and other individual liberties in both federal and state courts.
Robert’s work has resulted in court victories for property owners fighting eminent domain abuse, tour guides fighting unconstitutional restrictions on their speech, taxi drivers seeking the right to own their own business, and many others. Robert also litigates in defense of innovation and entrepreneurship in medical care and was co-counsel in Flynn v. Holder, IJ’s landmark challenge to the federal prohibition on compensating bone marrow donors.
Robert’s writing has been published by outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and dozens more nationwide. His opinions and views on legal issues have been featured in radio and television programs ranging from National Public Radio’s All Things Considered to Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes.
Robert is a graduate of Boston University and the New York University School of Law, where he was a founding member and eventual editor-in-chief of the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty. He currently lives in Virginia with his wife and children.
Robert McNamara is a member of the Virginia bar.
Vice President of Litigation and Deputy General Counsel, National Association of Manufacturers
Peter Tolsdorf is the vice president of litigation and deputy general counsel at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). As part of the Manufacturers’ Center for Legal Action, Mr. Tolsdorf works to strengthen the NAM’s ability to promote manufacturing policy objectives through litigation. He also serves as general counsel of The Manufacturing Institute, a nonprofit organization that seeks to help the manufacturing industry attract and develop world-class manufacturing talent.
Mr. Tolsdorf has extensive litigation experience on energy and the environment, labor and employment, product and civil liability, intellectual property, corporate governance and trade issues. At the American Petroleum Institute, he challenged regulatory overreach of the oil and natural gas industry. Mr. Tolsdorf previously served as an attorney at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), where he litigated energy generation and transmission matters. Before the FERC, he litigated cases at major international law firms Bingham McCutchen and McDermott Will & Emery.
Mr. Tolsdorf graduated from The George Washington University Law School, where he served as notes editor of The George Washington Law Review. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife and two sons.
Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Boston College Law School; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, Boston College Law School
Professor Lyons is a Professor and Associate Dean at Boston College Law School. He specializes in telecommunications and tech policy, energy, and administrative law. Before joining the faculty, he practiced at the firm of Munger, Tolles and Olson in Los Angeles. He also clerked for the Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Professor Lyons is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he has written over 250 blog posts on tech policy issues, including net neutrality, telecommunications regulation, First Amendment issues with tech regulation, and generative AI.
Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Boston College Law School; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, Boston College Law School
Professor Lyons is a Professor and Associate Dean at Boston College Law School. He specializes in telecommunications and tech policy, energy, and administrative law. Before joining the faculty, he practiced at the firm of Munger, Tolles and Olson in Los Angeles. He also clerked for the Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Professor Lyons is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he has written over 250 blog posts on tech policy issues, including net neutrality, telecommunications regulation, First Amendment issues with tech regulation, and generative AI.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance, American Enterprise Institute; Executive Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. He also directs the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
He writes on regulation and constitutional government for a variety of publications. He practiced law in Washington, D.C., after clerking for the D.C. Circuit's Judge David Sentelle. He also has been chairman of the ABA's Administrative Law Section.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court.
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