Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large, Syndicated Columnist, Host of "The Josh Hammer Show," Article III Project Senior Counsel, Newsweek, Salem Media, Article III Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center
Josh Hammer is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek and host of "The Josh Hammer Show," a podcast, a syndicated radio show, and TV program on Salem News Channel. A syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, Josh is a frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues. He is also senior counsel for the Article III Project and Internet Accountability Project, as well as a Shillman Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a fellow with the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
An outspoken conservative, Josh opines on conservative intellectual trends, contemporary domestic and foreign policy debates, constitutional and legal issues, and the intersection of law, politics and culture. He has been published by many leading outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, National Affairs, American Affairs, The New Criterion, The National Interest, National Review, RealClearPolitics, First Things, City Journal, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, Tablet Magazine, Deseret Magazine, Compact Magazine, Chronicles Magazine, The Spectator, The American Mind, The American Conservative, The European Conservative, American Greatness, American Compass, The Federalist, Blaze Media, TomKlingenstein.com, Townhall, The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller, The Epoch Times, Anchoring Truths, Fortune, Fox Business, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Journal. He has also had legal scholarship published by the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
Josh is a college campus speaker through Young America's Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and clerked for the Hon. James C. Ho on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and as a Fellow with the James Wilson Institute. He is the former host of "America on Trial with Josh Hammer," a one-season daily podcast with The First that covered the unique legal issues surrounding the 2024 presidential election.
Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
Senior Associate, Husch Blackwell
Dave guides clients through a wide range of complex public law litigation in state and federal courts.
Clients appreciate Dave’s experience serving in Nebraska’s Attorney General’s Office as Assistant Attorney General and as the state’s first Deputy Solicitor General; in the Civil Litigation Bureau; and in the Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Bureau. In these roles, he routinely handled high-profile matters at the trial and appellate levels in both state and federal courts including:
Dave maintains a robust appellate practice, counseling clients through all stages of appeals including briefing and oral argument. He has argued more than 20 civil appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the Nebraska Supreme Court and the Nebraska Court of Appeals, obtaining favorable results in the overwhelming majority of those cases. He has a unique perspective on the importance of strategic amicus curiae support in the appellate process, having advised the Nebraska Attorney General on the state’s amicus participation and authorship in courts across the country.
He understands how regulatory agencies think – having helped develop and implement policy and guide governmental regulatory activities – and offers this insight to clients as they proactively approach compliance or navigate investigations.
Research Fellow, CATO Institute
Jay Schweikert is a research fellow with the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. His research and advocacy focuses on accountability for prosecutors and law enforcement, plea bargaining, Sixth Amendment trial rights, and the provision and structuring of indigent defense.
Before joining Cato, Schweikert spent four years doing civil and criminal litigation at Williams & Connolly LLP. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor for the Harvard Law Review, and chaired the Harvard Federalist Society’s student colloquium program. Following law school, Schweikert clerked for Judge Diane Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
He holds a BA in political science and economics from Yale University.
Senior Associate, Hilgers Graben PLLC
Trent represents sophisticated clients in civil litigation and appeals. His experience includes taking fact- and expert-witness depositions, assisting in fact development, document production, and witness preparation, and drafting and responding to a range of dispositive and non-dispositive motions. Besides his experience as an associate at two renowned law firms in Denver and Washington, D.C., Trent was a law clerk to The Honorable D. Brooks Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Trent lives in Lincoln with his wife and three children and enjoys cycling, trap shooting, and reading (especially American frontier novels).
United States Senator, Nebraska
Ben Sasse is a United States Senator, representing the great state of Nebraska.
He was elected in a 2014 landslide, winning each of Nebraska's 93 counties, and securing the second-largest margin for a new senator in the history of the state. Living off of a rickety old campaign bus, he and his family campaigned tirelessly on a common-sense platform of restoring the Constitution to its rightful place and encouraging a more constructive politics where every public official works to make the American Dream achievable for every family. He believes in term limits and a humbler Washington, where the federal government does fewer things, but the more important things, more urgently, more transparently, and with less partisan screaming. Healthy lives are lived primarily in the private sector, and the vast majority of good policy is created at the state and local level -- and Washington should get better at talking honestly about these essential American realities.
A fifth-generation Nebraskan, Ben grew up walking beans and detasseling corn, experiences that taught him the value of hard work. A graduate of Fremont High School, he was recruited to wrestle at Harvard and then earned a PhD in American history at Yale. Ben comes to the Senate having spent the last five years as a college president. When he was recruited to take over the failing Midland University, Ben was just 37 years old, making him one of the youngest college presidents in the nation. The 130-year-old Lutheran college was on the verge of bankruptcy when he arrived, but became one of the fastest-growing higher education institutions in the country by the time of his departure.
Most of his career has been spent guiding companies and institutions through times of crisis with straight talk about the core issues. He has worked with the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey and Company, as well as private equity firms and not-for-profit organizations, to tackle failing strategies across a broad array of sectors and nations.
Ben believes that we have a moral obligation to pass along a country as great and free and opportunity-filled to the next generation as we were blessed to inherit from our grandparents. This will require a more serious Congress, committed to reforming entitlements, telling the truth about fake federal budgets, modernizing national security for the age of global terror networks, and helping the next generation recover a sense of optimism about the American Dream for everyone of every race in every neighborhood.
Partner and Co-Chair, Public Policy Group, Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP
Mark Behrens co-chairs Shook's Washington, DC-based Public Policy Practice Group and is a leading national expert on civil justice issues with over thirty years of experience. A substantial part of his practice is working to improve the civil litigation environment through state and federal legislation; in the courts through amicus curiae briefs; through legal scholarship and judicial education; and in the court of public opinion.
Mark is actively involved in civil justice reform efforts at the federal and state levels. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and most state legislatures on behalf of business and civil justice organizations. Mark also has an active amicus brief practice specializing in tort liability and civil justice issues. He has authored or co-authored over 150 amicus briefs in cases before the United States Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts on behalf of business, civil justice, and defense lawyer organizations. In addition, Mark routinely files comments on behalf of business, civil justice, and defense lawyer organizations regarding potential changes to federal and state court rules. He chairs the International Association of Defense Counsel’s (IADC) Civil Justice Response Committee and serves on the Board of Directors of Lawyers for Civil Justice (LCJ).
Mark is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He received his J.D. in 1990 from Vanderbilt University Law School, where he was a member of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his B.A. in economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1987.
Of Counsel, Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP
Chris’ public policy work focuses on tort law and civil justice system reform. His work is generally divided among legislative efforts, appellate litigation, and liability counseling. Chris has drafted model legislation to be introduced on the state and federal level, testified on numerous legislative initiatives, and authored amicus briefs to state supreme courts and federal appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. He also serves as an adviser to various business groups and trade associations interested in tort liability issues and civil justice system reform.
In addition, Chris is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI), and has assisted in the development of a variety of ALI projects implicating liability law. He has also been a recurrent guest lecturer at the U.S. Department of Justice and Wake Forest University School of Law, as well as a speaker at numerous legal conferences and industry group meetings, on issues related to tort law. Chris has additionally produced significant scholarship in the area of liability law. He has authored more than 50 legal publications on a wide range of liability issues, including articles in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, UPenn Journal of Business Law, and Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy, and has served as a contributor to tort casebooks.
Partner, Briscoe Prows Kao Ivester & Bazel LLP
Tony Francois is experienced in Water and Real Property Law, Land Use and Zoning, Environmental Regulation, Natural Resources Development, Agricultural Law, and Constitutional Law. He has represented homeowners, builders, farmers and ranchers, trade associations, and water districts in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies and state and federal trial and appellate courts. He is a member of the California State Bar and the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California and the Districts of New Mexico and North Dakota, and has litigated cases in federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has appeared before the Supreme Courts of California, Idaho, Nevada, and the United States.
Prior to attending law school, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in the former West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tony was an Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation from 2012 to 2021. He was a lobbyist for 10 years, first with California Farm Bureau Federation from 2003 to 2007, and then with KP Public Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was an attorney at McQuaid, Bedford & Van Zandt in San Francisco from 1999 – 2003.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence, Independence Institute
Professor Robert G. Natelson is a constitutional scholar and author.
Rob’s constitutional scholarship has been cited repeatedly by justices and parties at the U.S. Supreme Court—as well as by federal appeals courts, and at least 18 state supreme courts.
Rob’s research into the Constitution’s original meaning has carried him to libraries throughout the United States and in Britain, including four months at Oxford University. His books and articles span many different parts of the Constitution, including groundbreaking studies of the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Indian Commerce Clause, federalism, Founding-Era interpretation, regulation of elections, and the amendment process of Article V. He created the first-ever online bibliography for 18th century materials used in constitutional research. He is a contributing author to the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (on Magna Carta). He contributed eight essays to the third edition of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution: five on the amendment procedure and one each on the Guarantee Clause, the Postal Clause, and the Recess Appointments Clause.
U.S. Supreme Court justices have relied explicitly on Rob’s research in 41 citations in 13 separate cases.
Qualified Immunity: A Debate
Nebraska Lawyers Chapter
Topics
The Controversy about the ERA Amendment Process
It seems likely that another constitutional controversy will soon emerge. Next year, the Virginia Legislature...
2018 Civil Justice Update
Mark A. Behrens, Christopher Appel
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes seriously its responsibility as a non-partisan institution...
Will We Soon Have Clarity on Navigable Waters?: How the Supreme Court’s October 2017 Term Set the Stage
Tony Francois
Note from the Editor: This article discusses the longstanding legal battle over the meaning of...
Topics
State AG Watch: Five States Win $839 Million Obamacare Lawsuit
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a five-state coalition that on Thursday won an...
Capital Punishment: A One-Sided Contribution to a Complex Debate
John G. Malcolm
A review of: End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice, by...
Counting to Two Thirds: How Close Are We to a Convention for Proposing Amendments to the Constitution?
Robert G. Natelson
Note from the Editor: This article argues that, in aggregating applications from states to call...
Topics
Morrison v. Olson Oral Argument Rewind: Everything Old Is New Again
Historian-turned-politician Sen. Ben Sasse (NE) likes a good historical coincidence. And last week, on April...
Closing Address
Sixth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
Washington, DCTopics
Round Two for Obamacare: Sebelius Redux
Rarely do challengers of landmark legislation get a second bite at the apple in constitutional...