Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Patrick J. Bumatay was confirmed as a U.S. Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in December 2019. He is based in San Diego, California.
Prior to his appointment, Judge Bumatay served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, where he was a member of the Appellate and Narcotics Sections. He also served as a Counselor to the Attorney General on criminal law issues, including on national opioid strategy and combating transnational organized crime.
Judge Bumatay has also worked in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of the Associate Attorney General, and the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. Judge Bumatay has twice received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award.
Judge Bumatay previously worked as an associate at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, and Bohrer in New York, New York. Judge Bumatay clerked for the Honorable Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Honorable Sandra L. Townes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Judge Bumatay earned his B.A., cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Professor of Law, Michigan State University (currently serving as FCC General Counsel)
Professor Candeub joined the MSU Law faculty in fall 2004. He is also a Fellow with MSU's Institute of Public Utilities. Prior to joining MSU, he served as an advisor at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). From 1998 to 2000, Professor Candeub was a litigation associate for the Washington D.C. firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue and also has served as a corporate associate with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, also in Washington, D.C. Immediately following law school, he clerked for Chief Judge J. Clifford Wallace, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. While in law school, Professor Candeub was an articles editor for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
Professor Candeub's scholarly interests focus on the law and regulation of communications, internet, technology. His numerous law review articles and scholarly papers have placed him at the center of legal and policy controversies, and he often writes for popular outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and US News. Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have cited and relied upon his work.
He joined the Trump administration in 2019 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Telecommunications and Information and assumed the role of Acting Assistant Secretary. He later joined the Department of Justice as Deputy Associate Attorney General.
Professor Candeub is a senior fellow at the D.C.-based Center of Renewing America.
Executive Director, First Amendment Clinic, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University
Gregg Leslie is the executive director of the First Amendment Clinic. He was previously a staff attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit association that provides legal assistance to journalists, and served as the organization’s legal defense director for 17 years.
Leslie serves on the governing committee of the Communications Law Forum of the American Bar Association, and was a member of the ABA's Fair Trial and Free Press Task Force in 2011. He also served as chairman of the D.C. Bar’s Media Law Committee and Arts, Entertainment, Media & Sports Law Section, and taught media law in Georgetown University’s Master of Professional Studies in Journalism program.
Counsel, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP; Senior Competition Counsel, TechFreedom
Bilal Sayyed represents clients before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) in significant merger, civil and criminal antitrust matters. A significant portion of his practice involves representing investment funds on antitrust and Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act compliance matters; he has also provided expert witness services related to HSR compliance. Bilal also counsels clients before the FTC in consumer protection and privacy investigations. He maintains an active amicus and appellate brief writing practice in antitrust litigation and antitrust merger matters.
Prior to joining Cadwalader, Bilal was the Director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning (OPP) (2018-2021). In that role, he provided legal and policy advice to the Chairman and Commissioners on antitrust and consumer protection matters and worked closely with the senior and career leadership of the FTC’s Bureaus of Competition, Consumer Protection, and Economics. Bilal previously served as an Attorney Advisor to FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris from 2001 to 2004. In that role, Bilal advised the Chairman on matters involving a wide spectrum of industries, including chemical and mining, petroleum and natural gas, health care and pharmaceutical, defense and transportation, gaming, various consumer products and retail operations, and professional associations and standard-setting organizations.
Bilal has taught antitrust and competition law at the George Mason University School of Law since 2011.
Bilal received his B.A. from Case Western Reserve University, and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and the State of New York, as well as before the U.S. District Courts for the District of Colorado and the District of Columbia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Fifth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bilal is the host of Rethinking Antitrust, a podcast published by TechFreedom that examines the economics, institutions, law, legislation, and policy goals of antitrust enforcement.
Senior Counsel, Vice President of Litigation Strategy, Alliance Defending Freedom
Jonathan Scruggs serves as senior counsel and vice president of litigation strategy with Alliance Defending Freedom. In this role, he identifies new litigation opportunities, develops new legal strategies, and improves processes across multiple litigation teams in collaboration with the chief legal counsel.
Since joining ADF in 2006, Scruggs has worked on and prevailed in a variety of cases related to Title IX, gender ideology, and people’s right to freely express their faith, including Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 303 Creative v. Elenis, and Brush & Nib Studio v. Phoenix, which Scruggs argued at the Arizona Supreme Court. Scruggs has argued before numerous federal appellate courts and trial courts across the country and has extensive experience litigating free-speech, religious-liberty, establishment, Title IX, and equal-protection issues on behalf of students, female athletes, businesses, professionals, and non-profit entities.
Scruggs earned his B.A., summa cum laude, from Vanderbilt University in 2003 and his J.D. at Harvard Law School in 2006. He is also a 2004 Blackstone Fellow.
A member of the bars of Arizona and Tennessee, Scruggs is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal district and appellate courts.
Assistant Professor of Law, The Ohio State University - Moritz College of Law
Bridget Dooling is a nationally recognized expert on administrative law and regulatory policy. Her scholarship on regulatory matters has been or will be published in leading legal journals including the Duke Law Journal, the Administrative Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review Headnotes, the American University Law Review and The Annals of Health Law.
Professor Dooling teaches courses on legislation and regulation, administrative law and other regulatory topics. She is a Senior Fellow at the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) and recently served on the Council of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.
Prior to joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dooling was a research professor with the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center and a professor of law (by courtesy) at GW Law. Before that, Professor Dooling spent over 10 years in the federal government as a deputy chief, senior policy analyst and attorney for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
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, Brooklyn Law School
Professor Mulligan teaches Internet law, intellectual property law, and trusts & estates. Her research addresses efforts to adapt intellectual property law for the digital age, the relationship between law and technology, and theories of constitutional interpretation. Recently, she has written about the Internet of Things, robot punishment, and early translations of the Constitution.
While at Brooklyn, Professor Mulligan researched as a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and taught as a visiting associate professor at Yale Law School. Previously, she taught at the University of Georgia and was a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Her scholarship has been published in a variety of journals and law reviews, including Georgia Law Review, SMU Law Review, and Constitutional Commentary.
Professor Mulligan earned her bachelor’s degree cum laude and her law degree cum laude from Harvard University, where she worked as a production and article editor for the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Before entering academia, she served as a law clerk for Judge Charles F. Lettow of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Christopher J. Walker is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan law faculty in 2022, he spent a decade teaching at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, worked on the Civil Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff for the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. Professor Walker’s research focuses on administrative law, regulation, and law and policy at the agency level. Outside the law school, he chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law
Daniel E. Walters is an a Professor of Law at the Texas A&M University School of Law. Prior to joining the Texas A&M faculty, he was an Assistant Professor of Law at Penn State Law, and before that a Regulation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law. He earned a JD from the University of Michigan Law School and a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is also admitted to practice law (but inactive) in Illinois.
Professor Walters writes about administrative and regulatory law, with a particular focus on the implications of democratic theory for the administrative state, on public participation in administrative processes, on deference doctrines, on empirical studies of administrative behavior, and on the court-agency relationship. He also writes about climate change and energy law, with an emphasis on electric transmission lines, grid governance, the food-climate nexus, and climate legislation. His articles have appeared in many of the top journals in law and public administration, including the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, the Emory Law Journal, the Iowa Law Review, the Harvard Environmental Law Review, the Administrative Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, and the Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory (JPART), among others. He is a co-editor, with Cary Coglianese, of a forthcoming book: Regulation in a Turbulent Era. He is a former winner of the Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Administrative & Regulatory Law (student category) and the Beryl A. Radin Award for best article in JPART, and his work has been included in the Environmental Law Institute’s Environmental Law & Policy Review’s list of top environmental law review articles.
Professor Walters is an active volunteer in several professional organizations, including the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice (the Section) and the Foundation for Natural Resources and Energy Law (FNREL). Since 2020, he has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Administrative & Regulatory Law News, the ABA Section’s quarterly magazine, and in 2023 he was recently elected to a three-year term on the Section’s Council of Advisors. He has served since 2022 on the Natural Resources Law Teacher’s Planning Committee within FNREL, and before that he was a Trustee with the organization from 2021-2022.
Professor of History, Georgia Southern University
Johnathan O'Neill is Professor of History at Georgia Southern University. Professor O’Neill is the author of Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History (2005) and Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism Since the New Deal (2023).
Associate Professor of Government, Van Andel Graduate School of Government, Hillsdale College in Washington, DC
Bradley C.S. Watson is Associate Professor of Government at the Van Andel Graduate School of Government of Hillsdale College in Washington, DC. Professor Watson’s books include Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea (Notre Dame, 2022/2020), Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution: A New Republic (Cambridge, 2020/2017), and Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence (ISI, 2020/2009).
Professorial Lecturer in Law, George Washington University Law School
Theodore C. (Ted) Hirt was an attorney in the Department of Justice's Civil Division from August 1979 to March 2016. He was in its Federal Programs Branch from 1979 to 2008 (trial attorney, senior trial counsel, assistant director), and then in its Office of Immigration Litigation from 2008 to 2016 (trial attorney and senior litigation counsel). Among his responsibilities (September 2001 to March 2016) was being an advisor to the Assistant Attorneys General for the Civil Division, who serve ex officio on the Civil Rules Advisory Committee. Mr. Hirt’s areas of specialization include First Amendment issues, internet and telecommunications law, and electronic discovery. From 1976 to 1979, he was an associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Kampelman. From 1975 to 1976 he was an attorney in the Prehearing Division of the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Panel III: When Free Speech and Free Markets Intersect
Patrick J. Bumatay, Adam Candeub, Gregg P. Leslie, Bilal Sayyed, Jonathan Scruggs
Featuring: Prof. Adam Candeub, Professor of Law, Michigan State University (currently serving as FCC General Counsel)...
Panel: Abundance and the Law
Bridget Dooling, Daniel Lyons, Christina M. Mulligan, Christopher J. Walker, Daniel E. Walters
Prof. Bridget Dooling, Assistant Professor of Law, Michael E. Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University...
Welcome Remarks by AALS President-Elect Danielle Conway
Event Video: Welcome Remarks by AALS President-Elect Danielle Conway
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