Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Senior Staff Attorney, Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, ACLU
Brian Hauss is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, where he focuses on free expression issues. Since joining the ACLU in 2012, he has litigated cases defending the First Amendment rights of writers, journalists, media organizations, activists, advocacy groups, labor unions and private citizens. He has authored or co-authored numerous Supreme Court amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the ACLU and other groups. He also regularly discusses First Amendment issues in the media and at law schools throughout the country. Brian was a 2021-22 Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School and served as a law clerk to the Hon. Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Founder and Principal, Fillmore Global Strategies LLC
Ambassador Nathan A. Sales is the founder and principal of Fillmore Global Strategies LLC, a consultancy that provides legal and strategic advisory services on matters at the intersection of law, policy, and diplomacy.
From 2017 to 2021, Ambassador Sales served at the U.S. Department of State as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (acting). He oversaw nine bureaus and offices led by Senate-confirmed principals, with 1,300 employees and a combined foreign assistance budget of more than $5 billion annually, and the mission of preventing and countering threats to civilian security, including terrorism, mass atrocities, and violations of human rights and the rule of law.
Concurrently, Ambassador Sales was Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism. After being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he was sworn in on August 10, 2017. He served as the principal adviser to the Secretary of State on international counterterrorism matters, and led the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, a 200-person team with an annual foreign assistance budget of $400 million. He was also the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, leading U.S. relations with the 83-member Coalition and efforts to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS in the Middle East and around the world.
While at the State Department, Ambassador Sales led the elements of the U.S. government’s China strategy promoting democratic values and human rights, including with respect to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. He oversaw the development and implementation of a wide range of U.S. government sanctions, including Global Magnitsky actions and Executive Order 13,936, targeting those responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy. Ambassador Sales was the architect of the landmark 2017 UN Security Council Resolution 2396 on terrorist travel, and successfully pressed NATO to make counterterrorism a core Alliance mission. He led diplomatic engagements to persuade a dozen key partners in Europe and the Americas to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization in its entirety. He launched the Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial, in which heads of state and minister-level officials meet bianually to coordinate efforts against terrorist threats in the region. He led the U.S. government’s international efforts to combat white supremacist terrorism. Under his leadership, the State Department imposed terrorism sanctions on the Russian Imperial Movement – the first-ever U.S. designation of white supremacist terrorists.
Before joining the State Department, Ambassador Sales was Of Counsel at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP (formerly Bancroft PLLC). He was also a tenured law professor, teaching and writing in the fields of administrative law, constitutional law, and national security law. His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times.
Ambassador Sales previously was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He led DHS’s efforts to draft and implement legislation that strengthened the security of and expanded the Visa Waiver Program (which allows citizens of certain countries to travel to the United States without a visa). He headed the U.S. delegation in talks with seven countries to implement the new security measures and was the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Special Envoy to South Korea.
Ambassador Sales also served at the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on regulatory initiatives, counterterrorism, and judicial confirmations. In 2005, he managed DOJ’s “war room” for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. He received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the Justice Department’s highest honor – for his role in drafting the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his work on judicial confirmations.
In addition to his work at Fillmore Global Strategies, Ambassador Sales is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior advisor at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy. He serves on a number of advisory boards, including for the Counter-Extremism Project (a nonprofit and nonpartisan international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies), the Secure Community Network (the official safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community), and the Sue J. Henry Center for Pre-Law Education at Miami University.
An Ohio native, Ambassador Sales received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke Law School, where he was Research Editor of the Duke Law Journal and joined the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Joel Gora has been a professor at Brooklyn Law School since 1978, teaching constitutional law, civil procedure and a number of other related courses. He also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1993-1997 and again from 2002 through 2006. He is the author of a number of books and articles dealing with First Amendment and other constitutional law issues. He is also an expert on campaign finance law matters, working in the field as both an advocate and an academic. Prior to joining the Brooklyn Law School faculty, Professor Gora was a law clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for two years after he graduated from law school, and then a full-time lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union for almost ten years. During his ACLU career, he worked on dozens of United States Supreme Court cases, including many landmark rulings. Chief among them was the case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Court’s historic 1976 decision on the relationship between campaign finance restrictions and First Amendment rights. He has worked, on behalf of the ACLU, on almost every one of the important campaign finance cases to come before the Court. He also served for more than 25 years on the board of directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and as one of its general counsel. He has served as well on a number of policy committees of the New York City Bar, and was also a member of the board of the Federal Bar Council. Professor Gora received his B.A. from Pomona College and LL.B. from Columbia Law School.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
RochesterDo Fears of Terrorism Justify the Patriot Act?
The Supreme Court’s Campaign Finance Decision in Citizen’s United: Victory for Free Speech or Defeat for Good Government?
Buckley v. Valeo Revisited
Joel M. Gora
Remarks of Professor Joel M. Gora at the Federalist Society's September 1999 Conference Editor's Note:...