Director, Center for Legal Policy, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
James R. Copland is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of Legal Policy. In those roles, he develops and communicates novel, sound ideas on how to improve America’s civil- and criminal-justice systems. His forthcoming book, The Unelected: How an Unaccountable Elite is Governing America (Encounter Books) will be released on September 8, 2020. He has testified before Congress as well as state and municipal legislatures; and has authored many policy briefs, book chapters, articles and opinion pieces in a variety of publications, including the Harvard Business Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation, the Wall Street Journal, National Law Journal, and USA Today. Copland speaks regularly on civil- and criminal-justice issues; has made hundreds of media appearances in such outlets as PBS, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg, C-Span, and NPR; and is frequently cited in news articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, and Forbes. In 2011 and 2012, he was named to the National Association of Corporate Directors “Directorship 100” list, which designates the individuals most influential over U.S. corporate governance.
Prior to joining MI, Copland was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company in New York. Earlier, he was a law clerk for Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Copland has been a director of two privately held manufacturing companies since 1997 and has served on many public and nonprofit boards. He holds a J.D. and an M.B.A. from Yale, where he was an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics; an M.Sc. in the politics of the world economy from the London School of Economics; and a B.A. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar.
Partner, Williams & Connolly
Sarah Harris is a partner in Williams & Connolly’s Supreme Court and Appellate practice, where she represents clients in high-stakes appeals in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts across the country. She has argued five cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and she has presented many arguments in federal courts of appeals and state appellate courts. Her cases have run the gamut of substantive areas, including constitutional law—especially First Amendment and separation-of-powers issues—as well as administrative law, arbitration, class actions, antitrust, False Claims Act litigation, commercial litigation, and federal civil procedure.
Sarah is widely recognized for her appellate advocacy. Chambers USA has recognized her as “Up and Coming” in Appellate Law. She has been named to Bloomberg Law’s 40 Under 40 list of top lawyers nationwide and to Benchmark Litigation’s “40 & Under Hot List,” as well as a an appellate “Rising Star” by The National Law Journal and Law360, a “Next Generation Lawyer” by The Legal 500, and as one of Bloomberg Law’s “Five Fresh Faces to Know in Appellate.”
Sarah clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court of the United States, Judge Laurence Silberman on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Sandra Lynch on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Before joining Williams & Connolly, she served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Sarah received her undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, and her J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. She also holds a Ph.D. and M. Phil. from the University of Cambridge.
Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Troy McKenzie joined the faculty of New York University School of Law in 2007. His scholarly interests include bankruptcy, civil procedure, complex litigation, and the federal courts. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1997 from Princeton University and his law degree in 2000 from NYU, where he was an executive editor of the NYU Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. After law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States. Before joining the NYU faculty, McKenzie was a litigation associate for four years at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. His article "Judicial Independence, Autonomy, and the Bankruptcy Courts" recently appeared in the Stanford Law Review (2010).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Menashi was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on November 14, 2019. Previously, he served as special assistant and associate counsel to the President in the White House and as acting general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. He was assistant professor of law at Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he taught administrative law and civil procedure, and a research fellow at New York University School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center. He was also a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in New York, where he practiced appellate and commercial litigation, and served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as senior articles editor of the Stanford Law Review, and from Dartmouth College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Of Counsel, BakerHostetler
Mark Braden concentrates his work principally on the law of the political process, including work with election and campaign agencies, voting issues, redistricting, and ethics and lobbying regulations – areas in which he has substantial knowledge and unusual experience.
He provides effective, and often highly innovative, legal guidance when representing individuals and organizations in the political arena and counseling some of the largest political action committees (PACs) and campaigns in the nation. Mark spent 10 years as chief counsel to the Republican National Committee prior to joining BakerHostetler. He is widely recognized for his knowledge of state election laws, having served as chief counsel to the Ohio Elections Commission and election counsel to the Ohio Secretary of State. Mark has played a significant role in the redistricting process nationwide. And in campaign finance, he was the father of “soft money” as originally used in national campaigns.
Mark is a former member of the adjunct faculty of George Washington University and Catholic University, and former special election law counsel to the United States House of Representatives’ Administration Committee. He has testified before congressional committees and the Federal Election Commission, and his experience in the legal and political arenas has resulted in invitations to lecture at universities and institutes nationwide. He has authored International Election Principles: Election, Chapter: “Early and Absentee Voting” (ABA Publishing, 2009) and Election Reform in the United States after Bush v. Gore, eds. Grofman & Alvarez, Chapter: “Entering the Political Thicket” (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Attorney
Maya M. Noronha is a civil rights attorney.
As special counsel for external affairs at First Liberty Institute, Maya worked for the largest legal organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.
Previously, Maya worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as acting chief of staff of the Administration for Children and Families; principal advisor to the Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families; and senior advisor to the Director of the Office for Civil Rights and regulatory reform officer. She provided advice on federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of conscience, religion, race, color, national origin, limited English proficiency, sex, disability, age, and health information in both health care and human services.
In the area of election law, Maya has advised officials elected to or candidates for President, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Governor, state legislature, city council, and magisterial district judge. She practiced law at Baker Hostetler LLP, where she was on the Political Law and Federal Advocacy Teams, advising clients on voting rights, redistricting, election integrity, campaign finance, financial reporting, ethics compliance, as well as conducting trial and appellate litigation. She also has delivered legislative testimony, planned continuing legal education conferences on election law, and published about voting rights and election administration.
In addition to addressing the Federalist Society, she has delivered remarks to the White House Initiative on Asian American Pacific Islanders, United States Senate, Women in Government Relations, Georgetown University, George Mason University School of Law, the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, and Arizona State University Cronkite School of Journalism.
Maya is in Phi Beta Kappa, a member of the Alpha Sigma Nu Jesuit Honor Society, and a John Carroll Scholar. Forbes Magazine recognized Maya as one of its 30 under 30 in Law and Public Policy.
She serves concurrently on the Federalist Society’s Free Speech & Election Law Executive Committee and the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law.
Education
· J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2011
· A.B., Georgetown University, 2005
Adjunct Professor of Law; Director, N.Y. Census and Redistricting Institute, New York Law School
Jeff Wice is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at New York Law School where he directs the New York Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute and teaches classes on redistricting, election law, and the census. He is now working on his sixth redistricting cycle. In past years, he served as a redistricting counsel to New York State Legislativbe Leaders and as counsel to three New York City Districting Commissions and to numerous counties and localities across New York and the nation.
During the 2000 census cycle, Professor Wice served as counsel to President Bill Clinton’s members of the U.S. Census Monitoring Board. He is the co-editor/author of the National Conference of State Legislatures' 2020 Redistricting Redbook, a comprehensive handbook on the census and redistricting.
‘’City & State NY’ recognized Professor Wice as one of New York’s “Top 50 Over 50” in 2022 and just last month as a "New York legal trailblazer" for his efforts promoting fair representation and the census. He is a graduate of the George Washington University and Antioch School of Law.
Of Counsel, BakerHostetler
Mark Braden concentrates his work principally on the law of the political process, including work with election and campaign agencies, voting issues, redistricting, and ethics and lobbying regulations – areas in which he has substantial knowledge and unusual experience.
He provides effective, and often highly innovative, legal guidance when representing individuals and organizations in the political arena and counseling some of the largest political action committees (PACs) and campaigns in the nation. Mark spent 10 years as chief counsel to the Republican National Committee prior to joining BakerHostetler. He is widely recognized for his knowledge of state election laws, having served as chief counsel to the Ohio Elections Commission and election counsel to the Ohio Secretary of State. Mark has played a significant role in the redistricting process nationwide. And in campaign finance, he was the father of “soft money” as originally used in national campaigns.
Mark is a former member of the adjunct faculty of George Washington University and Catholic University, and former special election law counsel to the United States House of Representatives’ Administration Committee. He has testified before congressional committees and the Federal Election Commission, and his experience in the legal and political arenas has resulted in invitations to lecture at universities and institutes nationwide. He has authored International Election Principles: Election, Chapter: “Early and Absentee Voting” (ABA Publishing, 2009) and Election Reform in the United States after Bush v. Gore, eds. Grofman & Alvarez, Chapter: “Entering the Political Thicket” (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Attorney
Maya M. Noronha is a civil rights attorney.
As special counsel for external affairs at First Liberty Institute, Maya worked for the largest legal organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.
Previously, Maya worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as acting chief of staff of the Administration for Children and Families; principal advisor to the Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families; and senior advisor to the Director of the Office for Civil Rights and regulatory reform officer. She provided advice on federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of conscience, religion, race, color, national origin, limited English proficiency, sex, disability, age, and health information in both health care and human services.
In the area of election law, Maya has advised officials elected to or candidates for President, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Governor, state legislature, city council, and magisterial district judge. She practiced law at Baker Hostetler LLP, where she was on the Political Law and Federal Advocacy Teams, advising clients on voting rights, redistricting, election integrity, campaign finance, financial reporting, ethics compliance, as well as conducting trial and appellate litigation. She also has delivered legislative testimony, planned continuing legal education conferences on election law, and published about voting rights and election administration.
In addition to addressing the Federalist Society, she has delivered remarks to the White House Initiative on Asian American Pacific Islanders, United States Senate, Women in Government Relations, Georgetown University, George Mason University School of Law, the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, and Arizona State University Cronkite School of Journalism.
Maya is in Phi Beta Kappa, a member of the Alpha Sigma Nu Jesuit Honor Society, and a John Carroll Scholar. Forbes Magazine recognized Maya as one of its 30 under 30 in Law and Public Policy.
She serves concurrently on the Federalist Society’s Free Speech & Election Law Executive Committee and the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law.
Education
· J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2011
· A.B., Georgetown University, 2005
Adjunct Professor of Law; Director, N.Y. Census and Redistricting Institute, New York Law School
Jeff Wice is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at New York Law School where he directs the New York Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute and teaches classes on redistricting, election law, and the census. He is now working on his sixth redistricting cycle. In past years, he served as a redistricting counsel to New York State Legislativbe Leaders and as counsel to three New York City Districting Commissions and to numerous counties and localities across New York and the nation.
During the 2000 census cycle, Professor Wice served as counsel to President Bill Clinton’s members of the U.S. Census Monitoring Board. He is the co-editor/author of the National Conference of State Legislatures' 2020 Redistricting Redbook, a comprehensive handbook on the census and redistricting.
‘’City & State NY’ recognized Professor Wice as one of New York’s “Top 50 Over 50” in 2022 and just last month as a "New York legal trailblazer" for his efforts promoting fair representation and the census. He is a graduate of the George Washington University and Antioch School of Law.
Of Counsel, BakerHostetler
Mark Braden concentrates his work principally on the law of the political process, including work with election and campaign agencies, voting issues, redistricting, and ethics and lobbying regulations – areas in which he has substantial knowledge and unusual experience.
He provides effective, and often highly innovative, legal guidance when representing individuals and organizations in the political arena and counseling some of the largest political action committees (PACs) and campaigns in the nation. Mark spent 10 years as chief counsel to the Republican National Committee prior to joining BakerHostetler. He is widely recognized for his knowledge of state election laws, having served as chief counsel to the Ohio Elections Commission and election counsel to the Ohio Secretary of State. Mark has played a significant role in the redistricting process nationwide. And in campaign finance, he was the father of “soft money” as originally used in national campaigns.
Mark is a former member of the adjunct faculty of George Washington University and Catholic University, and former special election law counsel to the United States House of Representatives’ Administration Committee. He has testified before congressional committees and the Federal Election Commission, and his experience in the legal and political arenas has resulted in invitations to lecture at universities and institutes nationwide. He has authored International Election Principles: Election, Chapter: “Early and Absentee Voting” (ABA Publishing, 2009) and Election Reform in the United States after Bush v. Gore, eds. Grofman & Alvarez, Chapter: “Entering the Political Thicket” (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Attorney
Maya M. Noronha is a civil rights attorney.
As special counsel for external affairs at First Liberty Institute, Maya worked for the largest legal organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.
Previously, Maya worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as acting chief of staff of the Administration for Children and Families; principal advisor to the Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families; and senior advisor to the Director of the Office for Civil Rights and regulatory reform officer. She provided advice on federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of conscience, religion, race, color, national origin, limited English proficiency, sex, disability, age, and health information in both health care and human services.
In the area of election law, Maya has advised officials elected to or candidates for President, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Governor, state legislature, city council, and magisterial district judge. She practiced law at Baker Hostetler LLP, where she was on the Political Law and Federal Advocacy Teams, advising clients on voting rights, redistricting, election integrity, campaign finance, financial reporting, ethics compliance, as well as conducting trial and appellate litigation. She also has delivered legislative testimony, planned continuing legal education conferences on election law, and published about voting rights and election administration.
In addition to addressing the Federalist Society, she has delivered remarks to the White House Initiative on Asian American Pacific Islanders, United States Senate, Women in Government Relations, Georgetown University, George Mason University School of Law, the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, and Arizona State University Cronkite School of Journalism.
Maya is in Phi Beta Kappa, a member of the Alpha Sigma Nu Jesuit Honor Society, and a John Carroll Scholar. Forbes Magazine recognized Maya as one of its 30 under 30 in Law and Public Policy.
She serves concurrently on the Federalist Society’s Free Speech & Election Law Executive Committee and the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law.
Education
· J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2011
· A.B., Georgetown University, 2005
Adjunct Professor of Law; Director, N.Y. Census and Redistricting Institute, New York Law School
Jeff Wice is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at New York Law School where he directs the New York Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute and teaches classes on redistricting, election law, and the census. He is now working on his sixth redistricting cycle. In past years, he served as a redistricting counsel to New York State Legislativbe Leaders and as counsel to three New York City Districting Commissions and to numerous counties and localities across New York and the nation.
During the 2000 census cycle, Professor Wice served as counsel to President Bill Clinton’s members of the U.S. Census Monitoring Board. He is the co-editor/author of the National Conference of State Legislatures' 2020 Redistricting Redbook, a comprehensive handbook on the census and redistricting.
‘’City & State NY’ recognized Professor Wice as one of New York’s “Top 50 Over 50” in 2022 and just last month as a "New York legal trailblazer" for his efforts promoting fair representation and the census. He is a graduate of the George Washington University and Antioch School of Law.
R. B. Price and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Missouri School of Law
Carl H. Esbeck is R.B. Price Professor and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law emeritus at the University of Missouri. After attending Cornell University School of Law where he served as an editor on the Cornell Law Review, he held a judicial clerkship with the Honorable Howard C. Bratton, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in New Mexico.
Professor Esbeck publishes widely in the area of religious liberty and church-state relations. He is recognized as the progenitor of "Charitable Choice," an integral part of the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act, later made a part of the faith-based initiative and equal-treatment regulations under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In addition, he has taken the lead in recognizing that the modern Supreme Court has applied the Establishment Clause not as a personal right, but as a structural limit on the government's authority in disputes involving church governance. While on leave from 1999 to 2002, Professor Esbeck directed the Center for Law & Religious Freedom (CLRF) and later served as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. While directing the CLRF, Professor Esbeck was a central part of the congressional advocacy behind the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). While at the Department of Justice one of his duties was to direct a task force to remove barriers to the equal-treatment of faith-based organizations applying for social service grants. He is the author of Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776 - 1833 (U. of MO Press, 2019).
Executive Director & Secretary, American Civil Rights Project
Dan Morenoff is the executive director at the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
His work focuses on protecting and, where necessary, restoring the primacy of all Americans' shared civil rights against the identitarian alternative.
Before practicing law, Morenoff served on the legislative staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). Morenoff holds a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He has also served as an officer or director of several community organizations in Dallas, Texas.
Attorney, Institute of Justice
Kirby Thomas West is an attorney at the Institute for Justice, where she litigates cases defending property rights, free speech, and educational choice.
Before joining IJ in 2018, Kirby was a litigation associate at Baker Botts LLP. She clerked for Judge Dennis Shedd of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Kirby earned her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2015. While at Harvard, she served as the Articles Editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Between her first and second years of law school, Kirby clerked at IJ’s Texas office.
Kirby graduated, magna cum laude, from Bucknell University in 2012 with a BA in English and Political Science.
Kirby is licensed in Pennsylvania.
NYC Young Lawyers: Supreme Court Preview
New York, NYRedistricting: Discussing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
Mark Braden, Maya Noronha, Jeffrey M. Wice
This webinar addresses the impact that changes proposed in HR 4, the John R. Lewis...
Redistricting: Discussing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
Mark Braden, Maya Noronha, Jeffrey M. Wice
This webinar addresses the impact that changes proposed in HR 4, the John R. Lewis...
Redistricting: Discussing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
Article I Initiative and Free Speech & Election Law Practice Group Teleforum
TeleforumAn Extended Essay on Church Autonomy
Carl H. Esbeck
The doctrine of church autonomy[1] is distinct from the two more familiar lines of cases...
Mistaken Heritage: How a Statutory Misreading Has Denied Congress’ Intended Beneficiaries Protection for Half a Century
Dan Morenoff
When the Voting Rights Act (VRA) came up for renewal of its pre-clearance mechanism for...
Learning to Change: New Takes on Education Reform
Kirby Thomas West
A Review of: The Choice We Face: How Segregation, Race, and Power Have Shaped America’s...
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California Regulation Ruled an Uncompensated Taking in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid
On June 23, 2021, the United States Supreme Court issued an important decision for property...
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Why Standing Matters
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