Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
James Garland is a partner in Covington’s Litigation and White Collar Defense & Investigations practice groups. His practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, internal investigations, white collar criminal defense, and national security.
Mr. Garland has substantial experience litigating high-stakes, multidimensional business disputes for clients across a range of industries, including companies in the high-tech, financial services, defense, transportation, media and entertainment, and pharmaceutical sectors. Many of his civil representations have involved parallel enforcement proceedings in multiple forums, often with significant public relations and policy implications.
In the white collar area, Mr. Garland has represented both corporate and individual clients in large-scale, multi-party criminal investigations and related regulatory enforcement actions. Mr. Garland also regularly advises clients concerning national security-related matters, including with respect to issues involving electronic surveillance, cyber-security, and data privacy.
Mr. Garland returned Covington in 2010 after serving as Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to Attorney General Eric Holder at the U.S. Department of Justice. In that role, Mr. Garland advised the Attorney General on a range of enforcement issues, with an emphasis on criminal, antitrust, intellectual property, and cyber-security matters. He worked closely with senior officials at the White House, Main Justice, U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, FBI, SEC, and other federal, state, and local enforcement agencies.
Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft
David Howard is Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel with Microsoft. He joined Microsoft in 2010, after nearly 20 years at Dechert LLP. Howard joined Dechert in 1985, upon completion of a clerkship with the Honorable Marvin Katz of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He left the firm in 1987 to take a special assignment with the White House Counsel’s Task Force on the Iran/Contra Matter. In October 1987, Howard became an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and served in that position through 1994. He returned to Dechert in 1995. A graduate of Princeton University (A.B., cum laude) and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D., cum laude), Howard is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar and admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Second and Third Circuits.
Co-Founder, Able Lending
Evan Baehr is the cofounder of Able, an online lender to small businesses. It launched June 2014 with the Wall Street Journal'sWeekend Interview and on TechCrunch. His passion at Able is to serve the Fortune 5 Million – the 5.8 million small businesses that represent the backbone of the American economy. His previous startup was Outbox, a consumer internet company aiming to takeover the US Postal Service and backed by venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Mike Maples, featured on Fox News, CNN, TechCrunch, FastCompany, Wall Street Journal, INC, the New York Times, and on Jay Leno.
He has worked on the Facebook platform under Sheryl Sandberg, helping shape a vision to make life better by making it social, and for Peter Thiel building a political data company. He’s an honors graduate of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, Yale Divinity School, and Harvard Business School.
He has worked for the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, served as a legislative aid on the House Appropriations Committee under Rep. Frank Wolf, was Chief of Staff on the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, under which he wrote the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, and was the failed candidate for Princeton’s City Council, despite receiving more votes than George W. Bush.
He has served on the board of the Manhattan Institute’s Adam Smith Society, the New Canaan Society, the Rivendell Institute, and Harvard Business School's FIELD Program, and is a mentor with First Round Capital's Dorm Room Fund. He cofounded the Hoover Institute’s Rising Fellows Program, Harvard Business School’s Ideas@Work, Princetonians in the Nation’s Service, and the Yale Forum on Faith and Politics. He is the recipient of the Lily Endowment Thesis Prize, the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, and Princeton’s James Madison Fellowship. He lives in Austin, TX, with his wife, Kristina Scurry Baehr, a patent litigator, and children Cooper and Madeleine.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Chief Legal Officer, Paradigm
Principal, DeGroot Legal
Mr. DeGroot represents businesses in complex litigation, focusing on licensing, insurance, intellectual property, contract disputes, and toxic torts. He has experience in cases involving fraud, breach of contract, unfair competition, patents, business torts, mergers and acquisitions, creditors’ rights, and bankruptcy. He has extensive experience in all aspects of civil litigation, both in federal and state courts, including prejudgment remedies, discovery, trial, appeals, arbitration and mediation.
Mr. DeGroot works with clients in a variety of industries, including financial institutions, insurance, software, construction, semiconductors, and real estate.
Policy Counsel, Lyft
Associate Professor, University of Idaho College of Law
Stephen R. Miller joined the faculty of the University of Idaho College of Law in 2011. Prof. Miller received his undergraduate degree from Brown University, a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. While in law school, Prof. Miller was senior articles editor of the Constitutional Law Quarterly. Prof. Miller also worked for a land use and environmental law firm in San Francisco, California prior to joining the faculty. His research interests include economic development, sustainable development, land use, environmental law, and local government law.
His academic works have been published by or are forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, Harvard Environmental Law Review, and a number of other law reviews and professional journals. In 2013, he was named Faculty Advisor of the Year by the Idaho Law Review and also received the Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. In addition to his academic writings, Prof. Miller also blogs at Land Use Prof Blog, and writes an occasional column for the Idaho Statesman Business Insider.
Prof. Miller also runs the College of Law's Economic Development Clinic, which maintains the student-written blog Idaho NEXT. In 2013, the Clinic received the Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice from the Idaho chapter of the American Planning Association for Area of City Impact Agreements in Idaho. In 2014, the Clinic released Agritourism at the Rural-Urban Interface: A National Overview of Legal Issues with 20 Proposals for Idaho. In addition, the Clinic has been credited by state officials with popularizing the use of New Markets Tax Credits financing in Idaho, a financing tool that has already helped fund $50 million in investment in low income communities throughout the state.
Prof. Miller is also active in the community. He presently serves as a commissioner on the Boise City Planning and Zoning Commission and as a board member of the Joyce Ivy Foundation, which provides educational opportunities for talented high school students.
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Loretta A. Preska is a senior judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. Preska became the chief judge of the court in May of 2009 when Kimba Wood assumed senior status. She served as chief judge of the court for a seven-year term from 2009 to 2016, and took senior status in 2017.
Preska graduated from the College of St. Rose with her Bachelor's degree in 1970 and also graduated from Fordham Law with her Juris Doctor Degree in 1973. She graduated from NYU Law with her Master of Laws degree in 1978.
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.
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
Former Managing Director, BlackRock Inc.
Joanne Medero was until July 2020 a Managing Director at BlackRock where she was member of their Global Public Policy Group and a Senior Advisor to the Vice Chairman on the intersection of public policy and corporate governance. In June 2021, Ms. Medero was appointed a director/trustee of the Nuveen Funds.
Ms. Medero's service with BlackRock dates back to 1996, including her years with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which merged with BlackRock in 2009. She joined BGI as its Global General Counsel in 1996 and after more than ten years in that role, became the global head of Government Relations and Public Policy for Barclays’ investment banking and investment management businesses. Prior to joining BGI, Ms. Medero was a partner with Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe specializing in derivatives and market regulation issues. Ms. Medero also served as general counsel of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (1989-1993) and as an associate director for legal and financial affairs at the Office of Presidential Personnel, The White House (1986-1989).
Ms. Medero is a graduate of St. Lawrence University and received her JD from George Washington University.
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, was born in Trenton, New Jersey, March 11, 1936. He married Maureen McCarthy and has nine children- Ann Forrest, Eugene, John Francis, Catherine Elisabeth, Mary Clare, Paul David, Matthew, Christopher James, and Margaret Jane. He received his A.B. from Georgetown University and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School, and was a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University from 1960-1961. He was in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio from 1961-1967, a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia from 1967-1971, and a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago from 1977-1982, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University and Stanford University. He was chairman of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law, 1981-1982, and its Conference of Section Chairmen, 1982-1983. He served the federal government as General Counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy from 1971-1972, Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 1972-1974, and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1974-1977. He was appointed Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982. President Reagan nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat September 26, 1986.
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Loretta A. Preska is a senior judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. Preska became the chief judge of the court in May of 2009 when Kimba Wood assumed senior status. She served as chief judge of the court for a seven-year term from 2009 to 2016, and took senior status in 2017.
Preska graduated from the College of St. Rose with her Bachelor's degree in 1970 and also graduated from Fordham Law with her Juris Doctor Degree in 1973. She graduated from NYU Law with her Master of Laws degree in 1978.
Executive Director, Ohio Dental Association
David J. Owsiany is the executive director of the Ohio Dental Association and a past president of the Columbus Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society.
He has served as CEO of a statewide health care association, president of the Buckeye Institute, chief of policy for the Ohio Department of Insurance, judicial law clerk for the Illinois Appellate Court, and staffer on the United State Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Owsiany has written dozens of articles on legal and public policy issues for various publications, including the University of Toledo Law Review, the Federalist Society's State Court Docket Watch, Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Crain’s Cleveland Business, and Akron Beacon Journal.
Owsiany received his J.D. from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and B.A. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Assistant Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law
Alexander "Sasha" Volokh is an assistant professor of law, joining the Emory Law faculty in Fall 2009.
Professor Volokh earned his B.S. from UCLA and his J.D. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit and for Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Samuel Alito. Before coming to Emory, he was a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a visiting assistant professor at University of Houston Law Center.
His interests include law and economics, administrative law and the regulatory process, environmental law and policy, and legal history. His current research topics include the private management of government services, medieval law, judicial decisionmaking and statutory interpretation.
Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Professor Samuel Walker is a widely quoted expert on issues of civil liberties, policing and criminal justice policy. He is Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he taught from 1974 to 2005. He received a Ph.D. in American history from Ohio State University in 1973.
Prof. Walker is the author of 14 books on those subjects, which have appeared in a combined total of 32 editions. He has been interviewed in every major media outlet in the United States and around the world, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS/Frontline, CNN and others. His book, Presidents and Civil Liberties From Wilson to Obama, won the Langum Prize for the Best Book in American Legal History for 2012.
Prof. Walker is perhaps best known for his work on police accountability (including two books and two reports on “Driving While Female”) and for his definitive history of the American Civil Liberties Union, In Defense of American Liberties, which was first published in 1990 and issued in a revised edition in 2000 by Southern Illinois University Press. He is currently a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s National Working Group on Sexual Offenses by Police Officers.
Former Adjunct Professor of Law; former Special Counsel to the President; former federal prosecutor, Georgetown Law (ret.)
Bill Otis is a former Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, a one-time federal prosecutor, and a former Special White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he started his career in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, then became chief of appeals for the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. In the 1980's he served on the Department's "Train the Trainer" team, which taught US Attorneys Offices across the county how to implement the then-new Sentencing Reform Act. He has held several posts in the federal government, including Special Assistant to the Secretary of Energy and Counselor to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in addition to the White House post. He has testified before Congress on issues in criminal procedure, illegal drugs, the US Sentencing Commission, and the death penalty, and has given numerous media interviews on those and other subjects. He currently teaches a seminar at Georgetown Law titled "Conservatism in Law in America" with his wife, Federalist Society co-founder Lee Liberman Otis.
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