Editor, The Weekly Standard
William Kristol is the editor of The Weekly Standard. He is also a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday, a contributor for the Fox News Channel, and a monthly columnist for the Washington Post. Before starting the Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. Prior to that, Mr. Kristol served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the first Bush Administration, and to Education Secretary William Bennett under President Reagan. Before coming to Washington in 1985, Mr. Kristol was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Professor of Practice, Cardozo School of Law
Gabor Rona received his B.A. from Brandeis University, J.D. from Vermont Law School and LL.M from Columbia Law School.
As the former International Legal Director of Human Rights First, he advised Human Rights First programs on questions of international law and coordinates international human rights litigation. He also represented Human Rights First with governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, the media and the public on matters of international human rights and international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict).
Before Human Rights First, Rona was a Legal Advisor in the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. At the ICRC he focused on the application of international humanitarian and human rights law in the context of counter-terrorism policies and practices. He represented the ICRC in intergovernmental, nongovernmental, academic and public forums and his articles on the topic have appeared in the Financial Times, the Fletcher Forum on World Affairs and the Chicago Journal of International Law, among other publications. In addition, he represented the ICRC in connection with the establishment of international and other criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court. He has also taught International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, the University Centre for International Humanitarian Law in Geneva, Switzerland and Columbia Law School in New York.
Retired Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Upon his resignation as the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State in January 1993, Mr. Williamson rejoined Sullivan & Cromwell's Washington, D.C. office. He originally joined the Firm in 1964 after graduating from New York University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review. He became a partner of the Firm in 1971, moved to its London office in 1976, returned to its New York office in 1979, moved to its Washington, D.C. office in 1988 and became Of Counsel in 2007. In 2018, he retired from the firm.
At Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Williamson engaged in a broad and wide-ranging domestic and international financing and transactions practice, as well as advice with respect to corporate governance issues, the United States’ economic sanctions laws, the ethics rules applicable to government officials and the immunities of foreign sovereigns and international organizations.
Mr. Williamson has been an active participant on panels and other forums involving public international law and national security issues, such as the domestic and international bases for the use of force, the role of the United States with respect to the International Criminal Court, the law of the sea and the application of international legal principles in the war against terrorism.
Mr. Williamson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, the Executive Committees of the Business and Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD and the U.S. Council for International Business, the United States Advisory Board of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and the Board of Directors of Triton Oil & Gas Limited.
Mr. Williamson has served on the Boards of Regents and Trustees of the University of the South and as chair of the Board of Regents. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a higher education watchdog.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.
His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.
Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.
Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Dennis Jacobs is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He became Chief Judge on October 1, 2006. At the time of his appointment in 1992, he was a partner in the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Judge Jacobs received his B.A. degree from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1964; his M.A. degree from New York University in 1965; and his J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law in 1973.
Judge Jacobs was a lecturer in the English Department of Queens College of the City University of New York from 1967 until 1969. He was in private practice from 1973 with the New York law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, serving as a partner there from 1980 until his judicial appointment.
In 1997-2004, Judge Jacobs was a member of the Committee on Judicial Resources of the Judicial Conference of the United States; starting in 1999 he was chair of that committee.
Judge Jacobs is a native of New York City.
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.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Danny Julián Boggs is a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was appointed to a newly created seat on that court on January 29, 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 3, and received his commission on March 25. He served as the Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit from 2003 to 2009.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Sentelle was appointed United States Circuit Judge in October 1987, served as Chief Judge from February 11, 2008 until February 11, 2013, and took senior status on February 12, 2013. He is a 1968 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School. Following law school, he practiced with the firm of Uzzell & DuMont until he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Charlotte, N.C. in 1970. From 1974 to 1977, he served as a North Carolina State District Judge but left the bench in 1977 to become a partner with the firm of Tucker, Hicks, Sentelle, Moon & Hodge. In 1985, Judge Sentelle joined the U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina, in Asheville, where he served until his appointment to the D.C. Circuit. Judge Sentelle was the Presiding Judge of the Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels (1992-2006). He also served as the Chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference's Executive Committee (2010-2013). Judge Sentelle served for over 20 years as President of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of the American Inns of Court.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale Law School
Degrees from Davidson College, B.A. summa cum laude, 1973; Harvard University, M.A., 1974; Yale Law School, J.D, 1978. Clerked for Edward Weinfeld, 1978-79; Attorney at Shea & Gardner, 1979-82; Law Professor since 1982, tenured at Georgetown and Yale, visiting professor at Stanford, NYU, Toronto, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Fordham, Vanderbilt. Author of casebooks on legislation and sexuality, gender and law, as well as monographs on statutory interpretation and the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Author of dozens of articles, by one empirical count a top ten most cited law professors.
Professor of Law, UCLA Law School
Daniel Lowenstein was the first American law professor to specialize in Election Law and established a leading reputation in that field. He authored the first twentieth century textbook in the field — Election Law: Cases and Materials (Carolina Academic Press, 1995), now in its sixth edition. As co-editor with Professor Rick Hasen he inaugurated the Election Law Journal, the leading journal in the field. On January 29, 2010, leading scholars in Election Law put on a festschrift celebrating Lowenstein’s work in the field.
On July 1, 2009, Lowenstein became Director of the new UCLA Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions (CLAFI), intended to facilitate and promote study of the great works and achievements of western civilization. He currently teaches undergraduate courses, primarily in literature.
Lowenstein worked as a staff attorney at California Rural Legal Assistance for two and one-half years beginning in 1968. While working for California's Secretary of State, Edmund G. Brown Jr. starting in 1971, he specialized in Election Law and was the main drafter of the Political Reform Act, an initiative statute that California voters approved in 1974, thereby creating a new Fair Political Practices Commission. Governor Brown appointed Lowenstein as first chairman of the Commission in 1975. Lowenstein has served on the national governing board of Common Cause and has been a board member and a vice president of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights. He has also served as chairman of the Board of Directors of the award-winning theatre troupe Interact and regularly brings the company to the School of Law to perform plays with legal themes, such as Sophocles' Antigone, Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, and Wouk's The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.
Professor Lowenstein’s published research runs the gamut of Election Law subjects, including campaign finance, redistricting, voting rights, political parties, and initiatives. He has also published literary criticism on works such as The Merchant of Venice and Bleak House.
To obtain news and information about CLAFI or about the Interact play readings at the School of Law, please write to Lowenstein at Lowenstein@law.ucla.edu.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Senior Of Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP and Executive Chairma, The Chertoff Group
Michael Chertoff concentrates in the area of White Collar Defense and Investigations. In recent years, he has handled a series of federal investigations, including complex criminal and civil regulatory matters. He has advised major clients on SEC and Justice Department investigations and successfully served as the independent monitor of a major national healthcare company under criminal and civil investigation.
In addition to his legal work, Mr. Chertoff is Founder and Chairman of The Chertoff Group, a security and risk management firm, where he provides high-level strategic counsel to corporate and government leaders on a broad range of security issues, from risk identification and prevention to preparedness, response and recovery.
In April of 2012, Mr. Chertoff was elected as the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of BAE Systems, Inc. He also sits on the board of directors or board of advisors of a number of companies and nonprofits.
Previously, Mr. Chertoff served as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. As Secretary, he led a 218,000 person department with a budget of $50 billion. Mr. Chertoff developed and implemented border security and immigration policy; promulgated homeland security regulations; and spearheaded a national cyber security strategy. He also served periodically on the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, and on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Prior to his appointment to the Cabinet, Mr. Chertoff served from 2003 to 2005 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Before becoming a federal judge, Mr. Chertoff was the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In that position, he oversaw the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and formed the Enron Task Force, which produced more than 20 convictions, including those of CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay.
Mr. Chertoff’s career includes more than a decade as a federal prosecutor, including service as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Chertoff investigated and personally prosecuted significant cases of political corruption, organized crime, and corporate fraud.
From 1994-2001, Mr. Chertoff represented major corporations and individuals in numerous white collar investigations and trials. Among other matters, he successfully represented the nation’s largest hospital company in a four year, multi-jurisdictional criminal and civil investigation, represented major corporations in corruption scandals, and obtained acquittals at trial for individual criminal defendants.
Mr. Chertoff has received numerous awards including the Department of Justice Henry E. Petersen Memorial Award (2006); the Department of Justice John Marshall Award for Trial of Litigation (1987); NAACP Benjamin L. Hooks Award for Distinguished Service (2007); European Institute Transatlantic Leadership Award (2008); and two honorary doctorates. His trial experiences have been featured in over half a dozen books and many news articles.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Former United States Senator, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Editor, The Weekly Standard
William Kristol is the editor of The Weekly Standard. He is also a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday, a contributor for the Fox News Channel, and a monthly columnist for the Washington Post. Before starting the Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. Prior to that, Mr. Kristol served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the first Bush Administration, and to Education Secretary William Bennett under President Reagan. Before coming to Washington in 1985, Mr. Kristol was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Professor of Practice, Cardozo School of Law
Gabor Rona received his B.A. from Brandeis University, J.D. from Vermont Law School and LL.M from Columbia Law School.
As the former International Legal Director of Human Rights First, he advised Human Rights First programs on questions of international law and coordinates international human rights litigation. He also represented Human Rights First with governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, the media and the public on matters of international human rights and international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict).
Before Human Rights First, Rona was a Legal Advisor in the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. At the ICRC he focused on the application of international humanitarian and human rights law in the context of counter-terrorism policies and practices. He represented the ICRC in intergovernmental, nongovernmental, academic and public forums and his articles on the topic have appeared in the Financial Times, the Fletcher Forum on World Affairs and the Chicago Journal of International Law, among other publications. In addition, he represented the ICRC in connection with the establishment of international and other criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court. He has also taught International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, the University Centre for International Humanitarian Law in Geneva, Switzerland and Columbia Law School in New York.
Retired Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Upon his resignation as the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State in January 1993, Mr. Williamson rejoined Sullivan & Cromwell's Washington, D.C. office. He originally joined the Firm in 1964 after graduating from New York University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review. He became a partner of the Firm in 1971, moved to its London office in 1976, returned to its New York office in 1979, moved to its Washington, D.C. office in 1988 and became Of Counsel in 2007. In 2018, he retired from the firm.
At Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Williamson engaged in a broad and wide-ranging domestic and international financing and transactions practice, as well as advice with respect to corporate governance issues, the United States’ economic sanctions laws, the ethics rules applicable to government officials and the immunities of foreign sovereigns and international organizations.
Mr. Williamson has been an active participant on panels and other forums involving public international law and national security issues, such as the domestic and international bases for the use of force, the role of the United States with respect to the International Criminal Court, the law of the sea and the application of international legal principles in the war against terrorism.
Mr. Williamson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, the Executive Committees of the Business and Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD and the U.S. Council for International Business, the United States Advisory Board of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and the Board of Directors of Triton Oil & Gas Limited.
Mr. Williamson has served on the Boards of Regents and Trustees of the University of the South and as chair of the Board of Regents. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a higher education watchdog.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.
His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.
Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.
Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.
President, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Inc.
Dr. Pfaltzgraff is president of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Inc., which he cofounded in 1976. He is also Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He is an authority on issues of U.S. national security policy, including homeland security; proliferation and counterproliferation; alliance relationships with a focus on Europe and the Asia-Pacific area; regional security issues; crisis management; force planning; military transformation; the interrelationships of political, economic, and security policies; technology transfer; missile defense; international relations theory; U.S. foreign policy; and the implications of emerging trends in both regional and global security environments. He has held visiting appointments as George C. Marshall Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium; as professor at the National Defense College, Tokyo, Japan; and as honorary professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He has advised key U.S. officials on such topics as military strategy, modernization, and arms control policy, and has contributed as a management consultant to industry clients in the United States and abroad. He serves on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), U.S. Department of State. He serves as co-chairman of the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, which produced the 2009 report, Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, and the 21st Century.
Dr. Pfaltzgraff has lectured widely at government, industry, and academic forums in the United States and overseas, including at the National Defense University, the NATO Defense College, the Army War College, the Naval War College, the Armed Forces Staff College, the Air Command Staff College, and the United States Military Academy at West Point.
He holds an M.A. in international relations, a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. in international business from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Senior Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia School of Law, George Mason University; Retired Professor, Distinguished Fellow and Co-Founder, Center for National Security Law, University of Virginia School of Law (1987-2020)
Robert F. Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law. He co-founded the Center for National Security Law with Professor John Norton Moore in April 1981 and served as its associate director for 39 years, except for two periods of government service in the 1980s and during 1994-95, when he occupied the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He retired from UVA in January 2020 and currently serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the GMU National Security Institute. He also served briefly in 2020 as President of the Crime Prevention Research Center—one of the most respected pro-Second Amendment groups in the country—while its founder, Dr. John Lott, was on leave of absence.
A former Army captain and veteran of two tours in Vietnam, Turner served as a research associate and public affairs fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace before spending five years in the mid-1970s as national security adviser to U.S. Senator Robert P. Griffin, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (where Turner anticipated by seven years the Supreme Court’s landmark INS v. Chadha decision, striking down legislative vetoes). He also served in the executive branch during the Reagan administration as a member of the Senior Executive Service, first in the Pentagon as special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for policy, then in the White House as counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, and at the State Department as principal deputy and then acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs. In 1986, he became the first president of the congressionally established United States Institute of Peace.
A former three-term chairman of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security (and for many years editor of the ABA National Security Law Report), Turner also chaired the Executive-Congressional Relations Subcommittee of the ABA Section on International Law and Practice and chaired or co-chaired the National Security Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group for several years.
Turner taught undergraduate courses at Virginia on international law, U.S. foreign policy, the Vietnam War and foreign policy and the law in what is now the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. In addition, he co-taught National Security Law and advanced national security law seminars on the Indochina War and on war and peace with Moore at the Law School.
The author or editor of 17 books and monographs (including co-editor of the Center's 1,600-page National Security Law & Policy casebook, National Security Law Documents, and Legal Issues in the Struggle Against Terror) and numerous articles in law reviews and other professional journals, Turner has also contributed articles to most of the major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today. In an op-ed published in The International Herald Tribune in September 1990, he and Moore were the first to call for a war-crimes trial for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and for international controls over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and the following month he wrote the lead story in The Washington Post Sunday Outlook Section, “Killing Saddam: Would It Be a Crime?,” arguing that Hussein would be a lawful target during Operation Desert Storm. (His reasoning contributed to the modern legal justification for drone strikes targeting specific terrorist leaders.) Three years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turner published an op-ed in USA Today entitled: “In Self-defense, U.S. Has Right to Kill bin Laden.”
In July 2007, he co-authored an article in The Washington Post with former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General P.X. Kelley, “War Crimes and the White House,” criticizing the use of unlawful “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the Central Intelligence Agency. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon he authored an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Saigon’s Fall Still Echoes Today,” noting that after the war ended, Hanoi admitted it had made a decision in 1959 to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and start sending troops, weapons and supplies into South Vietnam to overthrow its government — just as the United States had charged. In 2010 Turner received the first “person of the year” award from SACEI, a major Vietnamese-American human rights organization.
A frequent lecturer and debater, Turner has spoken at more than 100 law schools around the nation and in other fora — taking on as many as four opponents at a time. His debate opponents have included former or future deans of Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Berkeley law schools. Following a 1987 debate against Dean Harlan Cleveland (Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) in which Turner defended the legality of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan Administration, the host student debating societies awarded Turner the victory by an 85-to-15 percent margin.
Turner has also written and lectured widely on University of Virginia founder and America’s third president Thomas Jefferson. In 2000-2001 he chaired the Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission. In his 2012 book Master of the Mountain, Jefferson critic Henry Wiencek described Turner as “Jefferson’s chief scholarly defender."
A former distinguished lecturer at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Turner is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Academy of Political Science, the Committee on the Present Danger, The Heterodox Academy, and other professional organizations. He maintained a 4.0 gpa as a graduate student at Stanford in History and Political Science and in the UVA Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and was the first person admitted directly to the UVA academic law doctorate (SJD) program without first being required to earn an LL.M. master’s degree. He was selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Law less than two years after graduating from law school and Who’s Who in the World before he reached the age of 40. Turner has testified before more than a dozen different congressional committees on issues of international or constitutional law and other topics.
Visiting Scholar, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University
Leonard Weiss is a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He is also a national advisory board member of the Center for Arms control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC. He began his professional career as a PhD researcher in mathematical system theory at the Research Institute for Advanced Studies in Baltimore. This was followed by tenured professorships in applied mathematics and electrical engineering at Brown University and the University of Maryland. During this period he published widely in the applied mathematics literature. In 1976 he received a Congressional Science Fellowship that resulted in a career change. For more than two decades he worked for Senator John Glenn as the staff director of both the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation and the Committee on Governmental Affairs. He was the chief architect of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978 and legislation that created the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. In addition, he led notable investigations of the nuclear programs of India and Pakistan. Since retiring from the Senate staff in 1999, he has published numerous articles on nonproliferation issues for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Arms Control Today, and the Nonproliferation Review. His current research interests include an assessment of the impact on the nonproliferation regime of nuclear trade with non-signers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and more generally the relationship of energy security concerns with nonproliferation.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Former United States Senator, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Panel 2: Preventing Attacks through Interrogation and Transfer of Terrorists Suspects
William Kristol, Deborah Pearlstein, Dean Reuter, Gabor Rona, Edwin D. Williamson, Benjamin Wittes
Deborah Pearlstein, Associate Research Scholar, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University...
Panel 2: Preventing Attacks through Interrogation and Transfer of Terrorists Suspects
Counterterrorism and the Obama Administration
Washington, DCMissile Defense and Space Security
International & National Security Law Practice Group
Washington, DC2006 Annual Luncheon - Judicial Independence
Timothy B. Dyk, Patricia M. Wald, Dennis Jacobs, Carlos T. Bea, Danny J. Boggs
Dean Reuter: Welcome to our National Lawyers Convention Luncheon. It’s my great pleasure to welcome...
Showcase Panel III : Are Constitutional Changes Necessary to Limit Government?
Richard D. Parker, David B. Sentelle, Frank H. Easterbrook, William N. Eskridge, Daniel H. Lowenstein
Dean Reuter: Good morning, and welcome to the third day of the Federalist Society National...
2006 NLC Address - Michael Chertoff
Ronald A. Cass, Michael Chertoff
Ron Cass: I promised Leonard Leo and Gene Meyer and Dean Reuter that I would...
Address by Arlen Specter
2006 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCAddress by Arlen Specter
Dean Reuter, Arlen Specter
United States Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania delivered an address at the 2006 Annual National...