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Mayflower Hotel

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  • Mayflower Hotel
Nov 12 2021
Friday 1:45 p.m. EDT    

Fireside Chat with Vivek Ramaswamy

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Vivek Ramaswamy • Todd J. Zywicki
Topics:
Civil Rights • Corporations & Securities • Culture • Politics
  • In-Person Event
Nov 12 2021
Friday 11:30 a.m. EDT    

Classrooms, Curricula, and the Law

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Akhil Reed Amar • Stuart Kyle Duncan • Josh Hammer • Kimberly Hermann • Letitia Todd Kim • Greg Lukianoff
Topics:
Civil Rights • Culture • Education Policy
Sponsors:
Civil Rights Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Nov 12 2021
Friday 11:30 a.m. EDT    

Federalism and Broadband Spending: Finding the Right Approach

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Brendan Carr • Eric Allan Koch • Roslyn Layton • Steven J. Menashi
Topics:
Federalism • Communications & Technology
Sponsors:
Communications & Technology Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Nov 12 2021
Friday 11:30 a.m. EDT    

"Cancel Culture" Comes to Financial Services

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Eric E. Murphy • Christopher L. Peterson • Paul N. Watkins • Todd J. Zywicki
Topics:
Culture • Financial Services
Sponsors:
Financial Services Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Nov 12 2021
Friday 9:00 a.m. EDT    

Showcase Panel II: Private Control Over Public Discussion

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Jane Bambauer • Randy E. Barnett • Adam Candeub • Barbara Lagoa • Eugene Volokh
Topics:
Corporations & Securities • Free Speech
Sponsors:
Corporations & Securities Practice Group • Free Speech Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Nov 11 2021
Thursday 3:30 p.m. EDT    

Religious Liberty after Fulton v. City of Philadelphia

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Akhil Reed Amar • Thomas C. Berg • William P. Marshall • Lawrence VanDyke • Lori Windham
Topics:
Religious Liberty
Sponsors:
Religious Liberties Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Nov 11 2021
Thursday 3:30 p.m. EDT    

Criminal Justice 2021 and The Rule of Law

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Stephanos Bibas • Lawrence S. Krasner • Tracey Meares • McGregor W. Scott • Rich Stanek
Topics:
Criminal Law & Procedure
Sponsors:
Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Nov 11 2021
Thursday 3:30 p.m. EDT    

Administrative Inquisitions? How Agencies Initiate, Conduct, and Conclude Investigations

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Tyler S. Clarkson • Aram A. Gavoor • James C. Ho • Richard J. Pierce • Susan Courtwright Rodriguez
Topics:
Administrative Law & Regulation
Sponsors:
Administrative Law & Regulation Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Nov 11 2021
Thursday 1:45 p.m. EDT    

The Antitrust Revolution?

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Bill Baer • François-Henri Briard • Makan Delrahim • Douglas H. Ginsburg • Diana L. Moss • Chad A. Readler
Topics:
Corporations & Securities
Sponsors:
Corporations & Securities Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Nov 11 2021
Thursday 1:45 p.m. EDT    

"Progressive" HR in 2021: The Solution or the Problem?

2021 National Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Sharon Fast Gustafson • Larry H. James • Peter Kirsanow • Paul B. Matey • Daniel Villao
Topics:
Culture • Labor & Employment Law
Sponsors:
Labor & Employment Law Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
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Speaker Information
Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy

Entrepreneur and Author of WOKE, INC.

Biography

Conservative leaders have called Vivek Ramaswamy one of “the most compelling conservative voices in the country” and “one of the towering intellects” in America.

Vivek Ramaswamy is a New York Times bestselling author and a successful entrepreneur who has founded multiple successful enterprises. A first-generation American, he is the founder and executive chairman of Roivant Sciences, a new type of biopharmaceutical company focused on the application of technology to drug development. He founded Roivant in 2014 and led the largest biotech IPOs of 2015 and 2016, eventually culminating in successful clinical trials in multiple disease areas that led to FDA-approved products.

Mr. Ramaswamy was born and raised in southwest Ohio. He graduated summa cum laude in Biology from Harvard in 2007 and began his career as a successful biotech investor at a prominent hedge fund. Mr. Ramaswamy continued to work as an investor while earning his law degree at Yale.

Mr. Ramaswamy was featured on the cover of Forbes magazine in 2015 for his work in drug development. In 2020 he emerged as a prominent commentator on stakeholder capitalism, free speech, and woke culture. He has authored numerous articles and op-eds, which have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Review, Newsweek, and Harvard Business Review.

Mr. Ramaswamy serves on the board of directors of the Philanthropy Roundtable, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, and St. Xavier High School.

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Todd J. Zywicki

Todd J. Zywicki

George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.   

Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.

Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.  He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”

Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.

Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business.  He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois.  He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.

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Akhil Reed Amar

Akhil Reed Amar

Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Biography

Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.

Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.

He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.

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Stuart Kyle Duncan

Stuart Kyle Duncan

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit

Biography

Judge Duncan received his B.A. from Louisiana State University in 1994, his J.D. from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1997, and his LL.M. from Columbia Law School in 2004.

After graduating from law school, he clerked for Louisiana-based Circuit Judge John Malcolm Duhé Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

From 2008–2012, Duncan served as Appellate Chief for Louisiana's Attorney General's office. From 2012–2014, he served as general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. From 2004-2008, he was an assistant professor of law at the University of Mississippi School of Law.

Before becoming a judge, Duncan practiced at the Washington, D.C. firm of Schaerr Duncan LLP, where he was a founding partner. He was appointed by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on May 1, 2018.

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Josh Hammer

Josh Hammer

Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large, Syndicated Columnist, Host of "The Josh Hammer Show," Article III Project Senior Counsel, Newsweek, Salem Media, Article III Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center

Biography

Josh Hammer is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek and host of "The Josh Hammer Show," a podcast, a syndicated radio show, and TV program on Salem News Channel. A syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, Josh is a frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues. He is also senior counsel for the Article III Project and Internet Accountability Project, as well as a Shillman Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a fellow with the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.

An outspoken conservative, Josh opines on conservative intellectual trends, contemporary domestic and foreign policy debates, constitutional and legal issues, and the intersection of law, politics and culture. He has been published by many leading outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, National Affairs, American Affairs, The New Criterion, The National Interest, National Review, RealClearPolitics, First Things, City Journal, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, Tablet Magazine, Deseret Magazine, Compact Magazine, Chronicles Magazine, The Spectator, The American Mind, The American Conservative, The European Conservative, American Greatness, American Compass, The Federalist, Blaze Media, TomKlingenstein.com, Townhall, The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller, The Epoch Times, Anchoring Truths, Fortune, Fox Business, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Journal. He has also had legal scholarship published by the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.

Josh is a college campus speaker through Young America's Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and clerked for the Hon. James C. Ho on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and as a Fellow with the James Wilson Institute. He is the former host of "America on Trial with Josh Hammer," a one-season daily podcast with The First that covered the unique legal issues surrounding the 2024 presidential election.

Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.

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Kimberly Hermann

Kimberly Hermann

Executive Director, Southeastern Legal Foundation

Biography

Kimberly Hermann serves as Executive Director for Southeastern Legal Foundation.

Kim has worked with Southeastern Legal Foundation since 2009. Her belief in liberty and desire to serve started at a young age – instilled by her parents’ dedication to hard work, family values, and love for America.

After earning her undergraduate degree in Analytical Finance and graduate degree in Accounting from Wake Forest University, Kim worked as a licensed CPA with an international accounting firm. But her strong belief in individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government led her to pursue a career in law. While in law school at Georgia State University College of Law, Kim served as a law clerk at SLF. After graduating, Kim worked at a private law firm in Atlanta where she specialized in financial and business litigation but continued to serve SLF in a pro bono capacity. In 2013, Kim returned to SLF full-time and is proud to dedicate her career to the freedom-based law movement.

Kim advances liberty through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts on issues ranging from government overreach, free speech, property rights, and economic liberty. In addition to representing clients, Kim testifies before state legislatures, drafts model legislation, and regularly publishes legal articles. Through SLF’s legal initiatives, she informs Americans about their constitutional rights, equipping them with the tools they need to stand up to government overreach. Her work and that of Southeastern Legal Foundation is regularly covered by national media and you will frequently hear or see her on radio, podcasts, and television.

Kim is an active member of the Federalist Society where she serves as an expert on the Federalist Society’s Civil Rights Executive Committee. She is also an active member of her community and when she isn’t fighting for liberty, you can find her at her children’s school or on the sports fields cheering them on. She lives in the Atlanta area with her husband and two children.

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Letitia Todd Kim

Letitia Todd Kim

Managing Director of the Legal Network, Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism

Biography

Letitia Kim is the Managing Director of the Legal Network at the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, a nonprofit civil rights organization that launched in March 2021. Letitia’s work at FAIR focuses on advocating for the rights of parents, students, and employees under Title VI, Title VII, Equal Protection, and the First Amendment, and funding litigation to protect those rights. Letitia also led the committee that produced FAIR’s model legislation to ensure greater transparency in schools.

Before joining FAIR, Letitia was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Civil Division of the Northern District of California, where she litigated cases under Title VII, the Federal Tort Claims Act, and the Constitution. She also practiced at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal (now Denton’s), focusing almost exclusively on federal litigation and appellate practice, including at the Ninth Circuit.

Letitia is a graduate of Cornell University and Michigan Law School. She lives in San Francisco with her family.

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Greg Lukianoff

Greg Lukianoff

President and CEO, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)

Biography

Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, Freedom From Speech, and FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus. Most recently, he co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Jonathan Haidt. This New York Times best-seller expands  on their September 2015 Atlantic cover story of the same name. Greg is also an Executive Producer of Can We Take a Joke? (2015), a feature-length documentary that explores the collision between comedy, censorship, and outrage culture, both on and off campus, and of Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020), a feature-length film about the life and career of former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser.

Greg has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and numerous other publications. He frequently appears on TV shows and radio programs, including the CBS Evening News, The Today Show, and NPR’s Morning Edition. In 2008, he became the first-ever recipient of the Playboy Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Award, and he has testified before both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives about free speech issues on America’s college campuses.

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Speaker Information
Brendan Carr

Brendan Carr

Chairman, Federal Communications Commission

Biography

Brendan Carr is the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He previously served as the senior Republican Commissioner and as the FCC’s General Counsel. Nominated by both President Trump and President Biden, Carr has been confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.

Described by Axios as “the FCC’s 5G crusader,” Carr has led the FCC’s work to modernize its infrastructure rules and accelerate the buildout of high-speed networks. His reforms cut billions of dollars in red tape, enabled the private sector to construct high-speed networks in communities across the country, and extended America’s global leadership in 5G.

Chairman Carr is also focused on expanding America’s skilled workforce—the tower climbers and construction crews needed to build next-gen networks. His jobs initiative promotes community colleges and apprenticeships as a pipeline for good-paying 5G jobs. He is recognizing America’s talented tower crews through a series of “5G Ready” Hard Hat presentations.

Chairman Carr leads a groundbreaking telehealth initiative at the FCC. The Connected Care Pilot Program supports the delivery of high-quality care to low-income Americans and veterans.

Chairman Carr’s time outside of Washington helps inform his approach to the job. He regularly hits the road to hear directly from community members and learn how changes in federal policies could help improve their lives.

Chairman Carr brings nearly 20 years of private and public sector experience in communications and tech policy to his position. Before joining the FCC as a staffer back in 2012, he worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein LLP in the firm’s appellate, litigation, and telecom practices. Previously, Chairman Carr clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for Judge Dennis Shedd. After attending Georgetown University for his undergrad, Chairman Carr earned his J.D. magna cum laude from the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law where he served as an editor of the Catholic University Law Review.

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Eric Allan Koch

Eric Allan Koch

Senator and Chairman, Indiana Senate Utilities Committee, Indiana State Senate

Biography

An 8th generation Hoosier, Eric grew up on a grain and livestock farm, where he learned the value of hard work and experienced the risk and rewards of the commodity markets.

He earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Georgetown University and worked on President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in the Office of Political Affairs at the Reagan-Bush ’84 Committee.

While earning his Juris Doctorate at the Indiana University School of Law, he clerked at the Bloomington law firm of McDonald, Barrett & Dakich.

He has been engaged in the private practice of law with offices in Bloomington since 1989 and Bedford since 2003. He is a member of the Monroe and Lawrence County Bar Associations, the Indiana State Bar Association, the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum, and founded and served as the first President of the Indiana Creditors Bar Association.

In 2002, he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives, where he served until being elected to the Indiana State Senate in 2016. His legislative service has been recognized by, among others, the Indiana Judges Association (Champion of Justice Award), the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association (Legislator of the Year 2008 and 2015), the Indiana Pro Bono Commission (Randall T. Shepard Award), Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher (Kentucky Colonel), and Indiana Governor Mike Pence (Sagamore of the Wabash).

He currently serves as Chairman of the Senate Utilities Committee, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce & Technology Committees, and as a member of the Senate Corrections & Criminal Law, Elections, and Family & Children Committees.

A nationally-recognized leader in energy policy, he serves as co-chairman of the Energy Supply Task Force of the National Conference of State Legislatures, as a member of the Executive Committee of the National Council on Electricity Policy, and holds a graduate certificate in Energy Policy Planning from the University of Idaho. He also serves as a member of the Federal Communication Commission Consumer Advisory Committee. He focuses on energy, telecommunications, and water policy interactions in Indiana and nationally.

He has served as a member of the Indiana Commission on Courts (2007—2011), the Indiana Probate Code Study Commission (2005—2007, 2013—2014, 2019—present), the Indiana Military Base Planning Council (2005—2019), the Board of Trustees of the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute (2006—2011), and the Indiana Public Defender Commission (2017—present). He represents Indiana as a Commissioner on The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (2018—present). As a member of the Indiana Supreme Court's Commercial Courts Committee (2019—present), he provides guidance to Indiana's Commercial Courts. He was appointed by the Indiana Supreme Court to serve on its Innovation Initiative (2019—present) to advise the Supreme Court on opportunities to increase efficiency and accessibility through innovative technology and case management, analysis of court reform, and development and testing of pilot programs related to court reform.

Eric frequently serves as a faculty member teaching continuing legal education courses, including for the Indiana State Bar Association and the Indiana Continuing Legal Education Forum. He enjoys teaching lawyers about new developments in the law and sharing his insights into the legislative process.

He is a registered civil mediator, having earned a civil mediation certificate from the Indiana University McKinney School of Law, studying under ADR expert John Krauss. Eric enjoys using the combination of his mediation skills and litigation experience to help parties settle cases and resolve disputes.

Eric is frequently appointed by judges to serve as a court-appointed fiduciary with responsibilities such as a trustee, federal multidistrict litigation plaintiffs’ steering committee member, special administrator, and personal representative.

A licensed Indiana title insurance producer, he founded Indiana Title Insurance Company in 2015 and serves as its President. His business experience also includes real estate, as President of White River Properties, Inc.; agriculture, as a partner in Koch Farms; and healthcare, as a former board member and Chairman of the Board of Dunn Memorial Hospital and St. Vincent Dunn Hospital.

He is a member of the Boards of Directors of Mid-Southern Savings Bank, FSB and its holding company Mid-Southern Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: MSVB).

His leadership in the non-profit sector has included service as a member of the Board of Governors of the Society of Indiana Pioneers, as a member of the Executive Board of the Hoosier Trails Council of the Boy Scouts of America, as a member of the Mitchell Urban Enterprise Association Board, and as a member of the Georgetown University Alumni Admissions Committee.

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Roslyn Layton

Roslyn Layton

Senior Vice President, Strand Consult

Biography

Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China.  She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.

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Steven J. Menashi

Steven J. Menashi

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

Biography

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.

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Eric E. Murphy

Eric E. Murphy

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit

Biography

Eric Murphy has been a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since March 2019. He previously served as the ninth State Solicitor of Ohio. In that role, Eric briefed and argued appellate cases on behalf of Ohio and its state agencies and officers in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Ohio Supreme Court. Before his appointment as State Solicitor, Eric practiced appellate litigation at Jones Day. After graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from Miami University.



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Christopher L. Peterson

Christopher L. Peterson

John J. Flynn Endowed Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

Biography

Christopher Peterson is the John J. Flynn Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law. He previously served as a Special Advisor in the Office of the Director at the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as a Special Advisor in the Office of Legal Policy for Personnel and Readiness in the United States Department of Defense, and as Senior Counsel for Enforcement Policy and Strategy in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Office of Enforcement. Professor Peterson has written dozens of scholarly articles and published three books on consumer finance. He has frequently testified in Congressional hearings and has presented his research to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and at the White House in both Democratic and Republican administrations. He is a fellow of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers, the American Bar Association's Consumer Financial Services Committee, and serves on the community advisory board of the American Fintech Council. Professor Peterson is a recipient of the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators’ Consumer Advocate of the Year award and the Pentagon’s Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence.

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Paul N. Watkins

Paul N. Watkins

Partner, Fusion Law, PLLC

Biography

Paul is the founding partner of Fusion Law, PLLC. He has extensive experience with state, federal, and global regulators building coalitions and implementing policies to promote innovation in financial services. He is responsible for designing and implementing the first state (Arizona) and federal (CFPB) FinTech sandboxes in the United States. He also designed the CFPB no-action letter and trial disclosure policies. He helped found the first global regulatory innovation coalition (Global Financial Innovation Network) and led the founding of the first U.S. regulatory innovation coalition (American Consumer Financial Innovation Network). He served on the Financial Stability Oversight Council subcommittee on digital assets. He also has drafted state-level laws on blockchain and utility tokens. 

Paul also has significant enforcement and litigation experience. He led many multi-state consumer protection enforcement matters as Civil Litigation Division Chief at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

Prior to his government service, Paul practiced law in the areas of securities litigation and transactional work for approximately six years at two well-known law firms.  He also clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

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Todd J. Zywicki

Todd J. Zywicki

George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.   

Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.

Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.  He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”

Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.

Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business.  He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois.  He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.

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Jane Bambauer

Jane Bambauer

Professor of Law and Journalism, University of Florida

Biography

Professor Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the Levin College of Law and at the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law.

Professor Bambauer’s research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Professor Bambauer’s research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Her work has also been featured in media outlets, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fox News, and Lawfare, where she is a contributing editor.

Professor Bambauer currently serves as the Chair of the National AI Advisory Committee Subcommittee on Law Enforcement, and she has previously served as the deputy director of the Center for Quantum Networks, a multi-institutional engineering research center funded by the National Science Foundation. She holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

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Randy E. Barnett

Randy E. Barnett

Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Biography

Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.

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Adam Candeub

Adam Candeub

Professor of Law, Michigan State University (currently serving as FCC General Counsel)

Biography

Professor Candeub joined the MSU Law faculty in fall 2004. He is also a Fellow with MSU's Institute of Public Utilities. Prior to joining MSU, he served as an advisor at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). From 1998 to 2000, Professor Candeub was a litigation associate for the Washington D.C. firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue and also has served as a corporate associate with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, also in Washington, D.C. Immediately following law school, he clerked for Chief Judge J. Clifford Wallace, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. While in law school, Professor Candeub was an articles editor for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

Professor Candeub's scholarly interests focus on the law and regulation of communications, internet, technology. His numerous law review articles and scholarly papers have placed him at the center of legal and policy controversies, and he often writes for popular outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and US News. Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have cited and relied upon his work.

He joined the Trump administration in 2019 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Telecommunications and Information and assumed the role of Acting Assistant Secretary. He later joined the Department of Justice as Deputy Associate Attorney General.

Professor Candeub is a senior fellow at the D.C.-based Center of Renewing America. 

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Barbara Lagoa

Barbara Lagoa

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

Biography

Judge Barbara Lagoa was born in Miami, Florida. She received her Bachelor of Arts cum laude in 1989 from Florida International University where she majored in English and was a member of the Phi Kappa Phi honor society. Judge Lagoa received her Juris Doctor from Columbia University School of Law in 1992, where she served as an Associate Editor of the Columbia Law Review. She is fluent in English and Spanish. On December 6, 2019, she received her commission as a judge on the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals from President Donald Trump.

On January 9, 2019, she became the first Hispanic woman and the first Cuban American woman appointed to serve on the Florida Supreme Court.  Prior to her appointment by Governor Ron DeSantis to the Florida Supreme Court, Governor Jeb Bush appointed her in June of 2006 to serve on the Third District Court of Appeal.  At that court, she became the first Hispanic woman and the first Cuban American woman appointed to serve on the Third District Court of Appeal.  On January 1, 2019, she became the first Hispanic female Chief Judge of the Third District Court of Appeal.

Prior to joining the bench, Judge Lagoa practiced in both the civil and criminal arenas. Her civil practice at Greenberg Traurig focused on general and complex commercial litigation, particularly the areas of employment discrimination, business torts, securities litigation, construction litigation, and insurance coverage disputes. In 2003, she joined the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida as an Assistant United States Attorney, where she worked in the Civil, Major Crimes and Appellate Sections. As an Assistant United States Attorney, she tried numerous criminal jury trials, including drug conspiracies and Hobbs Act violations. She also handled a significant number of appeals.

While a practicing lawyer, Judge Lagoa was admitted to The Florida Bar, the United States District Courts for the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She was also a member of many local, state, and national professional groups including the Dade County Bar Association, and the Florida Association for Women Lawyers.

Judge Lagoa’s civic and community activities include service on the Board of Directors for the YWCA of Greater Miami and Dade County, the Film Society of Miami, Kristi House, and the FIU Alumni Association. She was also a member of the Federal Judicial Nominating Commission. She is currently a member of the Eugene P. Spellman and William Hoeveler Chapter of the American Inns of Court.

Judge Lagoa is married to Paul C. Huck, Jr., an attorney. They have three daughters.

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Eugene Volokh

Eugene Volokh

Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law

Biography

Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.

Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).

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Akhil Reed Amar

Akhil Reed Amar

Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Biography

Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.

Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.

He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.

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Thomas C. Berg

Thomas C. Berg

James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Biography
Thomas C. Berg is the James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota), where he teaches religious liberty, constitutional law, intellectual property, and the religious liberty appellate clinic. He is the author or co-author of five books, including The State and Religion in a Nutshell (West); Religion and the Constitution (Wolters Kluwer, with McConnell and Lund); Patents on Life (Cambridge U. Press, with Cholij and Ravenscroft);. and a forthcoming book, Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age (under contract, Eerdmans). He has written or co-written more than 150 book chapters and scholarly and popular articles, and approximately 70 briefs in the Supreme Court and lower courts on freedom of religion and expression. He contributes regularly to SCOTUS Blog, Christianity Today, Mirror of Justice, and other venues. He has degrees from the University of Chicago (law, religious studies), Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Northwestern University (journalism). He practiced law in Chicago and was a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
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William P. Marshall

William P. Marshall

William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

Biography

William (Bill) Marshall joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2001 and serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests include the first amendment, presidential power, election law, federal jurisdiction, federal judicial selection, civil procedure, and media law. Marshall is the author of numerous book chapters, articles, and essays on free speech, separation of powers, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Supreme Court Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among others. 

Marshall received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Marshall was Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration and also served as the Solicitor General for the State of Ohio. He has taught at the Northwestern, Boston University, Vanderbilt, Ohio State, DePaul, Case Western Reserve, William and Mary, and the University Connecticut law schools. Prior to beginning his teaching career, Marshall was a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota.

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Lawrence VanDyke

Lawrence VanDyke

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

Biography

Lawrence VanDyke serves as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  Prior to  that appointment in January 2020, he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice.  Before that, he served consecutively as the Solicitor General of two western states – Nevada and Montana.  At the beginning of his legal career, he worked as an attorney in the Appellate and Constitutional Issues practice group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.

Judge VanDyke received his law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review.  He has engineering and theology undergraduate degrees and a masters degree in engineering management.  He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  Judge VanDyke and his wife Cheryl live in Reno, Nevada, and they have three children.

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Lori Windham

Lori Windham

Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

Biography

Lori Windham is vice president and senior counsel at Becket, where she has represented clients on cutting-edge religious freedom issues since 2005. She has represented parties before the Supreme Court, arguing Becket’s unanimous victory on behalf of foster families in Fulton v. Philadelphia, as well as working with the Becket team on its Supreme Court victories in Hosanna-Tabor, Hobby Lobby, and Little Sisters of the Poor. She won a victory for the world’s largest religious media network in EWTN v. Azar, staving off millions of dollars in government fines under unlawful the HHS mandate. She has won more than a dozen victories in federal appellate courts, including successful defense of cities and school districts sued for accommodating religion, victories for houses of worship facing discrimination in the land use process, and overturning a multimillion-dollar judgment against a major evangelical ministry. She recently won a first-in-the-nation injunction for an adoption agency threatened with shutdown for its religious beliefs.

Recognized in Washington as an expert on religious freedom issues, Lori has testified in Congressional oversight hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Outside Washington, Lori is sought-after speaker on First Amendment law, including appearances at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Central European University, and many others.

In addition to these venues, Lori also defends her clients in the media, including television appearances on CBS This Morning, Hardball, CNN Tonight, On the Record, America’s Newsroom, Opinion Journal, and many others. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and dozens of other papers. She is also a regular guest on radio, with appearances on shows ranging from Sean Hannity to NPR.

Lori has successfully represented a wide array of clients, including a Santeria priest prohibited from making animal sacrifices, synagogues prohibited from building on their own land, and religious student organizations penalized for their religious speech. One of her most challenging cases involved travel to a remote farming community to ensure that members of the local Amish community were not jailed for using their traditional building methods.

Lori is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Abilene Christian University. She has served on the Board of Visitors of Abilene Christian University and received the ACU Young Alumnus of the Year award for her work at Becket. She sits on the board of Dominion Christian School and the visiting committee of the Fund for American Studies’ Summer Law Fellowship.

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Stephanos Bibas

Stephanos Bibas

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit

Biography

Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.

After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.

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Lawrence S. Krasner

Lawrence S. Krasner

District Attorney, City of Philadelphia

Biography

Lawrence S. Krasner was officially sworn in on January 2, 2018, as the City of Philadelphia’s 26th District Attorney. Before being elected District Attorney, Mr. Krasner served of-counsel at Greenblatt, Pierce, Funt, and Flores, LLC. Larry was born in 1961 in St. Louis, the son of a World War II veteran and author father and evangelist mother. After attending public schools in St. Louis and the Philadelphia area, Larry earned degrees from the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School with the help of student loans and scholarships.

Mr. Krasner attended public school in the St. Louis and Philadelphia areas. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago in 1983 and his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1987, where he was selected to the Stanford Law Review. After multiple offers of employment in prosecutors’ and public defenders’ offices throughout the country, he worked as a public defender in Philadelphia from ’87 – ’91 and was then promoted to the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Philadelphia (’91- ’93). In 1993 he started his own private practice, specializing in criminal defense and police misconduct matters. He has remained in private practice ever since. During that time, Mr. Krasner has tried thousands of bench and jury trials in criminal and civil court in the Philadelphia area as well as other counties and states.

Throughout his 30 year career, Mr. Krasner has also proudly demonstrated a steadfast commitment to social justice, having defended protesters pro bono who were involved with movements including ACT UP, Black Lives Matter, progressive clergy with POWER, Casino-Free Philadelphia, DACA Dreamers, Decarcerate PA, anti-gun clergy with Heeding God’s Call, anti-poverty and homelessness advocates with Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Occupy Philly and Reclaim Philadelphia, and Grannies for Peace, among many others.

He has resided in Philadelphia for over 30 years with his wife of 28 years. His wife has been a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for 17 years. They have two adult sons.

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Tracey Meares

Tracey Meares

Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Biography

Tracey Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor and a Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. Before joining Yale, she was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School from 1995 to 2007. She was the first African American woman granted tenure at both law schools. Meares is a nationally recognized expert on policing in urban communities, who has worked extensively with the federal government, including being a member of President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. In 2019, Meares was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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McGregor W. Scott

McGregor W. Scott

Partner, King & Spalding LLP

Biography

Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, a 34-county district with an area that stretches from the Oregon border to Bakersfield, Greg Scott is an experienced trial lawyer who represents major companies facing government investigations and litigation, with a focus in the healthcare, retail, and construction industries. He has extensive knowledge on matters involving consumer protection, construction disputes, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the False Claims Act (FCA).

Greg represents corporations under investigation by state district attorneys concerning potential violations of consumer protection laws, as well as corporations operating senior assisted livingfacilities under investigation by the state attorney general regarding potential violations of elder abuse laws. In addition, he represents construction companies under investigation by state district attorneys when employees are involved in serious accidents at worksites.

A retired Lieutenant Colonel after serving more than 20 years in the California Army National Guard & United States Army Reserve, Greg went on to become a deputy district attorney in Contra Costa County and twice-elected District Attorney of Shasta County. He also served as an Adjunct Professor of National Security Law at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law following his first term as U.S. Attorney for the E.D. of California. Between his two terms as U.S. Attorney for the E.D. of California, Greg was the vice chair of the white-collar defense and corporate investigations practice at an AmLaw 50 firm.

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Rich Stanek

Rich Stanek

Sheriff (Ret.); Co-Founder and Principal Consultant, Public Safety Strategies Group LLC

Biography

Rich Stanek is co-founder and Principal Consultant with Public Safety Strategies Group, LLC., bringing his wealth of knowledge from 36 years of public safety experience to clients across the country, including organizational leadership, agency management, national law enforcement best practices, crime reduction strategies, public policy advocacy, corporate security, and expert testimony.

Rich served as the 27th Sheriff of Hennepin County, Minnesota for 12 years, with responsibility for the safety and security of 1.2 million residents.  He managed over 1100 employees and volunteers, a budget of $125 million, and provided care and custody for inmates in the largest Jail and Sheriff’s Office in the Upper Midwest.

He is the author of numerous publications providing education for residents regarding emerging public safety and justice issues:  Mental Illness among Jail inmates, Opioid Abuse and Addiction, the nexus between Mass Shootings and Mental Illness, the Collapse of the 35W Bridge, Intelligence-led Policing, and FirstNet, the dedicated National Public Safety Broadband Network for First Responders.

Rich served two terms on the Board of Directors for FirstNet: its mission is to develop, build and operate the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network that equips first responders.  FirstNet operates within the U.S. Department of Commerce with a nonpartisan Congressional authorization and $7 billion appropriation.  Rich was first appointed in 2014 and in his second term, Rich served as FirstNet’s Chair of Outreach and Advocacy efforts nationwide.

Rich started his policing career in 1983, with the Cottage Grove Police Department and joined the Minneapolis Police Department in 1986; he rose through the ranks to Captain and led the Criminal Investigations Division (Homicide, Burglary, Robbery, Rape, Gangs & Narcotics).  During those years, Rich developed strong relationships with residents, pastors, business owners, community groups and local elected leaders; they developed strategies to fight and lower violent crime in Minneapolis.   They worked to elect Rich as Hennepin County Sheriff and he re-prioritized Agency personnel and resources for three proven crime fighting initiatives: a Violent Offender Task Force, Criminal Information Sharing & Analysis Unit (CISA) to serve the Sheriff’s Office and 36 local Police Departments in Hennepin County and 7 Counties regionally; and new Crime Lab technology (DNA testing, firearms testing, and Property Crime initiatives).  As a result of his leadership, these efforts, and new partnerships, violent crime in Hennepin County dropped by 38% from 2006-2018.

Prior to serving as Sheriff, Rich was appointed by Governor Tim Pawlenty as the State’s Commissioner of Public Safety, and Director of Homeland Security, overseeing nine State Agencies with over 2200 employees; including the Minnesota State Patrol, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Emergency Management, Office of Justice Programs and State Fire Marshal.

Rich came to the forefront of State leadership when he was appointed Chairman of the State Peace Officer Standards & Training Board (POST) and then elected as a State Legislator; he served for 5 terms while also working as a Minneapolis Police Officer.  He chaired the House of Representatives Public Safety Policy & Finance Committees and authored numerous key legislative initiatives, including Minnesota’s entry into the Nation’s Emergency Management Assistance Compact (“EMAC”), and post-9/11 information sharing and communications initiatives to better equip First Responders.

At both the state and national level, Rich has become well-known for his strong and visible advocacy for advancements in law enforcement public policy, technology, education, and best practices, through his elected and appointed leadership roles.  As a result, Rich is a much sought-after media spokesperson, faculty presenter and keynote speaker.

During his service as Sheriff, Rich served as President of the Major County Sheriffs of America (MCSA), Vice President of the National Sheriffs Associations (NSA); and President of the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association (MSA).  He served as a Law Enforcement Senior Advisor to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Secretary of Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); He is the Past President of the Leaders in National Counterterrorism (LinCT); and served on the Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council (CICC) and FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), where he held a top-secret national security clearance.  Rich has testified numerous times before Congress regarding community policing strategies, 21st century Policing, countering violent extremism and community engagement.

Rich’s educational background includes an M.A. in Public Administration from Hamline University and a B.A. in Criminal Justice from the University of Minnesota.  Additional professional training includes; the Southern Police Institute in Louisville, PERF’s Senior Management Institute for Police at Cambridge University, the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, FBI National Executive Institute in Virginia and the Leaders in National Counterterrorism Training in Australia and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) in Israel.

Rich lives in Maple Grove, Minnesota, and has been married to his wife, Sally for 36 years; they have 2 adult children and a dog named Teddy.   Rich is an avid Northwoods outdoorsman; where he enjoys time at his northern Minnesota cabin; hunting, fishing, boating, hiking and snowmobiling.

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Tyler S. Clarkson

Tyler S. Clarkson

Associate General Counsel, Synthetic Biology Company

Biography

Tyler Clarkson works as an Associate General Counsel at a synthetic biology company handling all regulatory and compliance matters. Tyler previously served as the Deputy General Counsel, Principal Deputy General Counsel, and Acting General Counsel at USDA. He also worked as a Counselor to the Administrator at OIRA. Previously, he worked as an associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer focusing largely on global investigations. Tyler attended college and law school at UVA; while in law school, Tyler served as the president of the UVA Law Federalist Society chapter.

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Aram A. Gavoor

Aram A. Gavoor

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, The George Washington University Law School

Biography

Aram A. Gavoor is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and an internationally recognized scholar in American administrative law, national security, and federal courts. His co-authored work was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Department of Commerce v. New York (2019). His scholarship has earned placement in the Florida Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Ohio State Law Journal, and other law journals. He has briefed and argued over a dozen high-profile public law cases before a majority of the U.S. Courts of Appeals and numerous cases before almost a third of the 94 U.S. District Courts. Associate Dean Gavoor frequently shares his national security, artificial intelligence policy, and federal courts expertise with international news media, including CNN, BBC World News, Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and ABC (Australia) World News. In 2021, the National Law Journal named Associate Dean Gavoor a Rising Star (top 40 under 40) honoree.

 

Earlier in his career, Associate Dean Gavoor served as Senior Counsel for National Security in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, as third-in-rank Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, and in private practice. He received the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in 2019, the Civil Division Special Commendation Award in 2020, 2019, and 2018, and a Commendation from the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section of the Criminal Division in 2018.

 

Associate Dean Gavoor previously served on the law school’s part-time faculty from 2008-2017 before accepting a term-limited position as Visiting Associate Professor from 2017-2019. He received GW Law’s Distinguished Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award from the 2020 and 2017 graduating classes. He currently teaches Constitutional Law II, Administrative Law, National Security Law, and Federal Courts.

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James C. Ho

James C. Ho

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit

Biography

James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide.  He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court.  He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications.  His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries.  He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.

Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government.  On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn.  At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel.  He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.

His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.

In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty.  He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader.  He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.

Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999.  Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp.  He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.

 

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Richard J. Pierce

Richard J. Pierce

Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School

Biography

Professor Pierce is author of over twenty books and 130 articles on administrative law, government regulation, and the effects of various forms of government intervention on the performance of markets. His books and articles have been cited in hundreds of judicial opinions, including over a dozen opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Susan Courtwright Rodriguez

Susan Courtwright Rodriguez

Partner, McGuireWoods LLP

Biography

The Honorable Susan C. Rodriguez was sworn-in as a U.S. Magistrate  Judge in the Western District of North Carolina on April 3, 2023.  She was selected through a Merit Selection Panel, comprised of both  attorneys throughout the district and community representatives. Judge Rodriguez was previously a partner at the law firm,  McGuireWoods LLP, where she was the co-leader of the firm’s  financial institutions industry team. Her private practice experience  focused on government investigations and white-collar matters. She  has represented clients in numerous government investigations by  the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Homeland  Security, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the  Federal Trade Commission (FTC), among others. She was  recognized for her outstanding work for clients through Chambers  rankings in both 2022 and 2023 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime &  Government Investigations in North Carolina and nationally for  Fintech Legal: Corporate, Securities & Financing. Susan also was  named to “North Carolina Rising Stars,” Government Relations,  Super Lawyers, 2017-2019.  

Before joining McGuireWoods in 2011, Susan served as a legal  policy advisor at the Department of Homeland Security. Susan also  served as federal law clerk for the Honorable Frank D. Whitney,  U.S. District Court Judge for the Western District of North  Carolina, handling both civil and criminal matters. Prior to that, she  was a presidential appointee, serving as a staffer in the White  House Counsel’s office from 2005-2006, handling management of  judicial nominations and assisting with responses to congressional  investigations. 

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Bill Baer

Bill Baer

Visiting Fellow in Governance Studies, Brookings Institution

Biography

Bill Baer is a visiting fellow in Governance Studies. He is one of the world’s best known and respected antitrust/competition enforcers. Baer is the only person to have led antitrust enforcement at both U.S. antitrust agencies, serving as assistant attorney general in charge of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2013 to 2016, and as director of the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission from 1995 to 1999. During his tenure as assistant attorney general, the Antitrust Division achieved unprecedented success in civil and criminal enforcement, bringing and winning more cases than at any point in its history. He also developed close working relationships with his competition enforcement colleagues around the world. In 2016 and early 2017, Baer also served as acting associate attorney general, the third highest official in the Department of Justice. He oversaw the work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Tax, and Environment and Natural Resources Divisions and successfully led the effort to hold financial institutions accountable in the residential mortgage-backed securities crisis, securing record penalties and consumer redress. Baer worked at the Federal Trade Commission on two different occasions: from 1995 to 1999, as director of the Bureau of Competition; and from 1975 to 1980 as attorney advisor to the chairman and assistant general counsel for Legislation and Congressional Relations. While not in public service, he headed the highly regarded antitrust practice at Arnold & Porter, representing a broad range of companies in U.S. and international cartel investigations, antitrust litigation, and merger and acquisition reviews by antitrust enforcers, including the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and the European Commission.

Baer was twice named by Global Competition Review as the best competition lawyer in the world; honored, in 2010 and 2012, by Best Lawyers as the best antitrust lawyer in Washington; and named by The National Law Journal as one of “The Decade’s Most Influential Lawyers.” In 2015 the Federal Trade Commission honored him with the Miles W. Kirkpatrick Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017, the American Antitrust Institute presented him with the Alfred E. Kahn Award for Antitrust Achievement. In 2024 the American Economic Liberties Project honored him with its first Achievements in Antitrust Award. Most recently, Baer was awarded the John Sherman Award for his substantive contributions to the development of antitrust law. It is the highest honor granted by the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Baer received his J.D. in 1975 from Stanford Law School, where he served as senior article editor of The Stanford Law Review, and his B.A. in 1972 from Lawrence University. Outside of Brookings, he is a trustee and board officer of his alma mater, Lawrence University. He previously served on the Biden transition team for the Federal Trade Commission. In addition, he occasionally serves as a consulting expert on antitrust matters.

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François-Henri Briard

François-Henri Briard

Partner, Supreme Court Attorney, Cabinet Briard LLP

Biography

François-Henri Briard is a Knight of the Legion of Honor, an Officer of the National Order of Merit and a Knight of the Palmes Académiques.

He was a member of the Governing Board of the Bar of the French Supreme Courts (2003-2005).

François-Henri Briard was a trustee of Sarah Lawrence College in New York for eight years. He is President of the Institut Vergennes, a member of the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society and an honorary member of the Society of the Cincinnati and of the Sons of the American Revolution. He is also an expert with the Federalist Society, a U.S. think tank that focuses on constitutional and judicial issues.

He is a member of the Institute of Consulting Tax Attorneys (IACF) and an associate member of the Academy of Moral Sciences, Letters and Arts of Versailles and Ile de France.

He is a member of the French Navy civilian reserve with the rank of frigate captain and has been awarded a medal by the voluntary military services. On behalf of the Firm, he received the Military Reserve Prize (2011).

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Makan Delrahim

Makan Delrahim

Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania

Biography

Makan Delrahim is currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania.

Previously he served as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, Deputy Assistant to the President, and Deputy White House Counsel. Mr. Delrahim’s rich antitrust background covers the full range of industries, issues, and institutions touched upon by the work of the Antitrust Division. He is a former partner in the Los Angeles office of a national law firm. He served in the Antitrust Division from 2003 to 2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, overseeing the Appellate, Foreign Commerce, and Legal Policy sections. During that time, he played an integral role in building the Antitrust Division’s engagement with its international counterparts and was involved in civil and criminal matters. He has served on the Attorney General’s Task Force on Intellectual Property and as Chairman of the Merger Working Group of the International Competition Network. Mr. Delrahim was also a Commissioner on the Antitrust Modernization Commission from 2004 to 2007. Earlier in his career, Mr. Delrahim served as antitrust counsel, and later as the Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Douglas H. Ginsburg

Douglas H. Ginsburg

Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit

Biography

Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986.  After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget.  Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law.  Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.

Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law.  He also serves on the Advisory Boards of:  Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.

In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy. 

In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.  

He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.

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Diana L. Moss

Diana L. Moss

Vice President and Director of Competition Policy, Progressive Policy Institute

Biography

Diana Moss joined the Progressive Policy Institute in 2023. She was previously President of the American Antitrust Institute from 2015-2023. An economist, Dr. Moss has developed and expanded competition enforcement and policy advocacy channels and strategies, and strengthened communications with enforcers, Congress, other advocacy groups, and the media. Her work spans both antitrust and regulation, with industry expertise in digital technology, electricity, petroleum, food and agriculture, airlines, telecommunications, and healthcare. Dr. Moss was previously at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where she coordinated the agency’s competition analysis for electricity mergers. In the early 1990s, she consulted in private practice in the areas of regulation and antitrust. Dr. Moss has spoken widely on various topics involving competition policy and enforcement, testified before Congress, appeared before state and federal regulatory commissions, and made numerous radio and television appearances. She has published articles in a number of economic and legal academic journals, including: American Economic Review, Journal of Industrial Organization, the Energy Law Journal, and the Antitrust Bulletin. She is editor of Network Access, Regulation and Antitrust (2005). Dr. Moss is Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a M.A. degree from the University of Denver and a Ph.D. from the Colorado School of Mines.

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Chad A. Readler

Chad A. Readler

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit

Biography

Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department.  In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit.  He resides in Columbus.

 

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Sharon Fast Gustafson

Sharon Fast Gustafson

Principal, Sharon Fast Gustafson, Attorney at Law, PLC

Biography

SHARON FAST GUSTAFSON is the immediate past General Counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where she enforced Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Ms. Gustafson graduated with honors from Georgetown Law Center in 1991 and has concentrated her practice in employment law. She worked for four years in the labor and employment law group at Jones, Day in Washington, D.C. Since that time, she has had a broad-based solo practice advising and representing employers and employees in handling all aspects of the employment relationship, in compliance with federal and state workplace laws, and in designing and implementing sound employment policies and practices.

Ms. Gustafson is an experienced litigator in federal and state courts; before administrative agencies, including the EEOC, state and local civil rights offices, and the Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division; and in mediation and arbitration. She is admitted to practice in state and federal courts in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and in the United States Supreme Court.

Ms. Gustafson successfully litigated a pregnancy discrimination case, Young v. UPS, 575 U.S. 206 (2015), from EEOC intake to a successful outcome at the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2016, she received the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association’s “Lawyer of the Year” award “in recognition of outstanding dedication to Civil Rights, Equality, and Justice.”

Ms. Gustafson represents both employers and employees in matters relating to employment law.

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Larry H. James

Larry H. James

Managing Partner, Crabbe Brown & James LLP

Biography

Larry James has been at the heart of the Columbus business, legal, civic, and political scene for the last thirty years. He is a respected litigator, as well as an advisor to local and national leaders. In recognition of his many achievements, the law firm changed its name from Crabbe, Brown, Jones, Potts & Schmidt to Crabbe, Brown & James in January 2001.

In 2011, The Ohio State University selected Mr. James as lead counsel to represent its student athletes in NCAA investigations. In 2013, Armen Keteyian published his book The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football, a chapter of which is dedicated to Larry’s work in representing the OSU football players.

In 2012, Mr. James and his wife, Donna, were awarded the American Red Cross of Greater Columbus’ Humanitarians of the Year Award. In 2015, noted journalist Wil Haygood published his award-winning book Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America, which he dedicated to Mr. James.

Mr. James is a life member of the Sixth Circuit Judicial Conference, and he has served as General Counsel of the National Fraternal Order of Police since 2001.

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Peter Kirsanow

Peter Kirsanow

Partner, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP

Biography

Peter focuses his legal practice on representing management in employment-related litigation and in contract negotiations, NLRB proceedings, EEO matters and arbitration.

Peter Kirsanow is a partner with Benesch’s Labor & Employment Practice Group. He returned to Benesch in January 2008 after serving as a presidential appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington D.C. for two years. While serving on the NLRB, he was involved with significant decisions including Oakwood Healthcare, Inc., Dana/Metaldyne and Oil Capital Sheet Metal, Inc. In addition, Peter testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. He also continues to testify before and advise members of the U.S. Congress on employment law matters, most recently on November 18 before the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight regarding disparate impact theory.

Peter was recently reappointed by the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives to his fourth consecutive six-year term on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. This is a part-time position which will expire in December 2025.

Recently, Peter and a team of Benesch attorneys served as lead counsel to the National Association of Manufacturers in litigation before the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia against the NLRB, challenging the Board’s Notice of Employer Rights Posting Rule. The court ruled in favor of Benesch’s client, striking down the NLRB’s Rule in its entirety. This ruling impacts over 6,000,000 employers nationwide which would have been subject to the posting requirement.

Additionally, Peter is past chair of the board of directors of the Center for New Black Leadership and is a member of Benesch’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee. This committee helps ensure that the firm promotes an environment in which differences are respected, employees are treated fairly, and individual skills and talents are valued.

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Paul B. Matey

Paul B. Matey

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit

Biography

Judge Paul Matey was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 2019 by President Trump.

Before his judicial service, Judge Matey was a partner at Lowenstein Sandler in New Jersey where he practiced complex commercial litigation and criminal defense. Earlier, Judge Matey was the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for University Hospital Newark, an academic medical center and teaching hospital.

He also served as the Deputy Chief Counsel to Governor Chris Christie, and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of New Jersey, where he was awarded the Justice Department’s Director’s Award for Superior Performance. He also practiced at the Washington D.C. firm of Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, and served as a law clerk to judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Scranton, a Jesuit University, in 1993, and his juris doctorate, summa cum laude, from Seton Hall University School of Law in 2001, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Seton Hall Law Review.

In 2019, Judge Matey was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and, since 2020, has lectured on administrative law and the American legal history at Seton Hall.

 

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Daniel Villao

Daniel Villao

CEO, Intelligent Partnerships

Biography

Daniel Villao is Chief Executive Officer at Intelligent Partnerships, Inc. and the Immediate Past Chair of the National Board of Directors for the Association of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA). He is also the former Deputy Administrator in the Office of Apprenticeship for the U.S. Department of Labor under both Republican and Democratic Administrations.

With decades of experience in policy development, Daniel has had proven success in innovative supplier-access design and training. As Deputy Administrator, Daniel was successful in helping major employers such as Microsoft, Lufthansa, Zurich, and AON adopt apprenticeship to create workforce development systems that benefit America's workers and employers.

Daniel specializes in implementing an innovative and accessible workforce design that transforms businesses and adds value to all aspects of organizations. Daniel has dedicated his career to analyzing the ever-changing landscape of the workplace and helping organizations navigate the world of work and creating jobs that make sense in emerging models.

Daniel Villao is the author of the acclaimed Beyond Green Jobs, which addresses a systems approach to diversity and inclusion in the construction sector in a future world defined by climate change.

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