Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Chief Political Correspondent, Washington Examiner and Fox News Contributor
Byron York is Chief Political Correspondent for the Washington Examiner, a Fox News contributor, author of "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy."
Presiding Judge, George Court of Appeals
Presiding Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard was appointed as the 73rd judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia on November 1, 2010 by Governor Sonny Perdue. Prior to his appointment, Judge Dillard was in private practice with James, Bates, Pope & Spivey in Macon, serving as chairman of the firm’s appellate practice group. Judge Dillard was elected and then reelected by his fellow Georgians in 2012, 2018, and 2024. On July 1, 2017, Judge Dillard was sworn in as the 30th Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia for a two-year term that ended on June 30, 2019. He currently serves as the presiding judge of the Court’s Fourth Division, and will begin serving as the presiding judge of the Court’s Third Division in 2026.
Judge Dillard was born in Nashville, Tennessee on November 13, 1969. He attended and graduated from Hillwood High School in Nashville, Tennessee; Samford University (B.A. 1992); Mississippi College School of Law (J.D., cum laude, 1996); and Duke University School of Law (LL.M., Judicial Studies, 2025). In college, Judge Dillard was a member of The Sigma Chi Fraternity and Omicron Delta Kappa. He was also given the Evelyn Meadows Historical Essay Award, as well as the William McMillian Rogers Colonial Dames Overall Essay Award, for “The Tempting of America to be America: Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Papers.” During law school, Judge Dillard was a member of the Moot Court Board and received the Judge Robert G. Gillespie Outstanding Achievement in Appellate Advocacy Award, as well as the American Jurisprudence Award in Appellate Advocacy. He also served as president of the Mississippi College Chapter of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
After graduating from law school, Judge Dillard joined the Macon law firm of Stone and Baxter, where he practiced from 1996 until 2001. In September 2001, he left private practice for a two-year period to serve as a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for Judge Daniel A. Manion (who was appointed by President Ronald W. Reagan in 1986 and served until 2022). In September 2003, Judge Dillard joined James Bates as of counsel, specialized in appellate practice and complex litigation, and served as chairperson of the firm’s appellate practice group. While in practice, he received an AV® Preeminent™ Peer-Review Rating from Martindale-Hubbell and was named by Super Lawyers as one of Georgia’s “rising stars.”
Additionally, Judge Dillard was appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue to the Judicial Nominating Commission and the Public Defender Selection Panel for the Macon Judicial Circuit. He has published scholarly essays in the Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties, the Encyclopedia of Great American Judges, the Encyclopedia of Great American Lawyers, Judicature, the Green Bag Almanac & Reader, the Journal of Appellate Practice & Process, as well as two articles in the Mercer Law Review regarding the inner workings and culture of the Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia. He was also a participating lawyer with the Criminal Justice Act Appellate Panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, handling pro bono publico appeals for indigent individuals. Judge Dillard is a member of the State Bar of Georgia’s Appellate Practice and Judicial Sections, the Macon Bar Association, the Atlanta Bar Association, the Lawyers Club of Atlanta, the Saint Thomas More Society, the Judge Clarence Cooper American Inn of Court, the Logan E. Bleckley American Inn of Court, the William Augustus Bootle American Inn of Court, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the Palaver Club of Macon, and the Samford Bulldog Club. He also has served as a mentor for The Appellate Project, which is “focused on empowering law students of color to pursue appellate work.”
Since joining the Court of Appeals, Judge Dillard has spoken to numerous organizations, participated in countless state and national seminars, held a wide variety of leadership positions, and received many awards. In 2025, one of Judge Dillard’s opinions—his concurrence in Board of Commissioners of Brantley County v. Brantley County Development Partners LLC et al.—was selected by The Green Bag Almanac and Reader as one of its works of “exemplary writing.” Judge Dillard was also named as the Milvain Chair in Advocacy by the University of Calgary Law Faculty that year, and he is the first American jurist and 43rd person to ever receive this honor. In 2024, Judge Dillard was appointed by Chief Justice Michael P. Boggs as co-chair of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Study Committee on Legal Regulatory Reform, joined The Legal Accountability Project’s Advisory Board, and also gave the “Last Senior Lecture” to the Samford University Class of 2024. In 2023, Judge Dillard began serving his second term on Samford University’s Board of Overseers, and started the L.L.M. program for Judicial Studies at the Duke University School of Law. In 2022, he began serving on the Communications Committee of the Council of Chief Judges of the State Courts of Appeal. In 2021, Judge Dillard was given the “Significant Sig” award by The Sigma Chi Fraternity (one of its highest honors), which “recognizes those alumni members whose exemplary achievements in their fields of endeavor have brought great honor and prestige to the name of Sigma Chi.” He also began serving that year on the Dean Search Committee for Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, and completed his work on that committee in April 2022. In 2020, Judge Dillard began serving his second two-year term as the president of the Samford University Alumni Association, a three-year term on Samford University’s Board of Overseers, as an advisor to the Pi Chapter of The Sigma Chi Fraternity at Samford University, and as a member of the Samford University Presidential Search Committee and the Samford University Task Force on Racial Justice. He was also given the Distinguished Judicial Service Award that year by the Young Lawyers Division of the State Bar of Georgia for the second time in his career. In 2019, Judge Dillard began teaching Appellate Practice and Procedure at Mercer University Law School and joined the National Advisory Board for The Constitutional Sources Project (“ConSource”), an organization dedicated to increasing access to and understanding of the United States Constitution and its history and creation. He was also named that year as the “Tweeter Laureate” of Georgia by the Georgia House of Representatives, as one of Atlanta’s 500 most powerful leaders by Atlanta Magazine, and as “Best Social Mediator” by the Fulton County Daily Report. In 2018, Judge Dillard began serving his first two-year term as president of the Samford University Alumni Association, as well as a member of the Samford University Athletic Director’s Cabinet. He also began his service that year as a member of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Justice for Children Committee. In 2017, Judge Dillard was named Samford University’s “Alumnus of the Year,” which is the highest honor the university bestows on its graduates. In 2016, Judge Dillard began serving a two-year term as president of Samford University’s Atlanta Alumni chapter. He was also appointed that year as the co-chairperson of the Georgia Judicial Council’s Strategic Plan Standing Committee, and as a member of the Council’s Standing Committee on Technology. Finally, he was also named Samford University’s 2016 “Featured Alumnus” for the Howard College of Arts and Sciences. In 2015, Judge Dillard was appointed by Governor Nathan Deal to the Georgia Appellate Jurisdiction Review Commission. He was also appointed that year to serve on the Georgia Judicial Council, and as the chairperson of the Court Reporting Matters Committee. In 2014, Judge Dillard was named the “State Judge of the Year” by his alma mater, the Mississippi College School of Law, for his outstanding judicial service; and he also received the “Fastcase 50” award, which honors leaders in the world of law, scholarship, and legal technology. In 2013, Judge Dillard was awarded the Distinguished Judicial Service Award by the Young Lawyers Division of the State Bar of Georgia, recognizing his outstanding service on the bench and commitment to improving the practice of law. In 2012, Judge Dillard was appointed to the Code of Judicial Conduct Review Committee by Chief Judge John J. Ellington, and he also began serving as the special consultant to the Georgia High School Mock Trial Committee.
Among his many accomplishments in leadership at the Court of Appeals, Judge Dillard restructured the Court’s Central Staff Attorney Office, advocated for and implemented livestreaming and archiving of the Court’s oral arguments, helped design and shepherd a complete overhaul of the Court’s operational structure, had the primary responsibility for overseeing the Court’s move to the Nathan Deal Judicial Center (during his time as chief judge), drafted numerous Court rules (including the rule abolishing “physical precedent”) and IOM revisions, and lead the implementation of the Court’s transition to its first typography change in twenty years (i.e., the “Equity” font). Finally, he created, designed, and continues to oversee the Judge Herbert E. Phipps Fellowship program in partnership with Morehouse College.
Judge Dillard is married to the former Krista McDaniel, and they have three children. He is a parishioner of Saint Joseph Catholic Church and the former president of the School Board for Saint Joseph’s Catholic School.
Chairman, Department of Economics, George Mason University
Dean & Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Law School
Thomas J. Miles is the Dean and Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. As its 14th Dean, Miles has deepened the Law School’s distinctive commitment to path-breaking scholarship and transformative education since 2015. Under his leadership, the Law School recruited more than a dozen academic and clinical faculty members and inaugurated the category of professor from practice. The scholarly ideas of the faculty have been supported and shared more widely through the launch of three new centers: the Center on Law and Finance, the Constitutional Law Institute, and the Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity. The clinical program expanded with the addition of three new clinics: the Innovation Clinic, the Jenner & Block Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic, and the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. During Miles’s deanship, the Law School recruited highly talented and diverse cohorts of students. He steered the Law School through the COVID-19 pandemic. The Law School undertook the first significant revision to the 1L curriculum since 1977 and introduced the accelerated JD/MBA program. The Law School’s vibrant student life was enhanced with new programs in the areas of freedom of expression and diversity and inclusion, including the introduction of a pre-orientation program. The placement of graduates into clerkships nearly doubled. These activities have been supported by generous philanthropy, including a completion of the Inquiry & Impact Campaign with a record amount for the Law School and the highest participation rate within the University. Six new named professorships, including the first named clinical professorship, have been deployed, and financial aid for students reached a new high. As a scholar, Miles makes creative use of the methods of law and economics to investigate legal questions not conventionally thought to fall within that field. For example, he has written on judicial behavior and immigration enforcement. Miles has taught a wide variety of courses at the Law School, including securities regulation, torts, first-year criminal law, economic analysis of law, and federal criminal law. In 2009, he received the Graduating Students Award for Outstanding Teaching. Miles received a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a BA from Tufts University. He clerked for the Hon. Jay S. Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and from 2005 to 2013, he was a Co-Editor of the Journal of Legal Studies.
Deputy Editorial Page Editor, Foreign Affairs Columnist, The Wall Street Journal
Bret Stephens writes “Global View,” the weekly foreign-affairs column of The Wall Street Journal, for which he won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. He is the paper’s deputy editorial-page editor, responsible for the opinion content of its overseas editions, as well as a member of the editorial board. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, a position he assumed in 2002 at the age of 28. He was raised in Mexico City, educated at the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics, and lives with his family in New York.
President, Society for the Rule of Law
George T. Conway III has been a partner in the Litigation Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz since January 1994. He joined the firm in September 1988. His litigation experience has included a variety of high-profile matters spanning many areas of law in federal and state courts throughout the country. He has extensive experience in securities litigation, mergers and acquisitions litigation, contract litigation, antitrust litigation, and other litigation, both at the trial and appellate levels.
In the area of securities litigation, he recently briefed and argued the case for respondents in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 does not apply extraterritorially to claims of so-called "foreign-cubed" plaintiffs -- foreign investors who purchased securities of foreign issuers on foreign exchanges. He also recently argued and won a precedent-setting motion to dismiss so-called "foreign-squared" claims against European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. brought by American plaintiffs who purchased that foreign company's shares on foreign exchanges.
Mr. Conway also recently argued and won an important appeal under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 on behalf of the Swiss installation artist Christoph Büchel in the artist’s highly publicized dispute with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. He also successfully represented the Chief Judge of the State of New York and the New York Unified Court System in historic constitutional litigation over the State of New York’s extended failure to adjust judicial salaries. Mr. Conway also played a substantial role in the successful defense of Kenneth Langone’s Invemed Associates in a disciplinary proceeding before the NASD (now FINRA) that resulted in what the New York Times called a "withering," "high-profile defeat" for the regulators.
Mr. Conway’s work in mergers and acquisitions litigation includes the representation of Rohm and Haas Co. and ADVO, Inc., in, respectively, Rohm and Haas v. Dow Chemical Co., and Valassis Communications v. ADVO, two Delaware Chancery Court cases involving claims to enforce merger agreements, as well as two historic cases in the development of Delaware corporate law governing mergers and acquisitions, QVC v. Paramount Communications and Paramount Communications v. Time Inc. and Warner Communications, in addition to many other cases involving contests for corporate control in the Delaware courts and elsewhere over the past two decades.
In addition, Mr. Conway played a substantial role in prosecuting one of the most prominent defamation cases in recent memory (Philip Morris v. American Broadcasting Cos.). He has extensive experience in merger-related private antitrust litigation and government antitrust investigations, including the defense of Cardinal Health in the preliminary injunction proceedings before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in FTC v. Cardinal Health. He also represented the National Football League in trademark and antitrust litigation against the Dallas Cowboys in NFL Properties v. Dallas Cowboys Football Club. His pro bono work includes his successful representation in the Second Circuit of crime victims and public-interest groups as amici curiae in opposing claims that federal law requires the State of New York to allow felons to vote while still incarcerated.
Mr. Conway is a graduate of Harvard College, where in 1984 he received an A.B. magna cum laude in biochemical sciences. He received his J.D. in 1987 from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. In 1987 and 1988, he served as a law clerk to Circuit Judge Ralph K. Winter, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
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