Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University
In memoriam
Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the
following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.
In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.
Chairman and Founding General Counsel, Institute for Justice
William H. (Chip) Mellor serves as chairman and founding general counsel of the Institute for Justice, which he co-founded in 1991. He was IJ’s president and general counsel from 1991 to 2015. He has litigated cutting-edge constitutional cases nationwide protecting economic liberty, property rights, school choice and the First Amendment, notably achieving the first federal appellate court victory for economic liberty under the 14th Amendment since the New Deal by overturning Tennessee’s prohibition on retail casket sales.
Under Mellor’s leadership IJ pioneered a new approach to strategic public interest litigation that combines courtroom advocacy with award-winning media relations, activism and strategic research to secure constitutional protection for individual rights. He grew IJ from a five-person startup into the National Law Firm for Liberty with a staff of nearly 100, including over 40 attorneys, and an annual budget of $20 million. IJ is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, and has offices in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Texas and Washington state.
While Mellor was president, IJ litigated five U.S. Supreme Court cases, winning all but one: In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, IJ successfully defended Cleveland’s school choice program from a lawsuit brought by the teachers’ unions and other school choice opponents, establishing the constitutionality of school vouchers. In Granholm v. Heald, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s ban on interstate wine sales, allowing small wineries and consumers represented by IJ to successfully challenge a government-imposed wholesale wine and liquor monopoly. In Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court ruled against IJ in a controversial 5–4 decision that held private property can be taken for private development. IJ mobilized unprecedented public outrage over the decision to secure legislative reforms or state supreme court decisions in 46 states that strengthened protection for property rights. In Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, the Supreme Court dismissed an Establishment Clause challenge to Arizona’s scholarship tax credit program because the Court recognized that individuals who donate to private, nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations spend their own money—not state funds. In Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of Arizona’s system of government-funded campaigns, which showered money on campaigns that took government funding when privately financed and independent speakers opposing them spoke more than the government wanted.
Mellor co-authored with the Cato Institute’s Robert Levy The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, which examines 12 Supreme Court cases that effectively amended the Constitution and profoundly reshaped the role of government in America. In The Dirty Dozen, Mellor and Levy argue for judicial engagement and for a Supreme Court that will protect individual rights and restore limits on government power.
Mellor launched the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago in 1998 and IJ’s Center for Judicial Engagement in 2011.
Mellor’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, New York Post, National Law Journal, Reason, National Review, Investor’s Business Daily, and all the major television and radio networks. In a 2012 broadcast of his Fox Business show Stossel, John Stossel named Mellor a “Champion of Freedom.”
Prior to founding IJ, Mellor served as president of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, a nationally recognized think tank located in San Francisco. Under his leadership, the Institute commissioned and published path-breaking books on economic liberty, property rights, and technology and the First Amendment that formed the long-term, strategic litigation blueprint for the Institute for Justice.
Mellor also served in the Reagan Administration as deputy general counsel for legislation and regulations in the Department of Energy, and from 1979 to 1983 he practiced public interest law with Mountain States Legal Foundation in Denver. Mellor received his J.D. from the University of Denver School of Law in 1977. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1973.
Read Mellor’s speech launching the Institute for Justice: “The Quest for Justice: Natural Rights and the Future of Public Interest Law.”
Mellor was awarded the Bradley Prize in 2012, was recognized by the American Bar Association as a Legal Rebel – an individual who remakes their corner of the legal profession – and was profiled in the Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview on January 7, 2012, as well as in Reason magazine in March 2008.
Professor at Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville
Professor Russell L. Weaver graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri School of Law in 1978. He was a member of the Missouri Law Review, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and won the Judge Roy Harper Prize. After law school, Professor Weaver was associated with Watson, Ess, Marshall & Enggas in Kansas City, Missouri, and worked for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of General Counsel in Washington, D.C.
Professor Weaver began teaching at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law in 1982, and holds the rank of Professor of Law and Distinguished University Scholar. He teaches Constitutional Law, Advanced Constitutional Law, Remedies, Administrative Law, Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure. He has received the Brandeis School of Law's awards for teaching, scholarship, and service, including the Brown Todd & Heyburn Fellowship. He has been awarded the President's Award (University of Louisville) for Outstanding Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in the Field of Social Science, the President's Award for Outstanding Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in the Career Achievement Category, and the President's Award for Distinguished Service. He is the Executive Director and past president of the Southeastern Conference of the Association of American Law Schools. He is an Honorary Associate of Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia).
Professor Weaver is a prolific author who has written dozens of books and articles over the last twenty-five years. He was named the Judge Spurgeon Bell Distinguished Visiting Professor at South Texas College of Law (affiliated with Texas A & M University) during the 1998-99 academic year, and he held the Herbert Herff Chair of Excellence at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis, during 1992-93. In addition, he has been asked to speak at law schools and conferences around the world, and has been a visiting professor at law schools in France, England, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada.
Professor Weaver is particularly noted for his work in the constitutional law area. He has served as a consultant to the constitutional drafting commissions of Belarus and Kyrghyzstan and as a commentator on the Russian Constitution. His constitutional law writings have focused on free speech issues, particularly those relating to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, and include a constitutional law case-book and two anthologies (The First Amendment Anthology and The Constitutional Law Anthology). He has a First Amendment casebook in progress.
Professor Weaver is also noted for his writings on legal education and his work in the administrative law area. In 1992 and 1993, he served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States. His writings have focused on agency interpretations of statutes and regulations, and he is co-author of one of the leading administrative law casebooks.
Professor Weaver has served on many community and professional committees. He served on the Louisville Bar Association's (LBA) Professional Responsibility Committee, and as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools' (AALS) Criminal Justice Section and serves on the AALS Planning Committee for the New Law Teacher's Workshop. He has also served on the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky's Legal Panel and Board of Directors.
President and CEO, The Federalist Society
Sheldon Gilbert is the President and CEO of The Federalist Society. Gilbert has been involved in the conservative and libertarian legal movement since law school, and has served in prominent roles at both nonprofit organizations as well as corporate America.
A longtime constitutional litigator, Gilbert has represented clients through amicus and party briefs in nearly a hundred cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, at both the certiorari and merits stages. Most recently, Gilbert served as Senior Lead Counsel for Strategic Initiatives at Walmart, the world’s largest company, where he led teams providing legal advice related to government enforcement, internal investigations, government relations, public relations, and special projects at the center of law and policy.
Before joining Walmart, Gilbert served as Vice President for Content and Development and Senior Fellow for Constitutional Studies at the National Constitution Center, a congressionally chartered non-partisan center for constitutional education and debate, where he led both fundraising and programming efforts. While at the NCC, Gilbert helped ensure that the Center’s programming and exhibits incorporated constitutional perspectives from experts on both the right and the left, including the launch of the Center’s landmark permanent exhibit on the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments.
Prior to the National Constitution Center, Gilbert served as the director of the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement (CJE), where he educated the public about the role of the courts and the Constitution, where he frequently hosted discussions and debates on constitutional issues, and often spoke at Federalist Society lawyer and student chapters across the country.
He was also a litigator with the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he represented the U.S. Chamber in over 400 cases in federal and state courts addressing a wide range of legal issues, from free speech to property rights.
Gilbert is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School where he helped found a first-of-its-kind National Religious Freedom Moot Court, which hosted law students from across the country to debate important, emerging religious liberty issues. After graduating from GWU, he also taught as a professorial lecturer at the school.
A graduate of the University of Utah, Gilbert is a child of the Mountain West, where he was born in a coal mining town in Utah and raised in Idaho near the Grand Tetons. Before going to law school, Gilbert’s diverse interests led him to work in a wide range of roles, from software development project management for a nonprofit, to working in his University’s radiobiology research lab, to volunteer service in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for his church.
Gilbert is married with four children.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
Morris Sheppard Arnold is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. Prior to his appointment, he served on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas after a nomination by Ronald Reagan in 1985. He assumed senior status on October 9, 2006.
Morris also served as a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review from 2008 to 2013. He was the presiding judge on that court from 2012 to 2013.
Senior Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School
Nancy Gertner is a former U.S. federal judge who built her career around standing up for women’s rights, civil liberties and justice for all. Gertner was appointed to the federal bench of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts by President Bill Clinton in 1994. She retired from the bench in 2011 to teach at Harvard Law School.
Named one of “The Most Influential Lawyers of the Past 25 Years” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Gertner has written and spoken throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. She has published widely on sentencing, discrimination, and forensic evidence; women’s rights; and the jury system. Her autobiography, “In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate,” was published in 2011.
She is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, and holds a M.A in Political Science and J.D. from Yale University. She has received numerous awards, including the Margaret Brent Award from the ABA commission on the status of Women, Massachusetts Bar Association’s Hennessey Award for judicial excellence in 2011; the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award from Colby College in 2010; the National Association of Women Lawyers’ highest honor, the Arabella Babb Mansfield Award, in 2011,The Women's Bar Association's highest award, The Lelia Robinson Award, in 2012, and, in 2008, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, which recognized her contributions to advancing human rights and civil liberties. The Marshall award has been given to one other woman, Justice Ruth Ginsburg.
In November 2014, she gave the Pope and John lecture at Northwestern University. In October 2014, she was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy; In September she gave the keynote address at the 18th Anniversary Celebration of the Jewish Women’s archive (September 14, 2014).
Gertner is presently working on her second book, Incomplete Sentences, concerning the men who she sentenced over her 17 year career as a federal judge. In addition to writing about them, highlighting the unfairness and disproportionality of their sentences, she is assisting in clemency petitions where appropriate.
Drawing on her wide ranging experience in practice and as a judge, Gertner also consults and litigates in civil right cases (she is of counsel to Neufeld, Scheck & Brustin, a civil rights firm in New York City), white collar criminal case (she is of counsel to Fick and Marx, a white collar criminal defense firm in Boston), as well as in employment discrimination and false claims cases.
Drawing on her judicial experience, Gertner engages in mediation and arbitration with Resolutions, LLC. (with Eric Green) and the Southeast Regional Mediation, Arbitration and Compliance Association (with Bill Nettles and Paul Zwier).
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Reena Raggi is a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of her appointment in 2002, she was a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
Judge Raggi earned her B.A. degree in 1973 from Wellesley College and her J.D. degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1976.
She was law clerk to Judge Thomas E. Fairchild of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1976 to 1977. From 1977 to 1979 she was in private law practice as an associate with the New York law firm of Cahill, Gordon & Reindel. She served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1979 to 1986, including assignments as Chief of the Narcotics Division (1982 to 1984), and Chief of the Special Prosecutions Division (1984 to 1986). Also in 1986, she served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York under an interim court appointment. Later that year, she resumed the private practice of law as a partner in the New York firm of Windels, Marx, Davies & Ives. She remained there until her appointment in 1987 as a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
Professor and Director, Prolife Center, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Teresa Collett, J.D., is professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, where she serves as director of the school's Prolife Center. Collett received her doctorate at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. As a well-known advocate for the protection of human life and the family, Collett specializes in the subjects of marriage, religion and bioethics in her research.
Collett has published numerous legal articles and is the co-author of a law casebook on professional responsibility and co-editor of a collection of essays exploring “catholic” and “Catholic” perspectives on American law. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and has testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as before legislative committees in several states.
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collett to a five-year term on the Pontifical Council for the Family. Her appointment was renewed by His Holiness Pope Francis until 2016 when the responsibilities of the Council were assumed by the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. In 2013, she served as a delegate to the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) for the Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.
She represented Congressman Ron Paul and various medical groups in the defense of the U.S. federal ban of partial-birth abortion, and the governors of Minnesota and North Dakota defending the N.H. requirement of state parental involvement prior to performance of an abortion on a minor before the U.S. Supreme Court. Collett is often asked to represent the interests of government officials before federal appellate courts. She has served as special attorney general for the states of Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as assisting other state attorneys general in defending laws protecting human life and marriage. Prior to joining St. Thomas in 2003, Collett taught at the South Texas College of Law, where she established the nation's first annual symposium on legal ethics.
The Criminalization of Almost Everything: Why Both Liberals & Conservatives Should Be Alarmed
Bond and Separation of Powers
The Once and Future King: The Rise and Fall of Crown Government
Chicago, IllinoisWhy Litigate Constitutional Law? Why Me? Why Now?
NSA Surveillance
Greenhouse Gas and the Supreme Court
Legal Ethics from the Bench
St. Louis, MissouriFISA and the Secret Courts
Federal Sentencing Guidelines
Debate: The 20 Week Abortion Ban