Deputy Counsel, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty
Dan Lennington serves as Deputy Counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), where he directs the Equality Under the Law Project. Started in early 2021, the EUL Project has represented dozens of individuals and businesses nationwide, successfully advocating for race neutrality in both public and private programs.
Before joining WILL, Dan served as Assistant Deputy Attorney General in Wisconsin and Assistant U.S. Attorney in Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Hillsdale College.
Dan can be reached at [email protected]. More information about the EUL Project can be found at www.defendequality.org.
General Counsel, Mountain States Legal Foundation
William E. Trachman is General Counsel for Mountain States Legal Foundation, where he protects the rights of individuals to live freely and securely under the U.S. Constitution. Previously, he was appointed to serve in the Department of Education as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office for Civil Rights. Prior to his appointment, he served as General Counsel to the Douglas County School District, where he helped litigate the fight for school choice in the school district. Presently, Mr. Trachman serves as Chair of the Colorado Federalist Society and the Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ Colorado Advisory Board. He previously taught as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. He attended U.C. Berkeley for both undergraduate and law school, and then clerked for the Honorable Harris Hartz on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Trachman is licensed in Colorado, California, and Washington, D.C.
Senior Fellow and Academic Director, Penn Carey Law School
Gus Hurwitz is a Senior Fellow and the Academic Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where he is working to develop academic and scholarly programs at the intersecution of law, technology, and policy.
He is also Director of Law & Economics Programs at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), a think tank based in Portland, Oregon, where he directs its law and economics-focused research program and helps to translate academic research into applied policy issues.
Hurwitz's research focuses on the regulation of technology, including administrative and regulatory law, antitrust law, torts and products liability, and media law - alongside cognate fields. Inrecent years he has worked on an AI standardization initiative with Seoul National University, a UNICEF-organized study of broadband deployment to public schools in Rwanda, and a book on conglomerate and ecosystems theories of antitrust.
He has published over 30 articles and book chapters, two books (one on cybersecurity law & policy, one on media regulation in the digital era) and have two more in process, over 100 shorter writings (op-eds, shorter analyses, blog posts, &c), hosted over 100 podcast episodes, and regularly appear or am quoted in popular media (including the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Associated Press). His work has been cited by legislators, federal courts of appeals, and federal regulatory agencies.
He was previously a full professor and founding director of the Governance & Technology Center at the University of Nebraska, prior to which he was the inaugural research fellow at the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition (CTIC). From 2007 to 2010, he was a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division in the Telecommunications and Media Enforcement Section.
He also is, or has been, affiliated with the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law, the National Security Institute at George Mason University, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Before attending law school, Hurwitz worked at Los Alamos National Lab and interned at the Naval Research Lab. During this time his work was recognized by the Federal Laboratory Consortium, Los Alamos National Lab, IEEE & ACM, Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, R&D Magazine, and even the Guinness Book of World Records.
A current list of Hurwitz’s publications is available on his website: GusHurwitz.net.
John Homer Kapp Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Raymond Ku is the John Homer Kapp Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He has also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Co-Director of Case’s Center for Law, Technology and the Art. He received his J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law where he was a Leonard Boudin First Amendment Fellow in the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, and his A.B. with Honors from Brown University where he was the recipient of the Philo Sherman Bennet Prize for the best political science thesis discussing the principles of free government. Professor Ku clerked for the Honorable Timothy K. Lewis, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then practiced constitutional, intellectual property, and antitrust law with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, and First Amendment/media and intellectual property law with Levine Pierson Sullivan & Koch, L.L.P., both in Washington, D.C. He has taught at Cornell Law School, Seton Hall University School of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and St. Thomas University School of Law.
An internationally recognized scholar, Professor Ku writes on legal issues impacting individual liberty, creativity, and technology. His areas of expertise include Constitutional Law, Cyberlaw, Privacy and Copyright. His articles appear in the law reviews and journals of Berkeley, Chicago, Georgetown, Minnesota, Vanderbilt, and Wisconsin among others, and he is the lead author of the first casebook devoted exclusively to the study of cyberspace law. Professor Ku was the 2009 recipient of the Case Western Reserve University Law Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teacher Award, and voted Professor of the Year by the graduating class of 2009.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Director of Housing Policy and the American Identity Project, Progressive Policy Institute
Richard D. Kahlenberg is the Director of Housing Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Director of the American Identity Project, where he is working on to strengthen American identity through public education. The author or editor of seventeen books, he has expertise in education, civil rights, and equal opportunity. Kahlenberg has been called “the intellectual father of the economic integration movement” in K–12 schooling and “arguably the nation’s chief proponent of class-based affirmative action in higher education admissions.” He is also an authority on teachers’ unions, charter schools, community colleges, housing segregation, and labor organizing.
Kahlenberg’s articles have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and NPR.
Previously, Kahlenberg was a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. a fellow at the Center for National Policy, a visiting associate professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, and a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA). He also serves on the advisory board of the Pell Institute, and the Albert Shanker Institute, and as a professorial lecturer at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. In addition, he is the winner of the William A. Kaplin Award for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy Scholarship. Reflecting on Kahlenberg’s work on higher education, William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson wrote that he “deserves more credit than anyone else for arguing vigorously and relentlessly for stronger efforts to address disparities by socioeconomic status.” He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and was a rotary scholar at the University of Nairobi School of Journalism.
Executive Director & Secretary, American Civil Rights Project
Dan Morenoff is the executive director at the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
His work focuses on protecting and, where necessary, restoring the primacy of all Americans' shared civil rights against the identitarian alternative.
Before practicing law, Morenoff served on the legislative staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). Morenoff holds a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He has also served as an officer or director of several community organizations in Dallas, Texas.
Julius Kreeger Professor of Law & Criminology, University of Chicago Law School
Sonja Starr joined the University of Chicago law faculty after eleven years teaching at the University of Michigan, where she was the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law. She previously taught at the University of Maryland and Harvard Law School after graduating from Yale Law. She also clerked for Judges Merrick Garland of the DC Circuit and Mohamed Shahabuddeen of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia.
Professor Starr's research focuses on the criminal justice system and on discrimination and disparity (in the criminal process and in other contexts, including employment, education, and health care). Her research blends quantitative empirical work with more traditional legal scholarship. Topics include the use of predictive algorithms in sentencing and bail, legal and empirical analyses of statistical discrimination, racialized medical algorithms, educational diversity and race-conscious policymaking, racial and other disparities in prosecution and sentencing, policies designed to expand employment opportunities for people with criminal records, and how neighborhoods affect employment discrimination patterns. Professor Starr’s work has appeared in, for example, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Yale Law Journal, and the Stanford and Harvard Law Reviews. She has been the Law and Economics Section Chair of the American Association of Law Schools, a past co-president of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, and a board member of the American Law and Economics Association. She teaches Criminal Law, the Constitutional Law Workshop, Race and Criminal Justice Policy, and Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Erin Wilcox joined PLF in 2018 and works primarily from Austin, Texas. She litigates cases around the country to secure the inalienable rights of all Americans to live responsibly and productively in their pursuit of happiness.
After graduating from law school, Erin defended the individual rights of employees as a litigator for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, was an attorney-advisor for the D.C. Public Employee Relations Board, and most recently fought for liberty in the Lone Star State as an attorney with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. During law school, Erin clerked at the Institute for Justice and was a Charles Koch Summer Fellow.
A native Texan, Erin ventured east after high school to earn a B.A. in history and political science from Wake Forest University and a J.D. from the Wake Forest University School of Law. In addition to liberty, Erin’s loves include college football, Texas barbecue, and a well-made Old Fashioned.
Founder and Managing Partner, Burke Law Group PLLC
Marcella Burke of Houston, Texas is founder and managing partner of Burke Law Group PLLC, an elite, full-service commercial law firm specializing in complex litigation. Burke began her legal career as an energy attorney in AmLaw 20 law firms, where she earned equity partnership. She was appointed in the Trump Administration to serve in the Senior Executive Service at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, where she managed the litigation docket and regulatory portfolio of chemicals, and all energy and natural resource permitting and project development on federal lands, including the federal oil and gas, renewables, carbon capture, wind, and hydropower. She served as Counsel to the Royalty Policy Committee and received appointments to the DOI’s Regulatory Reform Task Force and as National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) team lead for all energy project approvals.
Burke serves in leadership roles with the State Bar of Texas Environmental Division, the Foundation for Natural Resources and Energy Law, and the Institute for Energy Law. She has published numerous articles and papers on energy and natural resources issues, as well as been quoted on same in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bloomberg Law, and others.
She participated in judicial clerkships and externships including clerking on the Texas Supreme Court for Hon. Don Willett, and externing on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas, and two Texas appellate courts. Burke received a Bachelor of Arts from Texas A&M University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Houston Law Center, as well as fellowships in Constitutional Law with Claremont Institute and James Wilson Institute.
In 2023, Governor Abbott appointed Burke as one of four members of the School Land Board, which manages the sale and leasing of 13 million acres of state lands. Marcella also serves on the Board of Trustees for the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. She was a delegate at the 2023 ARC Forum in London.
Additionally, she is the Founder of the Burke Law Mom Endowment at the University of Houston Law Center, and the Burke Law Chickasaw National Family Flourishing Endowment, both of which support law students with children. She has served as a board member for the Federalist Society Houston Lawyers Chapter for over 10 years.
Senior Fellow and Academic Director, Penn Carey Law School
Gus Hurwitz is a Senior Fellow and the Academic Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where he is working to develop academic and scholarly programs at the intersecution of law, technology, and policy.
He is also Director of Law & Economics Programs at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), a think tank based in Portland, Oregon, where he directs its law and economics-focused research program and helps to translate academic research into applied policy issues.
Hurwitz's research focuses on the regulation of technology, including administrative and regulatory law, antitrust law, torts and products liability, and media law - alongside cognate fields. Inrecent years he has worked on an AI standardization initiative with Seoul National University, a UNICEF-organized study of broadband deployment to public schools in Rwanda, and a book on conglomerate and ecosystems theories of antitrust.
He has published over 30 articles and book chapters, two books (one on cybersecurity law & policy, one on media regulation in the digital era) and have two more in process, over 100 shorter writings (op-eds, shorter analyses, blog posts, &c), hosted over 100 podcast episodes, and regularly appear or am quoted in popular media (including the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Associated Press). His work has been cited by legislators, federal courts of appeals, and federal regulatory agencies.
He was previously a full professor and founding director of the Governance & Technology Center at the University of Nebraska, prior to which he was the inaugural research fellow at the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition (CTIC). From 2007 to 2010, he was a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division in the Telecommunications and Media Enforcement Section.
He also is, or has been, affiliated with the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law, the National Security Institute at George Mason University, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Before attending law school, Hurwitz worked at Los Alamos National Lab and interned at the Naval Research Lab. During this time his work was recognized by the Federal Laboratory Consortium, Los Alamos National Lab, IEEE & ACM, Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, R&D Magazine, and even the Guinness Book of World Records.
A current list of Hurwitz’s publications is available on his website: GusHurwitz.net.
John Homer Kapp Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Raymond Ku is the John Homer Kapp Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He has also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Co-Director of Case’s Center for Law, Technology and the Art. He received his J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law where he was a Leonard Boudin First Amendment Fellow in the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, and his A.B. with Honors from Brown University where he was the recipient of the Philo Sherman Bennet Prize for the best political science thesis discussing the principles of free government. Professor Ku clerked for the Honorable Timothy K. Lewis, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then practiced constitutional, intellectual property, and antitrust law with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, and First Amendment/media and intellectual property law with Levine Pierson Sullivan & Koch, L.L.P., both in Washington, D.C. He has taught at Cornell Law School, Seton Hall University School of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and St. Thomas University School of Law.
An internationally recognized scholar, Professor Ku writes on legal issues impacting individual liberty, creativity, and technology. His areas of expertise include Constitutional Law, Cyberlaw, Privacy and Copyright. His articles appear in the law reviews and journals of Berkeley, Chicago, Georgetown, Minnesota, Vanderbilt, and Wisconsin among others, and he is the lead author of the first casebook devoted exclusively to the study of cyberspace law. Professor Ku was the 2009 recipient of the Case Western Reserve University Law Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teacher Award, and voted Professor of the Year by the graduating class of 2009.
Senior Fellow and Academic Director, Penn Carey Law School
Gus Hurwitz is a Senior Fellow and the Academic Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where he is working to develop academic and scholarly programs at the intersecution of law, technology, and policy.
He is also Director of Law & Economics Programs at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), a think tank based in Portland, Oregon, where he directs its law and economics-focused research program and helps to translate academic research into applied policy issues.
Hurwitz's research focuses on the regulation of technology, including administrative and regulatory law, antitrust law, torts and products liability, and media law - alongside cognate fields. Inrecent years he has worked on an AI standardization initiative with Seoul National University, a UNICEF-organized study of broadband deployment to public schools in Rwanda, and a book on conglomerate and ecosystems theories of antitrust.
He has published over 30 articles and book chapters, two books (one on cybersecurity law & policy, one on media regulation in the digital era) and have two more in process, over 100 shorter writings (op-eds, shorter analyses, blog posts, &c), hosted over 100 podcast episodes, and regularly appear or am quoted in popular media (including the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Associated Press). His work has been cited by legislators, federal courts of appeals, and federal regulatory agencies.
He was previously a full professor and founding director of the Governance & Technology Center at the University of Nebraska, prior to which he was the inaugural research fellow at the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition (CTIC). From 2007 to 2010, he was a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division in the Telecommunications and Media Enforcement Section.
He also is, or has been, affiliated with the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law, the National Security Institute at George Mason University, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Before attending law school, Hurwitz worked at Los Alamos National Lab and interned at the Naval Research Lab. During this time his work was recognized by the Federal Laboratory Consortium, Los Alamos National Lab, IEEE & ACM, Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, R&D Magazine, and even the Guinness Book of World Records.
A current list of Hurwitz’s publications is available on his website: GusHurwitz.net.
John Homer Kapp Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Raymond Ku is the John Homer Kapp Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He has also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Co-Director of Case’s Center for Law, Technology and the Art. He received his J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law where he was a Leonard Boudin First Amendment Fellow in the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, and his A.B. with Honors from Brown University where he was the recipient of the Philo Sherman Bennet Prize for the best political science thesis discussing the principles of free government. Professor Ku clerked for the Honorable Timothy K. Lewis, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then practiced constitutional, intellectual property, and antitrust law with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, and First Amendment/media and intellectual property law with Levine Pierson Sullivan & Koch, L.L.P., both in Washington, D.C. He has taught at Cornell Law School, Seton Hall University School of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and St. Thomas University School of Law.
An internationally recognized scholar, Professor Ku writes on legal issues impacting individual liberty, creativity, and technology. His areas of expertise include Constitutional Law, Cyberlaw, Privacy and Copyright. His articles appear in the law reviews and journals of Berkeley, Chicago, Georgetown, Minnesota, Vanderbilt, and Wisconsin among others, and he is the lead author of the first casebook devoted exclusively to the study of cyberspace law. Professor Ku was the 2009 recipient of the Case Western Reserve University Law Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teacher Award, and voted Professor of the Year by the graduating class of 2009.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Director of Housing Policy and the American Identity Project, Progressive Policy Institute
Richard D. Kahlenberg is the Director of Housing Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Director of the American Identity Project, where he is working on to strengthen American identity through public education. The author or editor of seventeen books, he has expertise in education, civil rights, and equal opportunity. Kahlenberg has been called “the intellectual father of the economic integration movement” in K–12 schooling and “arguably the nation’s chief proponent of class-based affirmative action in higher education admissions.” He is also an authority on teachers’ unions, charter schools, community colleges, housing segregation, and labor organizing.
Kahlenberg’s articles have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and NPR.
Previously, Kahlenberg was a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. a fellow at the Center for National Policy, a visiting associate professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, and a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA). He also serves on the advisory board of the Pell Institute, and the Albert Shanker Institute, and as a professorial lecturer at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. In addition, he is the winner of the William A. Kaplin Award for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy Scholarship. Reflecting on Kahlenberg’s work on higher education, William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson wrote that he “deserves more credit than anyone else for arguing vigorously and relentlessly for stronger efforts to address disparities by socioeconomic status.” He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and was a rotary scholar at the University of Nairobi School of Journalism.
Executive Director & Secretary, American Civil Rights Project
Dan Morenoff is the executive director at the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
His work focuses on protecting and, where necessary, restoring the primacy of all Americans' shared civil rights against the identitarian alternative.
Before practicing law, Morenoff served on the legislative staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). Morenoff holds a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He has also served as an officer or director of several community organizations in Dallas, Texas.
Julius Kreeger Professor of Law & Criminology, University of Chicago Law School
Sonja Starr joined the University of Chicago law faculty after eleven years teaching at the University of Michigan, where she was the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law. She previously taught at the University of Maryland and Harvard Law School after graduating from Yale Law. She also clerked for Judges Merrick Garland of the DC Circuit and Mohamed Shahabuddeen of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia.
Professor Starr's research focuses on the criminal justice system and on discrimination and disparity (in the criminal process and in other contexts, including employment, education, and health care). Her research blends quantitative empirical work with more traditional legal scholarship. Topics include the use of predictive algorithms in sentencing and bail, legal and empirical analyses of statistical discrimination, racialized medical algorithms, educational diversity and race-conscious policymaking, racial and other disparities in prosecution and sentencing, policies designed to expand employment opportunities for people with criminal records, and how neighborhoods affect employment discrimination patterns. Professor Starr’s work has appeared in, for example, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Yale Law Journal, and the Stanford and Harvard Law Reviews. She has been the Law and Economics Section Chair of the American Association of Law Schools, a past co-president of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, and a board member of the American Law and Economics Association. She teaches Criminal Law, the Constitutional Law Workshop, Race and Criminal Justice Policy, and Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Erin Wilcox joined PLF in 2018 and works primarily from Austin, Texas. She litigates cases around the country to secure the inalienable rights of all Americans to live responsibly and productively in their pursuit of happiness.
After graduating from law school, Erin defended the individual rights of employees as a litigator for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, was an attorney-advisor for the D.C. Public Employee Relations Board, and most recently fought for liberty in the Lone Star State as an attorney with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. During law school, Erin clerked at the Institute for Justice and was a Charles Koch Summer Fellow.
A native Texan, Erin ventured east after high school to earn a B.A. in history and political science from Wake Forest University and a J.D. from the Wake Forest University School of Law. In addition to liberty, Erin’s loves include college football, Texas barbecue, and a well-made Old Fashioned.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Director of Housing Policy and the American Identity Project, Progressive Policy Institute
Richard D. Kahlenberg is the Director of Housing Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Director of the American Identity Project, where he is working on to strengthen American identity through public education. The author or editor of seventeen books, he has expertise in education, civil rights, and equal opportunity. Kahlenberg has been called “the intellectual father of the economic integration movement” in K–12 schooling and “arguably the nation’s chief proponent of class-based affirmative action in higher education admissions.” He is also an authority on teachers’ unions, charter schools, community colleges, housing segregation, and labor organizing.
Kahlenberg’s articles have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and NPR.
Previously, Kahlenberg was a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. a fellow at the Center for National Policy, a visiting associate professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, and a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA). He also serves on the advisory board of the Pell Institute, and the Albert Shanker Institute, and as a professorial lecturer at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. In addition, he is the winner of the William A. Kaplin Award for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy Scholarship. Reflecting on Kahlenberg’s work on higher education, William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson wrote that he “deserves more credit than anyone else for arguing vigorously and relentlessly for stronger efforts to address disparities by socioeconomic status.” He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and was a rotary scholar at the University of Nairobi School of Journalism.
Executive Director & Secretary, American Civil Rights Project
Dan Morenoff is the executive director at the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
His work focuses on protecting and, where necessary, restoring the primacy of all Americans' shared civil rights against the identitarian alternative.
Before practicing law, Morenoff served on the legislative staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). Morenoff holds a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He has also served as an officer or director of several community organizations in Dallas, Texas.
Julius Kreeger Professor of Law & Criminology, University of Chicago Law School
Sonja Starr joined the University of Chicago law faculty after eleven years teaching at the University of Michigan, where she was the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law. She previously taught at the University of Maryland and Harvard Law School after graduating from Yale Law. She also clerked for Judges Merrick Garland of the DC Circuit and Mohamed Shahabuddeen of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia.
Professor Starr's research focuses on the criminal justice system and on discrimination and disparity (in the criminal process and in other contexts, including employment, education, and health care). Her research blends quantitative empirical work with more traditional legal scholarship. Topics include the use of predictive algorithms in sentencing and bail, legal and empirical analyses of statistical discrimination, racialized medical algorithms, educational diversity and race-conscious policymaking, racial and other disparities in prosecution and sentencing, policies designed to expand employment opportunities for people with criminal records, and how neighborhoods affect employment discrimination patterns. Professor Starr’s work has appeared in, for example, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Yale Law Journal, and the Stanford and Harvard Law Reviews. She has been the Law and Economics Section Chair of the American Association of Law Schools, a past co-president of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, and a board member of the American Law and Economics Association. She teaches Criminal Law, the Constitutional Law Workshop, Race and Criminal Justice Policy, and Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Erin Wilcox joined PLF in 2018 and works primarily from Austin, Texas. She litigates cases around the country to secure the inalienable rights of all Americans to live responsibly and productively in their pursuit of happiness.
After graduating from law school, Erin defended the individual rights of employees as a litigator for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, was an attorney-advisor for the D.C. Public Employee Relations Board, and most recently fought for liberty in the Lone Star State as an attorney with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. During law school, Erin clerked at the Institute for Justice and was a Charles Koch Summer Fellow.
A native Texan, Erin ventured east after high school to earn a B.A. in history and political science from Wake Forest University and a J.D. from the Wake Forest University School of Law. In addition to liberty, Erin’s loves include college football, Texas barbecue, and a well-made Old Fashioned.
Frances and George Skestos Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Adam C. Pritchard, the Frances and George Skestos Professor of Law, teaches corporate and securities law. He is the author, with Stephen J. Choi, of Securities Regulation: Cases and Analysis, currently in its fifth edition. His research focuses on securities class actions, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement, and the history of securities law in the U.S. Supreme Court. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Law and Economics, American Law and Economics Review, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, and various law reviews. Professor Pritchard holds BA and JD degrees from the University of Virginia, as well as an MPP from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. While at Virginia, he was an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics and served as articles development editor of the Virginia Law Review. After graduation, he clerked for the Hon. J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice. After working in private practice, Professor Pritchard served as senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel of the SEC, where he wrote appellate briefs and studied the effect of recent reforms in the areas of securities fraud litigation. He received the SEC's Law and Policy Award for his work in United States v. O'Hagan, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the misappropriation theory of insider trading. Professor Pritchard has been a visiting professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Iowa School of Law. He also has been a visiting scholar at the SEC and a visiting fellow in capital market studies at the Cato Institute. He was previously a member of the FINRA National Adjudicatory Council and the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel.
Legal Fellow, Pacific Legal Foundation
Sydney Madigan joined Pacific Legal Foundation in August 2024. Before coming to PLF, she clerked for the Hon. Joseph L. Falvey, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Sydney is a graduate of George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, where she served as the Federalist Society Chapter president. In addition to her law degree, she holds a degree in mathematics from Christendom College, where she researched the philosophical controversy surrounding computer-assisted proofs.
Sydney and her husband live in Virginia with their children.
Nuziard v. MBDA: What is the Future of Equal Protection Litigation?
Déjà Vu all over again? The Return of Network Neutrality
Justin (Gus) Hurwitz, Raymond Ku
In 2002, under Chairman Michael Powell, the FCC passed the Cable Modem Order which classified...
Déjà Vu all over again? The Return of Network Neutrality
Justin (Gus) Hurwitz, Raymond Ku
In 2002, under Chairman Michael Powell, the FCC passed the Cable Modem Order which classified...
Déjà Vu all over again? The Return of Network Neutrality
Discrimination By Proxy?: Arlington Heights Cases in the Post Students for Fair Admissions Era
Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Richard D. Kahlenberg, Dan Morenoff, Sonja B. Starr, Erin Wilcox
In the consolidated Students for Fair Admissions cases, the Supreme Court held unlawful the use of race...
Discrimination By Proxy?: Arlington Heights Cases in the Post Students for Fair Admissions Era
Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Richard D. Kahlenberg, Dan Morenoff, Sonja B. Starr, Erin Wilcox
In the consolidated Students for Fair Admissions cases, the Supreme Court held unlawful the use of race...
Discrimination By Proxy?: Arlington Heights Cases in the Post Students for Fair Admissions Era
Representing Whistleblowers: A Legal and Moral Framework Challenging Transgender Ideology in Medicine
Fort Worth Lawyers Chapter
Fort Worth, TXMacquarie Infrastructure Corp. v. Moab Partners, L.P. - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Adam Christopher Pritchard
On April 12, 2024, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Macquarie Infrastructure Corp. v....
The Supreme Court of Texas Addresses Exception to State Anti-Abortion Law
Sydney D. Madigan
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade,[1] the...