Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Associate Dean for External Engagement, University of Notre Dame Law School
Nicole Stelle Garnett is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, where she also serves as the Associate Dean for External Engagement and directs the Notre Dame Education Law Project. Her teaching and research focus on education law and policy, religious liberty, and topics related to property law (especially land use and urban development policies). In addition to dozens of articles on these subjects, she is the author of Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America (University of Chicago Press, 2014) and Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing and the Restoration of Urban America (Yale University Press, 2009).
Garnett received her B.A. with distinction in Political Science from Stanford University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Morris S. Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. Before joining the law school faculty in 1999, she worked for two years as a staff attorney at the Institute for Justice, a non-profit public-interest law firm in Washington, D.C., where she helped to defend the constitutionality of the nation's first private-school-choice programs.
At Notre Dame, Garnett is a faculty fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate, and deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture. She also is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Stephen E. Sachs is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches civil procedure, conflict of laws, and seminars on constitutional law. His research focuses on the law and theory of constitutional interpretation, the jurisdiction of state and federal courts, the history of procedure and private law, and the role of the general common law in the U.S. legal system.
Sachs has authored numerous articles, essays, and book chapters. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an adviser to the ALI’s project on the Restatement of the Law (Third), Conflict of Laws, a former member of the Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance.
In 2020, Sachs received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic who has demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society.
Sachs previously taught at Duke University School of Law and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering academia, he practiced in the Washington, D.C., litigation group of Mayer Brown LLP, and he clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as well as for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Sachs received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and served both as executive editor and articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Oxford University with a first-class BA (Hons) degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in history from Harvard University, earning the Sophia Freund Prize.
Sachs is a licensed attorney in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and he is authorized to practice before the D.C. Circuit, the Second Circuit, the Seventh Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Director of the Legal Writing Center, Liberty University
Andrew P. Connors serves as the Director of the Legal Writing Center and Director of the Intellectual Property Clinic at Liberty University School of Law, where he teaches classes including trademarks, intellectual property, and mediation. He is a Virginia attorney and a former partner at Connors & Brenke. He still represents clients through his firm, Darkhorse Law, where he focuses principally on disputes involving intellectual property, technology law, and business contracts.
As a litigator, he has represented clients in all state trial courts in Virginia, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, the Court of Appeals of Virginia, including the full Court of Appeals sitting en banc, and the Supreme Court of Virginia. He has handled cases involving all kinds of intellectual property matters, including trademark, trade secret, patent, and copyright suits or potential suits. His business counseling practice focuses on business formation, intellectual property protection, intellectual property licensing, and contract drafting, including technology-related contract and licensing agreements.
He speaks regularly to various groups about intellectual property law, contract law, and business litigation issues. Before entering private practice, Mr. Connors served as a law clerk for two years to the Honorable William G. Petty at the Court of Appeals of Virginia. In law school, he was a Managing Editor of the Liberty University Law Review and won several moot court awards.
Super Lawyers magazine has named Mr. Connors a “Rising Star” in Virginia from 2013–2020 for Intellectual Property, Appeals, and Business Litigation. Virginia Business magazine named Mr. Connors as part of its “Legal Elite” for Intellectual Property for 2017 and 2019. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Virginia State Bar Litigation Section and a Barrister with the Ted Dalton Inns of Court in Roanoke.
Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Health Law & Policy, Georgetown University
David A. Hyman, M.D., J.D., is the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Health Law & Policy at Georgetown University. Professor Hyman focuses his research and writing on the regulation and financing of health care. He teaches or has taught health care regulation, civil procedure, insurance, medical malpractice, law & economics, professional responsibility, and tax policy.
While serving as Special Counsel to the Federal Trade Commission, Professor Hyman was principal author and project leader for the first joint report ever issued by the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, “Improving Health Care: A Dose of Competition” (2004). He is also the author of Medicare Meets Mephistopheles, which was selected by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce/National Chamber Foundation as one of the top ten books of 2007, and the co-author (with Charles Silver) of Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care (2018). He has published widely in student-edited law reviews and peer-reviewed medical, health policy, law, and economics journals.
Prof. Sheley joined the College of Law in 2018. Before coming to OU she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law. She has also served as a Visiting Associate Professor at the George Washington University Law School and an Olin-Searle Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to academia she practiced for several years in the litigation group of the Washington, D.C. offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. While in practice she was commended by the Humane Society of the United States for her pro bono work in the prosecution of dog fighting sponsors. She is proud to have served on the Board of Directors of the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society.
Professor, University of Alberta Faculty of Law
Professor of Law and the Mike and Teresa Baker College Professor, The University of Houston Law Center
Johnny Rex Buckles has been a faculty member of the University of Houston Law Center since August of 2000. He has also served as a Visiting Professor of Law at the Washington & Lee University School of Law. Professor Buckles has taught Taxation of Exempt Organizations, Federal Income Tax, Law & Theology, Estate Planning, Trusts & Wills, Contracts and Tax Policy Seminar. Professor Buckles’ primary research interests are in the law of tax and charity, and in law and theology. His publications include a number of law review articles and contributions to collective works. Professor Buckles holds a Juris Doctorate from the Harvard Law School, a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Bachelor of Science from Oklahoma State University.
T.J. Maloney Chair in Business Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Griffith is an expert in corporate and financial regulatory law. He writes and speaks on corporate law, political economy, and the constitutional rights of corporations and other business associations. In addition to his academic writing, he has authored or contributed to many amicus briefs, including: Iowa v SEC, NCPPR v SEC, AFBR v SEC, and In re Tesla.
Associate Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Ben Johnson is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He researches and writes on governance by committees. Sometimes, the governing committee is a board of directors. Other times, it is a committee of justices at the Supreme Court. His research has won awards from national organizations in law (AALS) and political science (APSA) and can be found in law reviews and peer reviewed outlets. His recent work on the Supreme Court has been published in the Columbia Law Review and Alabama Law Review. Earlier work on district judges with financial conflicts (published in the North Carolina Law Review) led to a large exposé in the Wall Street Journal. His game theoretic model of corporate fiduciary duties is forthcoming at the BYU Law Review. He has ongoing projects on the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket, corporate fiduciary duties, shareholder voting, and machine learning.
Professor Johnson teaches Corporations (the only course in the curriculum where students learn to build and maintain institutions that can make the world a better place long after they are gone), Empirical Methods for Lawyers, and topics on the federal judiciary.
Professor of Law and J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow, University of North Dakota School of Law
Michael S. McGinniss is Professor of Law and J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow at the University of North Dakota School of Law, where he joined the faculty in 2010 and served as the Dean from 2019 to 2022. He chairs the executive committee for the Federalist Society's Practice Group on Professional Responsibility and Legal Education.
Before entering the legal academy, Professor McGinniss served for twelve years as a Disciplinary Counsel for the Supreme Court of Delaware. He currently teaches courses on Professional Responsibility, Advanced Legal Ethics, Civil Procedure, and Federal Courts. He also serves as Faculty Advisor for the North Dakota Law Review and the UND Law Federalist Society student chapter.
Professor McGinniss’ research and scholarship interests are wide-ranging and include lawyer and judicial ethics, lawyer discipline and regulation of the profession, constitutional law (especially First Amendment, separation of powers, and federalism), and cultural challenges faced by conservatives in the law schools and the legal profession. His most recent law review article, Declaring Independence to Secure Integrity: The Supreme Court Justices' Code of Conduct, was published in the Federalist Society Review. His article Expressing Conscience with Candor: Saint Thomas More and First Freedoms in the Legal Profession, was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Professor McGinniss has spoken to Federalist Society lawyer and student chapters across the country about judicial independence and ethics, especially relating to the federal courts and the United States Supreme Court Justices. In addition, he has spoken to several chapters about rising challenges to ideological diversity and targeting of conservative viewpoints in law schools and the legal profession. Although he is very pleased to speak on these and many other topics that may be of interest to lawyer and student chapters, in 2026-2027, he has particular interest in speaking on the topic “Lawyer Discipline as Political ‘Resistance’: Separation of Powers, Federalism, and the Rule of Law,” concerning his work-in-progress on the weaponization of professional disciplinary processes against conservative lawyers for political and ideological purposes.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship, Professor of Law, Liberty University
Timothy M. Todd, Ph.D., serves as Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship and Professor of Law. He also serves as the Director of the Wealth Management and Financial Planning Program at the law school, which has the distinction of being the first exclusively JD-based, CFP Board–registered program in the country.
He earned his Ph.D. in Personal Financial Planning from Kansas State University. He also earned a Master of Science (M.S.) in Applied Economics (with a concentration in Financial Economics) from the Johns Hopkins University. Moreover, he earned a Graduate Certificate in Applied Statistics from Kansas State University.
Dr. Todd has taught an array of courses, including individual income taxation; taxation of estates and gifts; wills, trusts, and estates; mergers and acquisitions; business planning; and bankruptcy, among others.
Todd graduated summa cum laude from Liberty University School of Law, where he graduated first in his class and served as managing editor of the law review. He clerked for the Honorable Eric G. Bruggink of the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Todd has the distinct privilege of being the first Liberty Law alumnus to join the law school faculty full time. Todd also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2016 to 2020, and he now serves as the first Associate Dean of Faculty Development & Scholarship at Liberty Law.
Dean Todd serves as a regular Forbes contributor, writing about taxes, tax planning, tax cases, and related areas.
In 2015 he was awarded an ATAX Research Fellowship, being named the 2015 John Raneri Fellow at the University of New South Wales School of Taxation and Business Law in Sydney, Australia.
Todd has been quoted in outlets such as Bloomberg, Bloomberg BNA Daily Tax Report, Tax Notes, Tax Notes Today, Accounting Today, and Business News Daily.
He is a former chair and vice chair of the ABA Section of Taxation’s Individual and Family Taxation Committee. He is a member of the AICPA National Financial Literacy Commission. He also serves as a council member for the Virginia Bar Association Taxation Section. Moreover, he has worked with the ABA’s Joint Task Force on Governance Issues for Distressed Companies, and he formerly served as a member of the AICPA’s Tax Practice and Procedures Committee.
Dr. Todd’s research and teaching interests include taxation, business planning, and corporate law, among other topics. His works have been published in Tax Notes, State Tax Notes, Texas A&M Law Review, Virginia Tax Review, Buffalo Law Review, University of Pittsburgh Law Review, Marquette Law Review, the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review, the Journal of Taxation, the University of Kansas Law Review, the South Carolina Law Review, the Charleston Law Review, the Journal of Tax Practice and Procedure, and the Liberty University Law Review.
In addition, he also holds an M.S. in Accounting, and he graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Business (specializing in finance) from Liberty University.
Todd is licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is admitted to the bars of the Supreme Court of Virginia, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the United States Court of Federal Claims, and the United States Tax Court. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar, the Virginia Bar Association, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the American Academy of Attorney-Certified Public Accountants.
Resident Fellow, Yale Law School
Lorianne Updike Toler is a constitutional legal historian and president of Libertas Constitutional Consulting, where she specializes in constitution-writing best practices, having worked and lived in Libya and the MENA region. She was the “midwife” to The Quill Project at Oxford and the founding president of The Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org) in Washington, DC. A graduate of Brigham Young University’s School of Communications and Law School (magna cum laude) and Oxford (MSt), she has published, spoken, and taught on US constitutional history, comparative constitutional history, intellectual property, Christianity, and religious freedom.
John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Associate Dean for External Engagement, University of Notre Dame Law School
Nicole Stelle Garnett is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, where she also serves as the Associate Dean for External Engagement and directs the Notre Dame Education Law Project. Her teaching and research focus on education law and policy, religious liberty, and topics related to property law (especially land use and urban development policies). In addition to dozens of articles on these subjects, she is the author of Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America (University of Chicago Press, 2014) and Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing and the Restoration of Urban America (Yale University Press, 2009).
Garnett received her B.A. with distinction in Political Science from Stanford University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Morris S. Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. Before joining the law school faculty in 1999, she worked for two years as a staff attorney at the Institute for Justice, a non-profit public-interest law firm in Washington, D.C., where she helped to defend the constitutionality of the nation's first private-school-choice programs.
At Notre Dame, Garnett is a faculty fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate, and deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture. She also is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Stephen E. Sachs is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches civil procedure, conflict of laws, and seminars on constitutional law. His research focuses on the law and theory of constitutional interpretation, the jurisdiction of state and federal courts, the history of procedure and private law, and the role of the general common law in the U.S. legal system.
Sachs has authored numerous articles, essays, and book chapters. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an adviser to the ALI’s project on the Restatement of the Law (Third), Conflict of Laws, a former member of the Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance.
In 2020, Sachs received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award, which recognizes a young academic who has demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society.
Sachs previously taught at Duke University School of Law and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering academia, he practiced in the Washington, D.C., litigation group of Mayer Brown LLP, and he clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as well as for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Sachs received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and served both as executive editor and articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Oxford University with a first-class BA (Hons) degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in history from Harvard University, earning the Sophia Freund Prize.
Sachs is a licensed attorney in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and he is authorized to practice before the D.C. Circuit, the Second Circuit, the Seventh Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law
Robert J. Cottrol joined the law school faculty in 1995 as a visiting professor of law of legal history. Previously, he taught at Rutgers University and Boston College, and had visited at the University of Virginia. As well as specializing in American legal history, Professor Cottrol has also taught torts and criminal law. His writings on law and history have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, American Journal of Legal History, Law and Society Review, Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies and American Quarterly, among others.
He is the author of The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Antebellum Era (selected by Choice as an outstanding academic book for 1983), editor of Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment (Book of the Month selection by the History Book Club), and From African to Yankee: Narratives of Slavery and Freedom in Antebellum New England (1998). Professor Cottrol’s book Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture and the Constitution (2003) won the Langum Project Prize for Historical Literature in 2003 and was a “Book-of-the-Month” selection of the History Book Club. Most recently, he has authored The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere (2013).
He is currently doing research contrasting the role of law in the development of systems of slavery and racial hierarchy in the United States and Latin America. He has lectured on American law at the Federal Universities of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and the University of Buenos Aires and La Universidad del Museo Social in Argentina.
Professor of Law, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law; Director, Election Law @ Moritz, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
Professor Foley (known as “Ned”) directs Election Law @ Moritz at Ohio State’s law school, where he also holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law.
His book Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2016) was named Finalist for the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History and listed as one of 100 “must-read books about law and social justice”.
He has completed a new book manuscript, Presidential Elections and Majority Rule (to be published by Oxford University Press), which employs historical analysis to offer a feasible reform of state laws that would enable the Electoral College to operate as intended and thereby avoid the election of presidents who lack majority support among the voters in the states responsible for their Electoral College victories.
As Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Project on Election Administration (with his Mortiz colleague Steven Huefner, who served as Associate Reporter), Professor Foley drafted Principles of Law: Non-Precinct Voting and Resolution of Ballot-Counting Disputes, which provides nonpartisan guidance for the resolution of election disputes.
During his fellowship at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Foley wrote Due Process, Fair Play and Excessive Partisanship: A New Principle of Judicial Review of Election Law, 84 U. Chicago Law Review 655-758 (2017), which was cited in briefs in Gill v. Whitford and Benisek v. Lamone (the Supreme Court gerrymandering cases). His extensive online commentary about gerrymandering includes: Wechsler, History, and Gerrymandering, Scotusblog, and Constitutional Preservation, the Marbury Duty & Congressional Gerrymanders, Election Law Blog.
While Professor Foley has special expertise on recounts and other procedures for fairly and accurately identifying which candidate is the winner in close elections, he has written widely on all aspects of election law, including the need for nonpartisan institutions in election administration. He has also co-authored Election Law and Litigation: The Judicial Regulation of Politics (Wolters Kluwer 2014).
Professor Foley has taught at Ohio State since 1991. Previously, he clerked for Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. In 1999, he took a leave from the faculty to serve as the state solicitor in the office of Ohio’s Attorney General. In that capacity, he was responsible for the state’s appellate and constitutional cases.
Professor Foley is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law and Yale College.
Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Professor Derek Muller is a nationally-recognized scholar in the field of election law. His research focuses on the role of states in the administration of federal elections, the constitutional contours of voting rights and election administration, the limits of judicial power in the domain of elections, and the Electoral College.
He has published more than two dozen academic works, and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has testified before Congress, and he is a contributor at the Election Law Blog. He is a co-author on a Federal Courts casebook published by Carolina Academic Press. He is also the co-reporter on a new Restatement of the Law, Election Litigation, an effort led by the American Law Institute.
Professor Muller teaches Election Law, Civil Procedure, and Evidence.
George T. and Harriet E. Pfleger Chair in Law, USC Gould School of Law
Franita Tolson is the George T. and Harriet E. Pfleger Chair in Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the Political Science and International Relations Department at the USC Dornsife College of Letter, Arts and Sciences.
Her scholarship and teaching focus on the areas of election law, constitutional law, legal history, and employment discrimination. She has written on a wide range of topics including partisan gerrymandering, political parties, the Elections Clause, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Her research has appeared or will appear in leading law reviews including the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. Tolson is one of the coauthors of the leading election law casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 6th ed., forthcoming 2022). Her forthcoming book, In Congress We Trust?: Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era, will be published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press.
As a nationally recognized expert in election law, Tolson has written for or appeared as a commentator for various mass media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Bloomberg Law. She has testified before Congress numerous times on voting rights issues. She has also authored a legal analysis for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Richard Durbin, that would explicitly protect the right to vote. During the fall of 2020, Tolson worked as an election law analyst for CNN. She currently co-hosts an election themed podcast, Free and Fair with Franita and Foley, with Ned Foley of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
Prior to joining USC, Tolson was the Betty T. Ferguson Professor of Voting Rights at Florida State University College of Law and a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Before entering academia, she clerked for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the Honorable Ruben Castillo of the Northern District of Illinois.
Tolson is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where she was the Walter V. Schaefer Visiting Professor of Law during the Spring 2021 academic quarter.
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument: Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters
The U.S. Supreme Court appears ready to clarify when and under what circumstances federal labor...
Courthouse Steps Oral Argument: Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters
TeleforumCan a Textualist Approach to the Constitution Create a More Limited Government?
Los Angeles Lawyers Chapter & Southwestern Law School Student Chapter
Los Angeles, CATopics
Labor Disputes, Property Rights, and Vandalism
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v....
Panel: America and Her Discontents
Nicole Stelle Garnett, Paul Gowder, Joshua Kleinfeld, Stephen E. Sachs
Featuring: Prof. Nicole Stelle Garnett, John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law...
Panel: America and Her Discontents
24th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
San Diego, CA7 Minute Presentations of Works in Progress Panel 2-B
24th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
San Diego, CA7 Minute Presentations of Works in Progress Panel 2-A
24th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
San Diego, CATopics
Religious Liberty Update on U.S. Congress and Executive Branch Actions
Congress NEW LAW 1. On December 29, 2022, President Biden signed into law H.R.2617, the...
Panel: Election Law in Flux
Robert J. Cottrol, Michael R. Dimino, Edward B. Foley, Derek T. Muller, Franita Tolson
Election law has attracted increasing academic and judicial scrutiny in recent years, with topics of...