Clinical Professor and Senior Scholar and Senior Fellow for Copyright Research and Policy of C-IP2, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Sandra Aistars is Senior Fellow for Copyright Research and Policy and a Senior Scholar at the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy (C-IP2). She also leads the law school’s Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Program. Professor Aistars has over twenty years of advocacy experience on behalf of copyright and other intellectual property owners. She has served on trade missions and been an industry advisor to the Department of Commerce on intellectual property implications for international trade negotiations; worked on legislative and regulatory matters worldwide; frequently testified before Congress and federal agencies regarding intellectual property matters; chaired cross-industry coalitions and technology standards efforts; and is regularly tapped by government agencies to lecture in U.S. government-sponsored study tours for visiting legislators, judges, prosecutors, and regulators.
Immediately prior to joining Scalia Law, Professor Aistars was the Chief Executive Officer of the Copyright Alliance – a nonprofit, public interest organization that represents the interests of artists and creators across the creative spectrum. While at Scalia Law, she continues to collaborate with the Copyright Alliance as a member of its Academic Advisory Board. Professor Aistars currently serves on the boards of the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA) and the Howard Intellectual Property Program (HIPP), and she has previously served as trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA (CSUSA). Professor Aistars has also previously served as Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Time Warner Inc. She began her legal career in private practice at Weil, Gotshal and Manges LLP.
Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law
Professor Michael Risch joined the Villanova faculty in 2010 from the West Virginia University College of Law, where he directed the Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Law Program. Prior to joining the West Virginia faculty, he served as an Olin Fellow in Law at Stanford Law School. Professor Risch’s teaching and scholarship focus on intellectual property and internet law, with an emphasis on patents, trade secrets and information access. His articles have been published in the Stanford Law Review and Duke Law Journal, among others; online in the Yale Law Journal Online and PENNumbra; and less formally at the Madisonian, Prawfsblawg, and Patently-O blogs. Two of his articles have been cited by the United States Supreme Court. Professor Risch received his A.B. with honors and distinction in Public Policy and with distinction in Quantitative Economics from Stanford University, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School. Prior to entering academia, he was a partner at intellectual property boutique Russo & Hale LLP in Palo Alto, California.
Associate Professor, UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law
Zvi S. Rosen is an Associate Professor at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law and the Faculty Director of the Franklin Pierce Society for Intellectual Property. He has served as a Assistant Professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Law, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, and as a Visiting Scholar and Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
In 2015-2016, he was the Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the U.S. Copyright Office. Mr. Rosen received his J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 2005 and LLM in Intellectual Property in 2006 from the George Washington University Law School. He has practiced at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP as well as smaller firms and his own practice, and clerked for the Hon. Thomas B. Bennett of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Alabama. He has written extensively on the development of modern copyright and trademark law, as well as on bankruptcy law.
Senior Counsel, Caplin & Drysdale; Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
Professor Carney is a Senior Counsel with Caplin & Drysdale, Cht’d. in Washington, D.C. He served as a Trial Attorney for the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for six years, and was in private (law firm) tax practice for many years, specializing in IRS administrative practice, tax controversies (audit and IRS Appeals Office), and tax litigation. He also advised clients in a similar capacity as a partner in the National Tax Office of Ernst & Young LLP in Washington. He is a member of the District of Columbia bar, as well as the bars of the U.S. Tax Court, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, D.C Circuit, and Eleventh Circuit.
Professor of Law, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University of Bloomington
Professor David Gamage is a scholar of tax law and policy and also of health law and policy. He has written extensively on tax and budget policy at both the U.S. state and federal levels, as well as on tax theory, fiscal federalism, and the intersections between taxation and health care. Professor Gamage consistently ranks in the top five of the SSRN Tax Professor Rankings.
Gamage has authored or coauthored over fifty scholarly articles and essays. His scholarship has appeared in a range of journals, including the peer-edited Tax Law Review and Public Finance Review, and the flagship law reviews of the University of Chicago, the University of California, and Northwestern Law Schools. His casebook, Taxation: Law, Planning, and Policy, is published by Carolina Academic Press.
From 2010 through 2012, Gamage served as special counsel to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Policy. In that position, he administered the individual income tax portfolio of the Treasury Department's Tax Legislative Counsel, and he oversaw the drafting of all individual income tax regulations and executive branch initiatives related to the individual income tax. Gamage's position primarily involved the drafting and implementation of tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). Since returning to academia in 2012, Gamage has served on a tax reform commission for the state of California and has regularly advised other state and federal policymakers on tax and health policy.
Founder, Law Office of Eileen J. O'Connor PLLC
After nearly 30 years as a national tax specialist with the IRS and major accounting firms, Eileen J. O’Connor, now an attorney in private practice, was Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division for six years during the administration of President George W. Bush and a member of then-President-elect Trump’s Treasury Department Transition Team. She focuses on federal administrative and tax law.
J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law; Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center; Executive Director, Project for Older Prisoners, The George Washington University Law School
Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. After a stint at Tulane Law School, Professor Turley joined the GW Law faculty in 1990, and in 1998, became the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history.
He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS). He has written more than three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals including those of Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, and Northwestern Universities, among others. He most recently completed a three-part study of the historical and constitutional evolution of the military system.
Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy; and four former U.S. Attorney Generals during the Clinton impeachment litigation. Professor Turley also has served as counsel in a variety of national security and terrorism cases, and has been ranked as one of the top 10 lawyers handling military cases.
He has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues, and is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He also is a nationally recognized legal commentator; he ranked 38th in the top 100 most cited ‘public intellectuals’ in a recent study by Judge Richard Posner and was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country.
He is a member of the USA Today board of contributors and the recipient of the “2005 Single Issue Advocate of the Year” – the annual opinion award for the Aspen Institute and The Week magazine. More than 400 of his articles on legal and policy issues regularly appear in national newspapers. He also has worked as the CBS and NBC legal analyst, respectively, during national controversies.
Senior Counsel, Caplin & Drysdale; Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
Professor Carney is a Senior Counsel with Caplin & Drysdale, Cht’d. in Washington, D.C. He served as a Trial Attorney for the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for six years, and was in private (law firm) tax practice for many years, specializing in IRS administrative practice, tax controversies (audit and IRS Appeals Office), and tax litigation. He also advised clients in a similar capacity as a partner in the National Tax Office of Ernst & Young LLP in Washington. He is a member of the District of Columbia bar, as well as the bars of the U.S. Tax Court, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, D.C Circuit, and Eleventh Circuit.
Professor of Law, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University of Bloomington
Professor David Gamage is a scholar of tax law and policy and also of health law and policy. He has written extensively on tax and budget policy at both the U.S. state and federal levels, as well as on tax theory, fiscal federalism, and the intersections between taxation and health care. Professor Gamage consistently ranks in the top five of the SSRN Tax Professor Rankings.
Gamage has authored or coauthored over fifty scholarly articles and essays. His scholarship has appeared in a range of journals, including the peer-edited Tax Law Review and Public Finance Review, and the flagship law reviews of the University of Chicago, the University of California, and Northwestern Law Schools. His casebook, Taxation: Law, Planning, and Policy, is published by Carolina Academic Press.
From 2010 through 2012, Gamage served as special counsel to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Policy. In that position, he administered the individual income tax portfolio of the Treasury Department's Tax Legislative Counsel, and he oversaw the drafting of all individual income tax regulations and executive branch initiatives related to the individual income tax. Gamage's position primarily involved the drafting and implementation of tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). Since returning to academia in 2012, Gamage has served on a tax reform commission for the state of California and has regularly advised other state and federal policymakers on tax and health policy.
Founder, Law Office of Eileen J. O'Connor PLLC
After nearly 30 years as a national tax specialist with the IRS and major accounting firms, Eileen J. O’Connor, now an attorney in private practice, was Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division for six years during the administration of President George W. Bush and a member of then-President-elect Trump’s Treasury Department Transition Team. She focuses on federal administrative and tax law.
J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law; Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center; Executive Director, Project for Older Prisoners, The George Washington University Law School
Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. After a stint at Tulane Law School, Professor Turley joined the GW Law faculty in 1990, and in 1998, became the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history.
He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS). He has written more than three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals including those of Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, and Northwestern Universities, among others. He most recently completed a three-part study of the historical and constitutional evolution of the military system.
Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy; and four former U.S. Attorney Generals during the Clinton impeachment litigation. Professor Turley also has served as counsel in a variety of national security and terrorism cases, and has been ranked as one of the top 10 lawyers handling military cases.
He has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues, and is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He also is a nationally recognized legal commentator; he ranked 38th in the top 100 most cited ‘public intellectuals’ in a recent study by Judge Richard Posner and was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country.
He is a member of the USA Today board of contributors and the recipient of the “2005 Single Issue Advocate of the Year” – the annual opinion award for the Aspen Institute and The Week magazine. More than 400 of his articles on legal and policy issues regularly appear in national newspapers. He also has worked as the CBS and NBC legal analyst, respectively, during national controversies.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Nelson was confirmed to the Ninth Circuit in October 2018, as the youngest Circuit Judge to serve from Idaho and he has chambers in his hometown of Idaho Falls. Prior to his confirmation, Judge Nelson served for nine years as General Counsel of Idaho Falls-based Melaleuca, Inc., a consumer goods company. He previously worked in Washington, DC, where he served in all three branches of the federal government, including as Special Counsel for Supreme Court nominations to the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Deputy General Counsel to the White House Office of Management and Budget; Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice; and a law clerk to Judge Henderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has argued in most of the federal courts of appeals and worked on dozens of Supreme Court briefs. He started in the Washington, DC office of Sidley Austin as an appellate lawyer, after clerking for Judges Mosk and Brower of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague, and for now-Judge Tom Griffith, then-Senate Legal Counsel, during the impeachment trial of President Clinton. Judge Nelson earned his B.A. from Brigham Young University and his J.D., with honors, from BYU Law School. Judge Nelson has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1998.
Former CEO, Vascular Solutions
Howard Root is the recently-retired Chief Executive Officer of Vascular Solutions, Inc., a company he founded in 1997, took public in 2000, and grew into a worldwide medical device company that he sold to Teleflex for $1 billion in February 2017. Over the company’s 20 years, Howard led Vascular Solutions in inventing, developing and launching over 100 new medical devices that are used daily to improve the lives of patients suffering from cardiovascular disease. In 2014, Vascular Solutions and Howard were indicted on felony charges alleging the company’s salespeople had promoted off-label an FDA-cleared medical device that made up only 0.1% of the company’s sales and never harmed a single patient. After surviving an arduous legal process, with 121 attorneys charging $25 million in legal fees, in February 2016 the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on all charges, even though the defense didn’t call a single witness to testify in the four-week trial.
Executive Vice President, Goldwater Institute
Christina Sandefur is the Executive Vice President at the Goldwater Institute. She develops policies and litigates cases advancing healthcare freedom, free enterprise, private property rights, free speech, and taxpayer rights.
Christina is a co-drafter of the Right to Try initiative, now federal law, which protects terminally ill patients' right to try safe investigational treatments that have been prescribed by their physician but are not yet FDA-approved. She has won important victories for property rights in Arizona and works nationally to promote the Institute's Private Property Rights Protection Act, a state-level reform that requires government to pay owners when regulations destroy property rights and reduce property values.
Christina is the co-author of the book Cornerstone of Liberty: Private Property Rights in 21st Century America (2016). She is a frequent guest on national television and radio programs, has provided expert legal testimony to various legislative committees, and is a frequent speaker at conferences. She is the recipient of the 2018 Buckley Award in recognition of her leadership in the freedom movement, and she is an Advisory Board Member of the Network of enlightened Women. Christina serves on the board of the Phoenix Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society and is a member of the executive committee for the Federalist Society's Regulatory Transparency Project: FDA & Health.
Christina is a graduate of Michigan State University College of Law and Hillsdale College.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, Harvard Law School
Noah Feldman specializes in constitutional studies, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, free speech, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, he is also a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard. In 2003 he served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law or interim constitution. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 1992. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies from Oxford University in 1994. From 1999 to 2002, he was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard. Before that he served as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court (1998 to 1999) and to Chief Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1997 to 1998). He received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1997, serving as Book Reviews Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He’s the author of eight books: The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President (Random House, 2017); Cool War: The Future of Global Competition (Random House, 2013); Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices (Twelve Publishing, 2010); The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton University Press, 2008); Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2005); What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation building (Princeton University Press 2004); and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2003. He also co-authored two textbooks with Kathleen Sullivan: Constitutional Law, Twentieth Edition (Foundation Press, Fall 2019) and First Amendment (Foundation Press, 2016).
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Of Counsel, Spencer Fane LLP
Anthony J. “A.J.” Ferate has built a multi-faceted background in the areas of the law, policy, energy, campaigns and elections, and defense over the last 20 years.
Through recent representation as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (“OIPA”), A.J. held responsibilities over government efforts outside of the legislative branch on matters as broad as water, electric generation, commodity marketing, land matters, and seismicity. A.J. also maintained responsibility for legal matters at OIPA, including amicus briefing in appellate matters. A.J.’s extensive experience also includes management of public policy strategy for a Fortune 500 company.
For the past eleven years, A.J. has volunteered as General Counsel and spokesman for the Oklahoma Republican Party and has represented a number of elected officials, including U.S. Senator James Lankford, former statewide elected officials, a number of state legislators, and members of Congress.
Additionally, A.J. has assisted elected officials serve their constituents in all branches of government. Early in his career, A.J. held legislative aide duties in the Nebraska Legislature, then went on to work for former Nebraska Treasurer David Heineman. A.J. gained experience in the judiciary while serving Judge Gary L. Lumpkin at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal appellate court in Oklahoma. Following this service, A.J. began work with Denise A. Bode of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, assisting her in her duties regulating 70 percent of Oklahoma’s economy, including oil and gas and electric utilities.
A.J. honorably served ten years as an intelligence analyst for the United States Naval Reserve, including time at the Office of Naval Intelligence in the greater Washington DC area.
Opinion pieces authored or ghostwritten by A.J. have been published in the Seattle Times, Politico, Law360, The Oklahoman, Tulsa World and The Journal Record. A.J. has also been interviewed by national and international newspapers, and has also appeared on national radio programs including NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show and On Point with Tom Ashbrook.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig
Jennifer Weddle is the Co-Chair of Greenberg Traurig's American Indian Law Practice and has wide-ranging experience in complex regulatory and jurisdictional issues, with a focus in Indian law, handling a variety of matters for tribal and non-tribal clients. She has a dynamic, inter-disciplinary practice that centers on providing strategies for resolving complex jurisdictional problems. Much of her practice focuses in the areas of tribal economic development and natural resources development. Jennifer also has U.S. Supreme Court experience, including serving as one of the attorneys for the respondent in Nevada v. Hicks (2001) and representing the petitioners in Ute Mountain Ute Tribe v. Padilla (2012) and Grand Canyon Skywalk Development, LLC v. Grand Canyon Resort Corporation (2013) and cert stage amici in Saginaw-Chippewa Tribe v. NLRB (2016) and United States v. Cooley (2020) and amici on the merits in Lewis v. Clarke (2017), U.S. v. Washington (2018), Carpenter v. Murphy (2018), McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), and United States v. Cooley (2021).
Jennifer's work also includes negotiations for mineral leasing employment matters and representation before federal agencies. She has also been involved in civil litigation, working on numerous complex federal, state and tribal litigation matters, including class action tort litigation and large commercial disputes. Her transactional experience includes oil and gas renewables projects throughout the west, as well as Endangered Species Act work. Jennifer frequently assists tribes, banks and non-bank entities with financing and regulatory matters with Indian law components. Jennifer has wide-ranging project siting experience, including the application of NEPA, NHPA, and other environmental laws on tribal and public lands, including with respect to large linear multi-state energy and infrastructure projects. Jennifer has deep transactional, regulatory and litigation experience involving very complex matters with both legal and policy components.
Jennifer is past President of the National Native American Bar Association and past two-term Chair of the Federal Bar Association Indian Law Section. She currently serves as the Tenth Circuit Representative on the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, a role she has held since 2018, spanning the evaluations for more than two dozen federal judicial nominees at every level of the federal courts. She is a ’00 graduate of Harvard Law School and a ’97 graduate of the University of Michigan (Classical Languages and Literature).
Former General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, Former United States Ambassador to East Timor
Grover Joseph Rees, a native and resident of Louisiana, served as the first United States Ambassador to East Timor from 2002 to 2006.
From October 2006 until January 2009 Ambassador Rees served as Special Representative for Social Issues in the U.S. Department of State. He was responsible for promoting human dignity, including issues affecting vulnerable persons and the family, within the United Nations system. He served as Acting U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Counsel during the fall 2007 session of the UN General Assembly and also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations.
From 1995 until 2002 Rees was a senior staff member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the United States House of Representatives, where he was responsible for human rights and refugee protection and played a major role in the drafting and enactment of important human rights legislation including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the International Religious Freedom Act, and the Torture Victims Relief Act.
Ambassador Rees also formerly served as General Counsel of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (1991-93), as Chief Justice of the High Court of American Samoa (1986-1991), and as Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the United States (1985-86).
Prior to his work in Washington, Rees served for seven years as a law professor at the University of Texas. He has written and spoken widely on international law, human rights, refugees, and related issues.
Rees obtained his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his law degree from Louisiana State University Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Louisiana Law Review and was selected for the academic honor society Order of the Coif.
Rees was born in New Orleans, the oldest of 12 children. He is married to Lan Dai Nguyen Rees and has one son. He retired from government service in January 2009 and now lives and works in Lafayette, Louisiana.
In addition to English, Ambassador Rees speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese, Samoan, and Tetum.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law, Faculty Director of the Jenner & Block Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic, University of Chicago Law School
David Strauss graduated from Harvard College summa cum laudein 1973. He then spent two years at Magdalen College, Oxford, on the Marshall Scholarship and received a BPhil in politics from Oxford in 1975. In 1978, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was developments editor of theLaw Review. Before joining the Law School faculty, he worked as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the US Department of Justice and was an Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States.
Strauss joined the Law School faculty in 1985. He has published articles on a variety of subjects, principally in constitutional law and related areas, and recently published The Living Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2010). He is, with Geoffrey Stone and Dennis Hutchinson, editor of the Supreme Court Review. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Georgetown. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Strauss has argued nineteen cases before the United States Supreme Court. In 1990, he served as Special Counsel to the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. He is a member of the national Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society. He has also served Chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and as a member of the Board of Governors of the Chicago Council of Lawyers. In addition to his current teaching interests - constitutional law, federal jurisdiction, elements of the law, and administrative law - he has taught civil procedure and torts.
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