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Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

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  • Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Apr 7 1995
Friday 1:00 p.m. CDT    

1995 National Student Symposium

Originalism, Democracy, and the Constitution

Chicago, IL
Topics:
Constitution
Sponsors:
Northwestern Student Chapter
  • In-Person Event
Sep 13 1991
Friday 4:15 p.m. EDT    

Family Law and Individual Responsibility [Archive Collection]

1991 Annual Lawyers Convention

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese • William Kristol • Jane E. Larson • Phyllis Schlafly • Karl Zinsmeister
Topics:
Civil Rights • Family Law • Religious Liberty
Sponsors:
Religious Liberties Practice Group
  • In-Person Event
Mar 2 1991
Saturday 9:15 a.m. EDT    

Panel II: How Effective Are Bills of Rights in Protecting Freedom and Civil Liberties? [Archive Collection]

1991 National Student Symposium

New Haven, CT
Speakers:
John S. Baker • Frank H. Easterbrook • Thomas W. Merrill • Theodore B. Olson • Herman Schwartz
Topics:
Civil Rights • Constitution • Federalism • Founding Era & History • Separation of Powers
  • In-Person Event
Mar 10 1989
Friday 6:45 p.m. EDT    

Panel I: The Idea of Property [Archive Collection]

1989 National Student Symposium

Ann Arbor, MI
Speakers:
Tom Bethell • Lee C. Bollinger • David M. Di Rita • Richard A. Epstein • William Ian Miller • Jeffrey Paul • Carol M. Rose
Topics:
Philosophy • Property Rights • Founding Era & History
Sponsors:
Michigan Student Chapter
  • In-Person Event
Apr 4 1987
Saturday 2:00 p.m. CDT    

Panel IV: The Role of the Legislative and Executive Branches in Interpreting the Constitution [Archive Collection]

1987 National Student Symposium

Chicago, IL
Speakers:
John C. Harrison • Robert F. Nagel • Burt Neuborne • Daniel Polsby • Steven R. Ross
Topics:
Constitution • Federalism • Founding Era & History • Philosophy • Federalism & Separation of Powers
Sponsors:
Chicago Student Chapter
  • In-Person Event
Apr 4 1987
Saturday 11:15 a.m. CDT    

Panel III: Originalist Theories of Constitutional Interpretation [Archive Collection]

1987 National Student Symposium

Chicago, IL
Speakers:
Robert William Bennett • Raoul Berger • Douglas H. Ginsburg • Michael W. McConnell • Michael S. Moore
Topics:
Constitution • Founding Era & History • Jurisprudence • Philosophy
Sponsors:
Chicago Student Chapter
  • In-Person Event
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James Madison Portrait
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Speaker Information
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Writer, Historian, and Lecturer

Biography

Elizabeth Ann Fox-Genovese (May 28, 1941 – January 2, 2007) was an American historian best known for her works on women and society in the Antebellum South. A Marxist early on in her career, she later converted to Roman Catholicism and became a primary voice of the conservative women's movement. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2003.

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William Kristol

William Kristol

Editor, The Weekly Standard

Biography

William Kristol is the editor of The Weekly Standard. He is also a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday, a contributor for the Fox News Channel, and a monthly columnist for the Washington Post. Before starting the Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. Prior to that, Mr. Kristol served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the first Bush Administration, and to Education Secretary William Bennett under President Reagan. Before coming to Washington in 1985, Mr. Kristol was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.



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Jane E. Larson

Jane E. Larson

Voss-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School

Biography

Jane Larson (1958–2011) was the Voss-Bascom Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Jane was born in Omaha, Neb., the oldest daughter of Donald G. and Wilma M. Larson. She graduated from Alameda West High School in Pleasanton, Calif. She received her undergraduate degree Phi Beta Kappa with a specialization in women's history from Macalester College in 1980. She received her law degree with high honors from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1985. She worked as a judicial clerk for Justice Rosalie Wahl of the Minnesota Supreme Court and for Judge Theodore McMillian of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. From 1987 to 1990, she was an associate at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy.

In 1990, she joined the law faculty at Northwestern University School of Law, where she published a series of noted articles on legal history, property rights and social regulation, with particular emphasis on the rights of women and the poor (for example, "Free Markets Deep in the Heart of Texas," Georgetown Law Journal, 1995.) In 1996, she joined the faculty of University of Wisconsin Law School, where she continued her writing and lecturing on feminist legal theory and property law. Her academic writing has been called "a model of how to integrate the history of doctrine with the surrounding social values." She was an inspiring teacher, a self-taught decoder of Oriental rugs, and a jazz aficionado who requested Coltrane in lieu of epidural during the birth of her son, Simon. When she retired in October 2011, she was the Voss-Bascom Professor of Law.

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Phyllis Schlafly

Phyllis Schlafly

Founder, Eagle Forum

Biography

Phyllis Schlafly was a national leader of the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book, A Choice Not An Echo. She created the pro-family movement in 1972, when she started her national volunteer organization called Eagle Forum. In a ten-year battle, Mrs. Schlafly led the pro-family movement to victory over the principal legislative goal of the radical feminists, called the Equal Rights Amendment. An articulate and successful opponent of the radical feminist movement, she debated on college campuses more frequently than any other conservative. She was named one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century by the Ladies’ Home Journal.

Mrs. Schlafly’s monthly newsletter called The Phyllis Schlafly Report was published for fifty years. At her request, the monthly newsletter was renamed after her death to the Eagle Forum Report: the Successor to The Phyllis Schlafly Report. Eagle Forum is the publisher of the Eagle Forum Report.

Her syndicated column appeared in 100 newspapers, and on many conservative websites.

Mrs. Schlafly was the author or editor of 27 books on subjects as varied as family and feminism (The Power of the Positive Woman and Feminist Fantasies); the judiciary (The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It); religion (No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom); nuclear strategy (Strike From Space and Kissinger on the Couch); education (Child Abuse in the Classroom); child care (Who Will Rock the Cradle?); and phonics (First Reader and Turbo Reader).

Mrs. Schlafly was a lawyer and served as a member of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, 1985-1991, appointed by President Ronald Reagan. She testified before more than 50 Congressional and State Legislative committees on constitutional, national defense, and family issues.

Mrs. Schlafly was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington University, received her Master’s in Political Science from Harvard University, and received her J.D. from Washington University Law School. In 2008, Washington University/St. Louis awarded Phyllis Schlafly an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

Phyllis Schlafly was America’s best-known advocate of the dignity and honor that we as a society owe to the role of fulltime homemaker. The mother of six children, she was the 1992 Illinois Mother of the Year.

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Karl Zinsmeister

Karl Zinsmeister

Author, Journalist, Researcher, and Consultant

Biography

Karl Zinsmeister  is an experienced executive, original researcher, and productive author with deep analytical, communications, public-policy, creative, and marketing skills—including high-level experience managing a range of publications, businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. He is currently a consultant to major business figures and wealth creators as a designer of large-scale philanthropy projects, historian of American civil society, and expert on social reform and culture change.

He has written a dozen books—embedded war reporting, histories, political analysis, reference works, a novel, literary collections, academic volumes, a storytelling cookbook, even a book-length Marvel comic book.  Two of his works have recently been optioned for development into a television series and a documentary film. He has edited or co-produced many other books.

Zinsmeister's magazine and newspaper journalism totals several hundred articles. These have been published in a wide range of national publications, from cover stories for The Atlantic to essays in the Wall Street Journal, where he is a frequent contributor. Karl also has more than two decades of experience as an Editor in Chief, managing writing, artistic, and business teams producing nationally circulated magazines of thought and culture.

He created The Almanac of American Philanthropy—the authoritative 1,342-page reference on private giving that is often referred to as “the bible” documenting America's distinctive tradition of solving major problems through civil society and voluntary action. Between cash contributions and volunteer labor, philanthropy is approaching the trillion-dollar level as an annual undertaking in the U.S., and it is one of our country's most potent sources of social innovation and improvement.

Zinsmeister established the nation's first independent advisory on philanthropy for veterans and servicemembers. He raised $15 million and designed an unprecedented randomized-control experiment to prove out better ways of assisting men and women injured during military service.

He created the “Sweet Charity” podcast, presenting 5-10 minute stories on important achievements in philanthropic creativity. He wrote and edited a series of “Wise Giver's Guides” offering donors practical help in specific fields. The volumes he authored himself include one analyzing charter schools, and another on the relationship between philanthropy and public policy.

In response to national concern over polarization and government stalemate, Zinsmeister researched and released a political/historical work What Comes Next?, describing how America can be dramatically improved by private actors even amidst political gridlock, documented by encouraging examples from our past.

From 2006 to 2009 Zinsmeister served in the West Wing as President George W. Bush’s chief domestic policy adviser. His responsibilities stretched across many issues: the formulation of new immigration policies, the mortgage and student-loan credit crises, stem-cell and biotechnology innovation, improving care for military veterans, school reform, issues in health, transportation, environmental quality, and national competitiveness.

Earlier in his career Karl was a U.S. Senate aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He has been an adviser to many public policy groups, and has testified before Congressional committees and Presidential commissions on topics including family issues, economic policy, and the Iraq war.

For more than a decade, Zinsmeister occupied the J. B. Fuqua Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, a premier Washington, D.C. think tank, where he researched economic, demographic, and cultural topics. While there he created an acclaimed national monthly magazine of politics, business, and culture, The American Enterprise. Author and former Cabinet Secretary William Bennett called it “one of America’s finest magazines.... intellectually interesting, well-written, lively, wide-ranging, and above all useful.” Zinsmeister wrote nearly 300 articles for the magazine, and conducted interviews with public figures extending from Rudy Giuliani to Pat Moynihan, Andres Duany to Rupert Murdoch. 

In concert with his wife, Zinsmeister conceived and produced a feature documentary film entitled Warriors that aired nationally on PBS in 2007. The film won $450,000 of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in a major international competition. It presented personal profiles of America’s fighting forces via on-the-scene footage that Zinsmeister and two combat cameramen shot in Iraq. The New York Times described Warriors as “entirely compelling.” Footage from the film was used as a plot item in the final week of the HBO television series The Sopranos.

In the private sector, Zinsmeister was an executive in his native region of upstate New York at the Stickley company—an historic firm that designs, manufactures, and markets iconic American Arts & Crafts furniture designs worldwide. His responsibilities included marketing and sales, advertising, catalogs, photography, websites, communications, the Stickley Museum, some product design, and the modernization of many business and data systems. Zinsmeister has also operated his own businesses over a period of years, including designing, financing, renovating, and building eight properties with historic appeal, in Washington and New York.

A graduate of Yale University, Zinsmeister did further studies at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. During college he won national rowing championships in both the U.S. and Ireland. He has given hundreds of public lectures, originated a weekly radio commentary syndicated to 100 stations, and appeared often on a wide variety of national television and radio programs. He has lived, worked, or traveled in 40 countries, and nearly every U.S. state. He holds the highest U.S. security clearance.

Zinsmeister is married and has three grown children. He is an active outdoorsman, enjoys extended wilderness backpacking trips, and swims, bicycles, sculls, skis, and hikes often. He has been an avid photographer, woodworker, gardener and keeper of hens, taught Sunday school, and sung in church choirs. He currently lives in Washington, D.C. on a houseboat he designed and built himself.

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John S. Baker

John S. Baker

Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University

Biography

In memoriam

Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the

following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.  

In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975.  While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House.  He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.

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Frank H. Easterbrook

Frank H. Easterbrook

U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Biography

Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.



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Thomas W. Merrill

Thomas W. Merrill

Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

Biography

THOMAS W. MERRILL is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.  He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law and Yale Law School.  He has undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit (for Chief Judge David Bazelon) and the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Harry Blackmun).  From 1987-1990 he served as Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice.  Professor Merrill’s writings related to property include Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press Second Edition, 2012) (with Henry E. Smith); Property: The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law (Oxford U. Press, 2010); Property: Takings (Foundation Press, 2002)(with David Dana); and numerous articles, including “The Economics of Public Use” (Cornell Law Review 1986); “The Landscape of Constitutional Property” (Virginia Law Review 2000); and “The Character of the Governmental Action” (Vermont Law Review 2012). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Theodore B. Olson

Theodore B. Olson

Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP

Biography

Theodore B. Olson is a Partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C. office; a founder of the Firm’s Crisis Management, Sports Law, and Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Groups.

Mr. Olson was Solicitor General of the United States during the period 2001-2004. From 1981-1984, he was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. Except for those two intervals, he has been a lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. since 1965.

Selected by Time magazine in 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Mr. Olson is one of the nation’s premier appellate and United States Supreme Court advocates. He has argued 65 cases in the Supreme Court and has prevailed in over 75% of those cases.  These include the two Bush v Gore cases arising out of the 2000 presidential election; Citizens United v Federal Election Commission; Hollingsworth v Perry, the case affirming the overturning of California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages; Murphy v NCAA, overturning a federal law prohibiting states from authorizing sports betting; and U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security v Regents of the Univ. of Calif., challenging the Trump Administration’s rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”). Mr. Olson’s practice is concentrated on appellate and constitutional law, federal legislation, media and commercial disputes, and assisting clients with strategies for the containment, management and resolution of major legal crises. He has handled cases at all levels of state and federal court systems throughout the United States.  Mr. Olson co-authored “Redeeming the Dream, the Case for Marriage Equality” with David Boies. Both were featured in HBO’s award-winning documentary, “The Case Against 8.”

Mr. Olson's Supreme Court arguments have included cases involving separation of powers; federalism; voting rights; the Tenth Amendment; the First Amendment; the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses; jury trial rights; punitive damages; takings of property; the Commerce Clause; administrative law; taxation; criminal law; sports wagering; copyright, patent and antitrust; securities; campaign finance; foreign sovereign immunities; telecommunications; the environment; the internet; the Supremacy Clause; and other federal constitutional and statutory questions.  As Solicitor General, during the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Olson was the Government's principal advocate in the United States Supreme Court, responsible for supervising and coordinating all appellate litigation of the United States, and a legal adviser to the President and the Attorney General. As Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration, Mr. Olson was the Executive Branch's principal legal adviser, rendering legal guidance to the President and to the heads of the Executive Branch departments on a wide range of constitutional and federal statutory questions, and assisting in formulating and articulating the Executive Branch's position on constitutional issues.

Mr. Olson has served as private counsel to two Presidents, Ronald W. Reagan and George W. Bush, in addition to serving those two Presidents in high-level positions in the Department of Justice. He has twice been awarded the United States Department of Justice's Edmund J. Randolph Award, its highest award for public service and leadership, and also received the Department of Defense's Distinguished Public Service Award, its highest civilian award, for his advocacy in the courts of the United States, including the Supreme Court. He also received the American Bar Association Medal, its highest award for “exceptionally distinguished service by a lawyer or lawyers to the cause of American jurisprudence.” Mr. Olson is to receive the 2021 Jack Valenti Friend of the White House Fellows Award in the Fall of 2021 to be presented by the White House Fellows Foundation and Association.

Mr. Olson is a member of the Commission on White House Fellowships; a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation; a member of the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society; the Board of Directors of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; and the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial Foundation. He was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in 2007. He served on the President's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from 2006 to 2008; and of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2010 to 2020. He was Co-Chair of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy from 2008-2009, and served two terms on the Board of Directors of the National Center for State Courts.

Mr. Olson is a Fellow of both the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He has been repeatedly listed in legal publications as one of the nation’s leading appellate lawyers.  The late New York Times columnist William Safire described Mr. Olson as his generation's "most persuasive advocate" before the Supreme Court and "the most effective Solicitor General in decades.”

Mr. Olson received his law degree in 1965 from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) where he was a member of the California Law Review and Order of the Coif. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of the Pacific, where he was recognized as the outstanding graduating student in both forensics and journalism. He has written and lectured extensively on appellate advocacy, oral communication in the courtroom, civil justice reform, and constitutional and administrative law.

 

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Herman Schwartz

Herman Schwartz

Professor of Law Emeritus, American University Washington College of Law

Biography

Herman Schwartz is a Professor of Law Emeritus at American University Washington College of Law. Throughout a long career in academia, publishing and community service, he has focused his attention and the world's on issues of civil rights and civil liberties as they have played out in courts and prisons across the globe. He has worked with the United Nations, the human rights advocacy group Helsinki Watch, the U.S./Israel Civil Liberties Law Program (which he founded), the ACLU Prison Project (which he founded), Washington College of Law's Human Rights Center and other organizations. In May 2006 he was awarded the 2006 Champion of Justice Award by the Alliance for Justice.

Schwartz's special interest in recent years has been the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. He has served as an adviser to numerous Central and Eastern European nations, as well as former Soviet Union nations, on constitutional and human rights reform; recently he has been called up on to comment and advise on constitutional reform in Afghanistan, Iraq and several African countries. He also co-chaired a project on transitional justice in emerging democracies. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of the Open Society Institute Justice Initiative.

Current work includes hunger issues and particularly the expansion of programs for school children during the summer. Schwartz formerly chaired the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, and has developed a course in which students work with national and local public interest organizations that deal with poverty issues. He also is continuing to pursue a lifelong interest in the operations of America's courts, and frequently is called upon to analyze and write about Supreme Court decisions. He has published Right Wing Justice: The Conservative Campaign to Take Over the Courts (May 2004), a study of the judgeship controversies since Ronald Reagan.

From 1963 to 1976, Schwartz was heavily involved in studying and monitoring New York State's criminal justice system. During the tragic inmate uprising at Attica State Prison in 1971, he served as the first intermediary between the prisoners and the prison administration, and represented numerous prisoners thereafter, founded the ACLU Prison Project and argued two cases in the Supreme Court relating to prisoners rights. Throughout the 1960's and 1970's, he was active in civil rights and civil liberties litigation and advocacy, serving as chief counsel in school desegregation cases in the North and the South. He was also the ACLU expert on the law and policy of electronic surveillance and the author of numerous studies of the operation of the wiretap laws.

Schwartz has authored three books: Right-Wing Justice: The Conservative Campaign to Take over the Courts (May 2004), The Struggle for Constitutional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (2000) and Packing the Courts: The Conservative Campaign to Rewrite the Constitution (1988); edited and contributed to The Rehnquist Court: Judicial Activism on the Right (2002), and The Burger Years Rights and Wrongs in the Supreme Court 1969-1986 (1987). He has written numerous reports, articles, chapters and scholarly papers.

His work on the frontiers of civil rights and civil liberties has been recognized with such honors as the 2006 “Champion of Justice” award from the Alliance for Justice, a Citation of Appreciation by the Common Council of the City of Buffalo, an American Jewish Congress - Washington Capital area award, the William Conable Award for Civil Rights, the Citizens Counsel for Human Rights Award and The ACLU-Niagara Frontier Award for Civil Liberties.

His undergraduate degree is from Harvard University, magna cum laude, and his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude. For most of his professional career he has been a professor of law. He has also served in state and federal government, including service as Chief Counsel of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, and Chief Counsel for Revenue Sharing, U.S. Treasury.

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Tom Bethell

Tom Bethell

Senior Editor, The American Spectator

Biography

Tom Bethell was a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).

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Lee C. Bollinger

Lee C. Bollinger

President, Columbia University

Biography

Lee C. Bollinger became Columbia University’s 19th president in 2002 and is the longest serving Ivy League president. Under his leadership, Columbia stands again at the very top rank of great research universities, distinguished by comprehensive academic excellence, an innovative and sustainable approach to global engagement, two of the largest capital campaigns in the history of higher education, and the institution’s most ambitious campus expansion in over a century.

President Bollinger is Columbia’s first Seth Low Professor of the University, a member of the Columbia Law School faculty, and one of the nation's foremost First Amendment scholars. Each fall semester, he teaches “Freedom of Speech and Press” to Columbia undergraduate students. He has two books coming out in 2021: National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On, co-edited with Geoffrey R. Stone, which will be published by Oxford University Press; and Regardless of Frontiers: Global Freedom of Expression in a Troubled World, co-edited with Agnès Callamard, which will be published by Columbia University Press.

As president of the University of Michigan, Bollinger led the school’s historic litigation in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, Supreme Court decisions that upheld and clarified the importance of diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education. He speaks and writes frequently about the value of racial, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity to American society through opinion columns, media interviews, and public appearances around the country. Columbia remains one of the most diverse universities among its peer institutions and has seen the number of applicants to Columbia College and the selectivity of admissions at the school reach record levels.

As Columbia’s president, Bollinger conceived and led the University’s most ambitious expansion in over a century with the creation of the Manhattanville campus in West Harlem, the first campus plan in the nation to receive the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest certification for sustainable development.  An historic community benefits agreement emerging from the city and state review process for the new campus provides Columbia’s local neighborhoods with decades of investment in the community’s health, education and economic growth. The first two buildings, the Jerome L. Greene Science Center and the Lenfest Center for the Arts, opened in the spring of 2017. The third, the Forum, which hosts conferences, meetings, and symposia, opened in September of 2018.

Bollinger’s commitment to excellence in architecture is evident across Columbia’s campuses, from Renzo Piano’s master plan for Manhattanville, to the recently opened Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, to Rafael Moneo’s design for the Northwest Corner Building on the historic Morningside campus, to the Campbell Sports Center at Baker Field designed by Steven Holl.

Among Bollinger’s signal achievements at Columbia are the development of a network of nine Columbia Global Centers on four continents and the creation of new venues on the University’s home campus supporting global conversations and scholarship, including the World Leaders Forum and the Committee on Global Thought. 

From November 1996 to 2002, Bollinger was president of the University of Michigan, where he also served as a law professor and dean of the law school.

He is a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is widely published on legal and constitutional issues involving free speech and press, and his books include: The Free Press Century, Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century; Eternally Vigilant: Free Speech in the Modern Era; Images of a Free Press; and The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech in America.

Bollinger has received the National Humanitarian Award from the National Conference for Community and Justice and the National Equal Justice Award from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund for his leadership on affirmative action. He also received the Clark Kerr Award, the highest award conferred by the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, for his service to higher education, especially on matters of freedom of speech and diversity. He is the recipient of multiple honorary degrees from universities in this country and abroad.

Bollinger is a director of Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company) and serves as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. From 2007 to 2012, he was director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he also served as chair from 2010 to 2012.

After graduating from the University of Oregon and Columbia Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of Columbia Law Review, Bollinger served as law clerk for Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Chief Justice Warren Burger on the United States Supreme Court. He joined the University of Michigan Law School faculty in 1973.

Bollinger was born in Santa Rosa, California and raised there and in Baker, Oregon. He is married to artist Jean Magnano Bollinger, and they have two children and five grandchildren.

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David M. Di Rita

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Richard A. Epstein

Richard A. Epstein

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

Biography

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.

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William Ian Miller

William Ian Miller

Thomas G. Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

Biography

Bill Miller, the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law, has been a member of the Michigan Law faculty since 1984. His research centers on saga Iceland, from whence the materials studied in his course Bloodfeuds and which provides the sources for his Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (1990).

He also has written about emotions, mostly unpleasant ones involving self-assessment, and select vices and virtues. Thus his books: Humiliation (1993); The Anatomy of Disgust (1997)—named the best book of 1997 in anthropology/sociology by the Association of American Publishers; The Mystery of Courage (2000); Faking It (2003), which deals with anxieties of role, identity, and posturings of authenticity; Losing It (2011), where he turns a jaundiced eye toward aging and decline; and the latest in the grim series to appear Jan. 2020: Outrageous Fortune: Gloomy Reflections on Luck and Life. The Chicago Tribune named Losing It to its list of best books of the year; Macleans magazine of Canada also listed it in its top 10 nonfiction books of 2011. Eye for an Eye (2006) is an extended treatment of the law of the talion. Audun and the Polar Bear: Luck, Law, and Largesse in a Medieval Tale of Risky Business (2008) offers an expansive interpretation of a superbly crafted short Icelandic tale. "Why is your axe bloody:" A Reading of Njáls Saga is exactly what the subtitle indicates; yet another book on a saga, Hrafnkel or the Ambiguities: Hard Cases, Hard Choices, appeared in 2017. He also has been a visiting professor at Yale, the University of Chicago, the University of Bergen, the University of Tel Aviv, and Harvard, and in 2008, was the Carnegie Centenary Trust Professor at the University of St. Andrews, where he is now also an honorary professor of history.

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Jeffrey Paul

Jeffrey Paul

Professor of Philosophy (emeritus), Bowling Green State University

Biography

Jeffrey Paul is a retired professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, the Associate Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, and a Research Professor at the Freedom Center.

Jeffrey Paul is a retired professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, the Associate Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, and a Research Professor at the Freedom Center.  His research and teaching focus on ethics, political philosophy, and law.

Research Interests:

Jeffrey is the co-editor, with Richard A. Epstein, of Labor Law and the Employment Market (Transaction, 1985). He has published essays on ethics and political philosophy in The Monist, Philosophical Review, the Personalist, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, the Review of Metaphysics, Reason Papers, Orbis, the Journal of Medical Ethics, the History of Political Thought, the Hastings Center Report, and in John Gray and Z.A. Pelczynski’s collection Conceptions of Liberty in Political Theory.

His collection Reading Nozick was published by Rowman and Allanheld in 1981. He is Associate Editor of Social Philosophy & Policy, as well as a coeditor of many collections of essays on moral and political philosophy published by Cambridge University Press.

Jeffrey founded the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University with Fred D. Miller, Jr., in 1981. He is presently Associate Director of the Center.

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Carol M. Rose

Carol M. Rose

Lohse Chair in Water and Natural Resources & Professor Emerita of Law, The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law

Biography

Carol M. Rose is the Ashby Lohse Chair in Water and Natural Resources at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and was previously the Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization at Yale Law School.

Rose graduated from Antioch College with a B.A. (1962) and received an M.A. from the University of Chicago (1963), a Ph.D. in History from Cornell University (1969) and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (1977).

In 2010, Rose was awarded the Brigham–Kanner Property Rights Prize, awarded by the College of William & Mary School of Law annually to an individual whose work has advanced the cause of private property rights. Rose's notable works include Perspectives on Property Law (Aspen 3d ed. 2014) (with Robert Ellickson and Henry E. Smith) and Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership (Westview Press 1994).

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John C. Harrison

John C. Harrison

James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law

Biography

Professor John C. Harrison is the James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He joined the faculty at University of Virginia in 1993 as an associate professor of law after a distinguished career with the U.S. Department of Justice. His teaching subjects include constitutional history, federal courts, remedies, corporations, civil procedure, legislation and property. In 2008 he was on leave from the Law School to serve as counselor on international law in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State.

A 1977 graduate of the University of Virginia, Harrison earned his law degree in 1980 at Yale, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal and editor and articles editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order. He was an associate at Patton Boggs & Blow in Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Robert Bork on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He worked with the Department of Justice from 1983-93, serving in numerous capacities, including deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (1990-93).

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Robert F. Nagel

Robert F. Nagel

Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law, Colorado Law

Biography

Robert Nagel joined the faculty of CU Law School in 1975, leaving a position as a deputy attorney general in Pennsylvania. Since that time, he has focused on constitutional law and theory. For an audience of legal scholars, Professor Nagel has written prolifically, including four books and over 50 law review articles. However, he has also contributed to the popular debate on constitutional issues, including free speech, hate codes, and federalism, by addressing his ideas to the general citizenry in articles and opinion pieces in publications such as The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, First Things, and Washington Monthly. Much of his work has focused on the relationship between the judiciary (and its interpretation of the Constitution) and the wider context of American political culture. His two earlier books on this topic, Constitutional Cultures: The Mentality and Consequences of Judicial Review and Judicial Power and American Character: Censoring Ourselves in an Anxious Age, were widely read and reviewed. He has recently completed The Implosion of American Federalism, a book on the cultural and constitutional ramifications of political centralization. Professor Nagel has testified before several congressional committees. He was formerly the director of the Law School's Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.



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Burt Neuborne

Burt Neuborne

Inez Milholland Professor of Civil Liberties, New York University School of Law

Biography

Burt Neuborne is the Inez Milholland Professor of Civil Liberties and founding Legal Director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. For 45 years, he has been one of the nation's foremost civil liberties lawyers, serving as National Legal Director of the ACLU from 1981-86, Special Counsel to the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1990-1996, and as a member of the New York City Human Rights Commission from 1988-1992. He has argued numerous Supreme Court cases, and has litigated literally hundreds of important constitutional cases in the state and federal courts. He challenged the constitutionality of the Vietnam War, pioneered the flag burning cases, worked on the Pentagon Papers case, worked with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she headed the ACLU Women's Rights Project, anchored the ACLU's legal program during the Reagan years, and defended the Legal Services program against unconstitutional attacks. He currently directs the legal program of the Brennan Center, especially its efforts to reinforce American democracy and secure campaign finance reform. The Brennan Center was established in 1994 to honor Justice William Brennan, Jr.’s monumental contribution to American Law.

At the same time, Professor Neuborne has forged a national reputation as a constitutional scholar and teacher. In 1990, he was the recipient of the University-wide Distinguished Teacher Award at New York University for his work in teaching Civil Procedure, Evidence, Federal Courts and Constitutional Law. He is the author of three books and over 20 law review articles on diverse areas of constitutional law and procedure. Among his best known scholarly works is the two-volume Political and Civil Rights in the United States, which he co-authored with NYU colleagues Norman Dorsen and Sylvia Law and the Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, Paul Bender. His 1992 lectures on American law at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona have been translated and published in Spanish. In 2001, in recognition of his scholarship and his work in the courts, Professor Neuborne was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 1996, Professor Neuborne appeared as Jerry Falwell's lawyer in Milos Forman's The People v. Larry Flynt.

For the past 14 years, Professor Neuborne has served as a principal counsel in a series of lawsuits seeking to recover property unjustly taken from Holocaust victims by Swiss banks and German corporations during the Nazi era. The litigation has succeeded in assembling more than $8.5 billion for distribution to Holocaust victims and their families throughout the world. Professor Neuborne was appointed by the Court to oversee the $1.25 Swiss bank settlement, and was appointed by the United States to serve on the Board of Trustees of the German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future,” established to distribute the $5.2 billion settlement in the German slave labor litigation.

Professor Neuborne is married to Helen Redleaf Neuborne.



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Daniel Polsby

Daniel Polsby

Dean and Foundation Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law

Biography

Dean and Foundation Professor of Law Daniel D. Polsby joined the faculty of the law school in 1999 after serving 23 years on the Northwestern University law faculty, most recently (since 1990) as the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law. He has held visiting appointments in the law schools of the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan, and Cornell University. He was appointed acting dean of the George Mason School of Law in 2004 and was named dean in 2005.

Dean Polsby has published dozens of articles on such diverse subjects as voting rights, family law, employment rights, and spectrum utilization. He is the author of the award-winning article, "The False Promise of Gun Control," the cover essay of the March 1994 Atlantic Monthly. The article is one of the most widely anthologized essays of recent years.

Dean Polsby received his B.A. from Oakland University (1964) and earned his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota (1971). He teaches Criminal Law, Family Law, Constitutional Law, and other subjects.



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Steven R. Ross

Steven R. Ross

Partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP

Biography

Steven Ross has extensive public- and private-sector experience in representing corporations, institutions, boards and individuals in all manner of investigations, including congressional, criminal and regulatory proceedings and related civil litigation. He concentrates on congressional investigations, internal investigations, governmental ethics, federal election law, white collar criminal defense and constitutional issues.

From 1983 to 1993, Steven served as the General Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives, advising and representing its members, leadership, committees and employees from both political parties. He has also counseled the leadership and relevant committees on numerous congressional investigations.

In private practice, Steven guides clients through complex congressional inquiries and related litigation. He represents clients in investigations conducted by various federal executive branch departments, commissions and agencies, including the U.S. departments of Justice, Education, Health and Human Services, Defense and the Interior, as well as the Federal Election Commission and the Food and Drug Administration.

Steven has significant litigation experience, ranging from trials before U.S. district courts to arguments before the Supreme Court and numerous federal courts of appeals. He was actively involved in defending the constitutionality of multiple federal statutes, including the Independent Counsel Act, the Competition in Contracting Act and the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act.

Over the course of his career, Steven has litigated seminal cases regarding the scope of Congress’ oversight and investigations power, both on behalf of Congress and as counsel to private parties implicated by such inquiries. He has taught constitutional law as an adjunct professor at George Mason University Law School and served as a guest lecturer on the topic of congressional investigations at a number of law schools, including NYU, Fordham and the Georgetown University Law Center.

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Robert William Bennett

Robert William Bennett

Nathaniel L. Nathanson Professor of Law Emeritus, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

Biography

A scholar in the field of constitutional law, Robert Bennett has been a member of the faculty of the Northwestern University School of Law since 1969, serving as the school’s dean from 1985 to 1995. Since 2002 he has been the Nathaniel L. Nathanson Professor of Law at Northwestern. With some regularity Professor Bennett teaches a seminar in the Law of American Democracy and courses in contracts, legislation, constitutional law, and constitutional theory. Professor Bennett has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, the University of Virginia School of Law, the University of Southern California Law Center, Brooklyn Law School, and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University.

Professor Bennett is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and served as the Foundation’s president from 1992 to 1994. He has been a member of the American Law Institute since 1979. He was also a co-founder of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and served as its president. Professor Bennett is the author of numerous books and articles. His two most recent books are Talking It Through: Puzzles of American Democracy, published by Cornell University Press in 2002 and Taming The Electoral College, published by Stanford University Press in 2006. At the present time he is at work on a (co-authored) book about constitutional interpretation for Cornell University Press, tentatively titled Originalism and Living Constitutionalism. Professor Bennett received his BA, summa cum laude, in 1962 from Harvard University and his LLB, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1965. At Harvard College he was elected to phi beta kappa and at Harvard Law School he was a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review. Professor Bennett received a Knox Memorial Fellowship from Harvard University for study at the London School of Economics in 1965-66, and the following year he served as legal assistant to Commissioner Nicholas Johnson of the Federal Communications Commission. He was Reginald Heber Smith Fellow at the Office of Economic Opportunity, assigned to the Chicago Legal Aid Bureau in 1967-68, and he practiced law as an associate at the Chicago law firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt in 1968-69. Professor Bennett and his wife, Harriet Trop, live in Chicago and they have one daughter, Ariana Trop Bennett, who does as well.

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Raoul Berger

Raoul Berger

Charles Warren Senior Fellow in American Legal History, Harvard Law School

Biography

Raoul Berger (January 4, 1901 – September 23, 2000) was an American attorney and professor at The University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University School of Law. While at Harvard, he was the Charles Warren Senior Fellow in American Legal History.

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Douglas H. Ginsburg

Douglas H. Ginsburg

Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit

Biography

Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986.  After receiving his B.S. from Cornell University in 1970, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a professor at the Harvard Law School, the Deputy Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget.  Concurrent with his service as a federal judge, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the New York University School of Law.  Judge Ginsburg is currently a Professor of Law at the George Mason University and a visiting professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws.

Judge Ginsburg is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Global Antitrust Institute at the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law.  He also serves on the Advisory Boards of:  Competition Policy International; the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; the Journal of Competition Law and Economics; the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; the Supreme Court Economic Review; the University of Chicago Law Review; the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty; and, at University College London, both the Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.

In 2020, Judge Ginsburg was the 11th recipient of the John Sherman Award, presented by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in recognition of the awardee’s Lifetime Contributions to Antitrust Law and Policy. 

In 2014, Judge Ginsburg received the Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by the Global Competition Review.  

He is the author or co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on competition and regulation, including, most recently, Growing Convergence: The Limited Role of Antitrust in Standard Essential Patent Disputes, in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Summer 2021, Vol. 1, No. 2.

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Michael W. McConnell

Michael W. McConnell

Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School

Biography

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.

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Michael S. Moore

Michael S. Moore

Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Chair in Law and Co-Director, Program in Law and Philosophy, University of Illinois College of Law

Biography

One of the country’s most prominent authorities on the intersection of law and philosophy, and widely regarded as the country’s leading theoretician of the criminal law, Professor Moore joined the faculty in 2002 as the Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Chair, the first and only university-wide chair for the University of Illinois’ three campuses. He is jointly appointed as professor of law in the College of Law and as a professor with the Center for Advanced Studies, an honor bestowed on faculty on the basis of their outstanding scholarship and among the highest forms of campus recognition. Professor Moore was just the second UI College of Law faculty member to have held such an appointment.

Before coming to Illinois, Professor Moore served as the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and as co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the University of San Diego. From 1989-2000, he was the Leon Meltzer Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he co-founded and directed the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Law and Philosophy.

Over the course of his career, he also has been a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Southern California (where he held the Robert Kingsley Chair), and the University of Kansas. In addition, he has been the William Minor Lile Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, the Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor at the Yale Law School, The Mason Ladd Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa Schools of Law and of Medicine, as well as a visiting professor at Stanford University, Northwestern University, Tel Aviv University in Israel, di Tella University in Buenos Aires, and the Universität Erlangen in Germany.

He has held a number of fellowships and visiting scholar positions, including two in the Law and Humanities Program of Harvard University, five at the Australian National University’s Research School of Social Sciences in Canberra, Australia, and one each at the Humanities Research Institute of the University of California at Irvine, the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Neuroscience and Society, and the Yale Law School.

Over an academic career spanning more than 50 years Moore has published more than 140 books, articles, editorials, and other pieces of scholarship, documented recently in a festschrift published in his honor, K. Ferzan and S. Morse, eds., Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truth: The Philosophy of Michael S. Moore (Oxford University Press, 2016). He is the author of Placing Blame: A General Theory of the Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 1997), widely regarded as the leading modern statement of the retributivist theory of the criminal law. In an earlier book, Act and Crime: The Philosophy of Action and its Implications for Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 1993), Moore provided a unified theory of action that underlies English and American criminal jurisprudence. In a later book, Causation and Responsibility: An Essay in Law, Morals, and Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2009), Moore explored the nature of causation and its relation to both moral and legal responsibility. Earlier in his career, he authored Law and Psychiatry: Rethinking the Relationship (Cambridge University Press, 1984), which explored the tension that often exists between legal and psychiatric theories. His latest book, Mechanical Brains and Responsible Choices, still forthcoming, will return to these same issues, this time as they are raised by contemporary neuroscience rather than by dynamic psychiatry.

Professor Moore has presented hundreds of lectures and papers around the world in law, jurisprudence, political theory, legal philosophy, political science, economics, philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience, including most recently endowed, named lectures at Duke, Dartmouth, Columbia, Tel Aviv, Pennsylvania universities, as well as the annual Public Philosophy Lecture and the annual Center for Advanced Studies Lecture at the University of Illinois. He is on the board of editors of numerous journals in law and in philosophy and for a decade served as editor-in-chief of the journal, Law and Philosophy.

He regularly rotates his law teaching between first-year courses of criminal law, torts, contracts, property, and constitutional law, and upper-year courses in jurisprudence and legal philosophy. During his 13 years on the Philosophy Department faculty at Illinois he taught undergraduate courses in the philosophy of law and political philosophy and graduate seminars in neuroscience, ethics, the theory of action, and the metaphysics of causation.

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