Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History at Northwestern University School of Law
Stephen Presser is a leading American legal historian and expert on shareholder liability for corporate debts. He is frequently an invited witness before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on issues of constitutional law. He holds a joint appointment with the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and also teaches in Northwestern's history department.
Shareholder, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart
Chris Murray is Co-Chair of the firm’s Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Practice Group. In this role, he assists attorneys throughout the firm and clients nationwide to create, roll out, and enforce effective employment arbitration agreements and other ADR programs. Mr. Murray has extensive experience with class/collective action waivers in employment arbitration. Mr. Murray was part of the Ogletree team that successfully defended the use of such waivers in the Fifth Circuit’s landmark decision in D.R. Horton, Inc. v. N.L.R.B. Since then, he has successfully defended the enforceability of class action waivers in numerous subsequent cases and submitted an amicus brief on the subject on behalf of several major employers’ associations in the Supreme Court’s Murphy Oil case. Mr. Murray assists clients and the Firm’s attorneys to draft or revise arbitration programs focused on a client’s specific needs and goals and in light of changing law and evolving best practices.
Founder & Partner, John L. Dodd and Associates
John L. Dodd has been in private practice for over 20 years, is a former staff attorney at the California Court of Appeal, and has handled over 1,000 appellate matters, including several landmark parental rights and adoption cases decided by the California Supreme Court. He has served as a member of the Orange County Bar Association Board of Directors, the California Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and has Chaired the Committee of Bar Examiners of the State of California.
Mark Pulliam, a longtime member of the Federalist Society (and former President of the San Diego Lawyers Chapter), is a lawyer and writer in Austin, Texas. He is a contributing editor of Law and Liberty, and also writes for a variety of publications, including his blog, Misrule of Law.
Paula Stannard is a former deputy general counsel and acting general counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she oversaw the Food and Drug, Civil Rights and Legislation divisions of the 450-attorney HHS Office of the General Counsel and provided legal advice and counsel to senior HHS officials, including the Secretary of the department, on the issues arising in their respective areas.
At Alston & Bird, Paula advises clients on regulatory questions that arise out of the on-going health care reform effort and focuses her practice on HIPAA and health information technology (including certified EHR and meaningful use issues), food and drug and other regulatory issues in the health care sector. Her HHS experience provides clients substantive knowledge of, and experience in, FDA, HIPAA, e-health and health IT, federal health insurance regulation, patient safety, and public health preparedness and emergency response issues.
Paula received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1990, where she was an executive editor of the Stanford Law Review, and her B.A., magna cum laude, in political science and Latin from Amherst College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She clerked for the Honorable J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Stanford University
(J.D., 1990)
Amherst College
(B.A., 1987)
Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
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.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Gary Lawson joined the University of Florida Levin College of Law faculty on July 1, 2024, after twenty-four years at Boston University School of Law and eleven years at Northwestern University School of Law. While at Boston University, he was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in 2022 – the highest faculty honor within the university. He has authored or co-authored nine editions of a textbook on administrative law, a textbook on constitutional law, five university press books, one popular press book, and more than one hundred scholarly articles on topics ranging from aspects of constitutional theory and history to the proof of legal propositions. His works have been cited in more than twenty opinions of United States Supreme Court justices. He is a founding member, and serves on the Board of Directors, of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
David McIntosh is a leader for the principles of limited constitutional government and individual freedom. He is president of the Club for Growth, the leading advocate for economic liberty.
Former Congressman David McIntosh represented Indiana's 2nd Congressional District in the United States Congress from 1995-2001. As a Freshman, David chaired the Subcommittee on Regulatory Relief. He passed the Congressional Review Act and held extensive oversight and field hearings to build a record of public support for regulatory relief initiatives in energy, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, healthcare, transportation and technology sectors. Another issue that he championed was the elimination of the marriage penalty in the Federal Tax Code.
David served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and as special assistant to President Reagan for Domestic Affairs. During the first Bush administration, he served as executive director of the President's Council on Competitiveness and assistant to the Vice President. The Competitiveness Council coordinated the cost/benefit review of major regulations and promoted legal reform measures.
David is a co-founder of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and serves on the Board of Directors. He remains active with several free market and conservative think tanks and grassroots organizations. David has also had stints at the Hudson Institute and as a Professor of Economics at Ball State School of Business.
Prior to the Club for Growth, David was a partner at Mayer Brown, LLP in Washington, DC.
David graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, and Yale University, BA, cum laude, in 1980. He and his wife, Ruthie, are the proud parents of Ellie age 17 and Davey age 13.
Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
B.A., Yale; J.D., University of Chicago. Lee Liberman Otis is the Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President at the Federalist Society. She also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference (ACUS), and as the co-chair of the National Constitution Center's Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board. She previously was a special assistant and an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Department of Energy, an associate in the appellate section of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, an associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and a law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She also served as an assistant professor of law at George Mason, where she taught legislation, federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, civil procedure, and appellate advocacy. Ms. Otis has been an important member of the Federalist Society team since the organization’s beginnings. Together with David McIntosh, she led the effort to start what became the Chicago chapter of the Society. She also helped organize the Society’s first conference at Yale, its second conference at Chicago, and its first Lawyers Division chapter in Washington DC, as well as the effort to incorporate the Society, recruit its permanent staff, and obtain its early funding. She was a Founding Director of the Federalist Society.
Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship, Yale Law School
Professor George L. Priest passed away on Dec. 17, 2024. Please read his obituary here.
George L. Priest is the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship at Yale Law School. An internationally recognized expert, Professor Priest has focused his research over the past two decades on antitrust, the operation of private and public insurance, and the role of the legal system in promoting economic growth. He joined Yale Law School in 1981 and is co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy, which facilitates the scholarly work of the Yale law and economics faculty and supports student interest and research in the field. Before coming to Yale, Professor Priest taught law at the University of Chicago, SUNY/Buffalo, and UCLA. His subject areas are antitrust; capitalism; regulated industries; torts; and insurance and public policy. Professor Priest holds a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Legal History, Yale Law
John H. Langbein is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Legal History and Professorial Lecturer in Law. He is an eminent legal historian and a leading American authority on trust, probate, pension, and investment law. He teaches and writes in the fields of Anglo-American and European legal history, modern comparative law, trust and estate law, and pension and employee benefit law (ERISA). He has long been active in law reform work, serving under gubernatorial appointment as a Uniform Law Commissioner since 1984. He was the reporter and principal drafter for the Uniform Prudent Investor Act (1994), which governs fiduciary investing in most American states, and he was Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of Property: Wills and Other Donative Transfers (3 vols. 1999-2011). Professor Langbein has written extensively about the history of civil and criminal procedure, and about the contrasts between modern American and Continental procedure. His book, The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial (2003), received the Coif Biennial Book Award (2006) as the outstanding American book on law. In 2000 the American Society for Legal History awarded him the Sutherland Prize for his "pioneering work" in legal history. In 2009 he published History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (with R. Lerner & B. Smith), a textbook on the history of the legal system. He also coauthors a course book on pension and benefit law--Pension & Employee Benefit Law (with D. Pratt, S. Stabile, & A. Stumpff, 6th ed. 2015). Professor Langbein was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He is an honorary fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. He is admitted to the bar in Florida and the District of Columbia, and as a barrister of the Inner Temple in England.
Former Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service
Gerald Walpin, the new Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service, has vowed a vigorous effort to investigate and prosecute all persons who betray the public’s trust by defrauding the Corporation and its programs.
A prominent New York attorney, Walpin was nominated by President George W. Bush, confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn into office on January 8, 2007. He leads the Office of Inspector General (OIG), an independent Federal agency charged with oversight over the taxpayer-supported Corporation and its service programs, including AmeriCorps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)and Senior Corps.
“My major objective is to expand upon the good work of this office by preventing, detecting and prosecuting all thefts and frauds,” said Walpin. “The reality is that such misconduct takes precious resources away from deserving people, the same way the theft of a welfare check hurts a single mother who needs that money to buy milk for her children. For that reason, this office will seek out and ensure sanctions for all wrongdoing involving Corporation funds.”
Walpin said his other major goal is to “assist the Corporation in making its services efficient and accessible for all national service stakeholders.”
A New York City native, Walpin graduated from College of the City of New York in 1952. He earnedhis law degree, cum laude, in 1955 from Yale Law School, where he was managing editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1957-60, he served as a lieutenant in the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General.
His career included a five-year stint as Chief of Prosecutions for the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted a number of high-profile cases. He spent more than 40 years as senior partner and, more recently, of counsel to New York-based Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP.
Mr. Walpin has represented a wide range of clients, including large public corporations, securities brokerage firms, accounting firms, law firms, banks in lender liability claims, and individuals, both American and foreign, in securities litigations, employment litigations, criminal prosecutions, and investigations by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Both as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and in his law firm, he was frequently called upon to investigate fraudulent conduct.
Included in the published compilation “The Best Lawyers in America,” Mr. Walpin served from 2002-2004 as president of the Federal Bar Council, the association of attorneys practicing in the Second Circuit Federal courts. In 2003, he was honored with the American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for outstanding professionalism as an attorney and for mentoring younger lawyers.
Walpin and his wife Sheila, married for almost 50 years, have three children and six grandchildren.
Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service
Chief of Prosecutions in the New York U.S. Attorney's Office.
President of the Federal Bar council
Senior Partner of and Council to Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Chief of Prosectutions for the US Attornery for the Southern District of New York
Lieutenant in the US Air Force Judge Advocate General
B.A., College of the City of New York, 1952
J.D., Yale Law School
The Case for Judicial Appointments
Stephen B. Presser, Christopher C. Murray, John L. Dodd, Mark S. Pulliam, Alfred W. Putnam, Paula M. Stannard
Views expressed in this paper are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily...
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2002 National Student Symposium
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Thomas W. Merrill
Federalist Society members tend to applaud the Supreme Court's Chevron doctrine,1 because it seeks to...