Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation Chair, Lex Politica; Of Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as Chair of Lex Politica's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice overseeing the firm’s strategic appellate litigation and critical motions practice in the trial courts. Erin is an experienced litigator who represents clients in constitutional, regulatory, and appellate matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Erin has represented dozens of clients before the Supreme Court of the United States, served as lead counsel in high-profile cases raising novel constitutional and statutory issues, and authored numerous successful petitions for certiorari and briefs in opposition. She has argued in state and federal appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Erin represents diverse clients in high-stakes litigation from state governments to faith-based nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. She possesses expertise on a wide range of subject matters including administrative law, the First Amendment, religious liberty, federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, equitable jurisdiction, tax law, the Affordable Care Act, and Title IX.
Erin represents clients in cases where public communications strategy is paramount. She is a sought-after speaker and writer, has testified multiple times before Congress, and is a frequent presenter on constitutional and administrative law issues, including at the Oxford Union, the National Federalist Society Convention, and university campuses across the country. She is a frequent commentator to media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, WORLD, USA Today, the Federalist, and the Hill.
Erin previously oversaw Alliance Defending Freedom’s--where she still serves as Of Counsel--litigation strategies to empower women and protect the dignity of life, defend pregnancy centers’ First Amendment rights from government overreach, and safeguard Americans’ freedoms from the ever-encroaching administrative state.
White House Correspondent, The Daily Wire
Mary Margaret Olohan is a senior reporter for The Daily Wire and the author of "Detrans: True Stories of Escaping The Gender Ideology Cult." She previously wrote for The Daily Signal and for The Daily Caller News Foundation. She is a graduate of the Catholic University of America.
Vice President & Senior Legal Fellow, Defending Education
Sarah Parshall Perry is vice president and senior legal fellow at Defending Education.
Before coming to Defending Education, Sarah served as a Senior Legal Fellow for the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, part of the Institute for Constitutional Government at Heritage, where her work centered on civil rights and the proper role of the courts.
Sarah joined Heritage after serving as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education where she focused on policy reform, technical guidance, and the Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) annual report to Congress. While at OCR, she was appointed by the Acting Assistant Secretary to co-chair the Employment Engagement, Diversity, & Inclusion Council and, in coordination with the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement oversee the hiring of dozens of attorneys for OCR’s 12 regional offices nationwide. Prior to her tenure at the Department of Education, she spent six years at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. where she was Senior Fellow for Education Reform and later, became the regular substitute host for the “Washington Watch” radio show. Her work at the Family Research Council also included the building and oversight of multiple policy coalitions geared toward the fight against antisemitism in academia, curbing tech censorship, and protecting religious liberty.
Before joining FRC, Sarah was in-house counsel and director of development for a Baltimore advertising agency, providing management of all new business transactions from pitch to contract execution for the multi-million-dollar enterprise. She began her practice at the litigation firm of Simms Showers, LLP where her work included Title VII employment discrimination, maritime/admiralty, and False Claims Act (“Qui Tam”) law. Sarah has a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was an editor of the Virginia Journal of International Law, a recipient of the American Jurisprudence award, a Phi Delta Phi honor society member, and a student practitioner in the appellate litigation clinic where she argued before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. She holds a B.S. in Journalism with honors from Liberty University.
Her commentary and analysis have appeared in media outlets across the country, including the AP, BBC, Fox News, NPR, The Hill, Washington Post, Washington Times, and the New York Times. She is the mother of three children, and the author of just as many books on the trials and triumphs of parenting children on the autism spectrum. Sarah is a member of the Kirkpatrick Society at the American Enterprise Institute, and makes her home north of Baltimore, Maryland.
General Counsel, Center for American Liberty
Mark Trammell is the General Counsel at Center for American Liberty where he is dedicated to defending First Amendment freedoms and civil liberties.
Prior to joining the Center for American Liberty, Trammell served as in-house counsel to Young America’s Foundation, where he advocated for and defended students’ free speech rights on college campuses. He has also served as an attorney at Liberty Counsel and as an adjunct professor at Liberty University.
Trammell is a member of the Maryland bar and the Virginia bar. He is a graduate of Liberty University School of Law and Union University. Trammell currently serves on the Board of Trustees at Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Director of Law & Policy, Environmental Integrity Project
Following Princeton and the University of Chicago Law School, David began practicing law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Eventually tiring of litigation where the result was a wire transfer from Entity A to Entity B, in the early 1990’s David began his environmental law career at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Since then, he has litigated dozens of cases under all of the major environmental statutes including, as Sierra Club’s Chief Climate Counsel, initiating and managing Massachusetts v. EPA. Most recently, he has been busy challenging FERC’s permitting of natural gas pipelines and LNG export terminals. Apart from litigation, David has helped lead efforts on both greenhouse gas regulation and global warming legislation (and may be the only person ever invited to testify by both Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe).
He has drafted a range of federal climate legislation, advised states as to their greenhouse gas regulatory authority (and for many years has represented environmental groups defending state GHG regulations from dormant Commerce Clause challenges). David has designed and taught courses on “Environmental Litigation” at Georgetown University Law Center and “Environmental Law and Science” at the William and Mary Law School/Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Managing Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Michael Buschbacher is the managing partner of Boyden Gray PLLC. He represents public and private companies, trade associations, non-profits, and individuals in high-stakes litigation and administrative proceedings, with a particular focus on environmental and energy matters.
In addition to trial-level work, Mr. Buschbacher maintains an active appellate practice, both as merits counsel and as counsel for amici curiae. He has written amicus briefs quoted by the Seventh and Ninth Circuits. And his Supreme Court advocacy has been cited by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and E&E News. Mr. Buschbacher’s commentary on legal issues has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The American Conservative.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Buschbacher served at the U.S. Department of Justice as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. There, he advised senior Department leadership, served as the lead attorney on several lawsuits, and helped draft policy memoranda for the Department on the proper scope and procedure for environmental enforcement. Prior to serving in the government, Mr. Buschbacher was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Buschbacher is a former clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Magistrate Judge Paul R. Cherry of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
Mr. Buschbacher holds a B.A. in Music and Germanic Studies from Indiana University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School.
Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice and Founder and Faculty Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University Law School
The founder and faculty director of the groundbreaking Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and one of the foremost environmental lawyers in the nation, Michael Gerrard is an advocate, litigator, teacher, and scholar who has pioneered cutting-edge legal tools and strategies for addressing climate change. He writes and teaches courses on environmental law, climate change law, and energy regulation. He was the chair of the faculty of Columbia University’s renowned Earth Institute from 2015 to 2018 and now holds a joint appointment to the faculty of its successor, the Columbia Climate School.
For three decades, before joining the Columbia Law School faculty in 2009, Gerrard practiced law in New York, most recently as the partner in charge of the New York office of Arnold & Porter. As an environmental lawyer, he tried numerous cases and argued many appeals in federal and state courts and administrative tribunals. He also handled the environmental aspects of diverse transactions and development projects and provided regulatory compliance advice to an array of clients in the private and public sectors. Several publications rated him the leading environmental lawyer in New York and one of the leaders in the world.
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance, American Enterprise Institute; Executive Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. He also directs the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
He writes on regulation and constitutional government for a variety of publications. He practiced law in Washington, D.C., after clerking for the D.C. Circuit's Judge David Sentelle. He also has been chairman of the ABA's Administrative Law Section.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court.
Senior Legal Fellow, Pacific Legal Foundation
Steve Davis is a Senior Legal Fellow in Pacific Legal Foundation’s Constitutional Scholarship group and chair's the Federalist Society's Property Rights Practice Group Executive Committee. Steve’s work at PLF focuses on the study of the U.S. Constitution’s protection of property rights, and he plans and conducts Pacific Legal Foundation-sponsored conferences, symposia, and academic workshops on property rights issues and the Constitution. He enjoys pursuing constitutional scholarship research, writing, and speaking and is a frequent speaker at law and history seminars.
Prior to joining PLF, Steve litigated all stages of property rights cases in federal trial and appellate courts in private practice at large and small law firms. He filed property rights claims on behalf of hundreds of private property owners who own land in over a dozen states against the federal government, litigating those claims through trial and appeal. He also maintained a robust amicus-party practice in the U.S. Supreme Court, filing briefs on behalf of many legal scholars and public-interest groups.
Beginning in 2006, Steve served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, litigating civil rights, constitutional tort, tort, and employment discrimination claims in federal district court and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Following law school, Steve began his legal career pursing his passion for public policy and the legislative process in the Missouri legislature, where he served first as chief of staff to the minority leader of the Missouri House of Representatives and then was twice elected by the members of the House as the House’s 62nd Chief Clerk and Administrator.
Senior Director of Legislation and Research, California YIMBY
M. Nolan Gray is the Senior Director of Legislation and Research for California YIMBY and a professional city planner. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in city planning at UCLA. Gray currently lives in Los Angeles, where he serves on the North Westwood Neighborhood Council. He is a widely published author, with work appearing in outlets such as The Atlantic, Bloomberg Citylab, and The Guardian.
Partner, Holland & Knight
Jennifer Hernandez has practiced land use and environmental law for more than 30 years, and leads Holland & Knight's West Coast Land Use and Environmental Group. Ms. Hernandez divides her time between the firm's San Francisco and Los Angeles offices.
Ms. Hernandez is the only California lawyer ranked by her clients and peers in Chambers USA in the top tier of both land use/zoning and environmental lawyers. In addition, she was recognized as the top environmental litigator of the year in the San Francisco Bay Area by Best Lawyers, and received a California Lawyer of the Year award from the State Bar of California for her work on California's largest and most innovative land use and conservation agreement between her private landowner client and five major environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council. She also has received numerous civil rights awards for her work on overcoming environmentalist opposition to housing and other projects needed and supported by minority communities.
During his tenure as mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown named October 9, 2002, as "Jennifer Hernandez Day" in San Francisco in honor of her work as a "warrior on the Brownfields" to restore and redevelop former industrial lands. Ms. Hernandez is the longest-serving minority board member (23 years) of the California League of Conservation voters, was appointed by President Clinton to serve as a trustee for the Presidio National Park in San Francisco, and serves on the board of directors for California Forward and Sustainable Conservation.
Ms. Hernandez works for private sector, public agency and nonprofit clients on a broad range of projects in Bay Area, Southern California and Central Valley communities, including infill and master-planned mixed-use housing and commercial projects, university and research facilities, transportation and infrastructure projects, renewable and other energy projects, and local agency plan and ordinance updates. She has written three books, and more than 50 articles, on environmental and land use topics, and regularly teaches land use, environmental and climate law in law and business schools, colleges and seminars. She also serves on the firm's Directors Committee and received the firm's highest honor – the Chesterfield Smith Award – for her community service.
Ms. Hernandez graduated with honors from Harvard University and Stanford Law School, and clerked for Region 20 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) before beginning her land use and environmental law career. Ms. Hernandez is the daughter and granddaughter of steelworkers and was raised in Pittsburg, California. She and her husband live in Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Associate Professor, Charleston School of Law
Bill Merkel joined the Charleston School of Law faculty in 2012. Merkel graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in history in 1988 and proceeded to work as a cook in Baltimore and then as an analyst with the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C. before returning to graduate studies in history and law.
He completed his J.D. at Columbia Law School in 1996 and then worked in appellate litigation with Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington, D.C. from 1997-1998. Merkel is the author, with the late Richard Uviller, of The Militia and the Right to Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent (Duke University Press, 2002). He taught American history at Oxford University from 2001-2003 and Comparative Introduction to American Law to foreign trained LL.M. students at Columbia Law School from 2003-2005. From 2005-2011, Merkel was an Associate Professor of Law at Washburn Law School in Topeka, Kansas, where he was named Professor of the Year by the graduating class in 2008. At Washburn, Merkel taught Constitutional Law I & II, Comparative Constitutional Law, Public International Law, and International Criminal Law and the Law of War. He received a doctorate in history from Oxford University in 2007.
Merkel has held visiting positions at the University of North Dakota School of Law in 2009 and at the University of South Carolina School of Law in 2011-12. In 2013 and 2014, Merkel taught The United States and the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands as part of the Charleston School of Law’s summer school consortium program administered by Stetson University School of Law. At the Charleston School of Law, Merkel continues to teach courses in Constitutional Law, International Law, Comparative Law, and Legal History. Merkel’s article “Jefferson’s Failed Anti-Slavery Proviso of 1784 and the Nascence of Free Soil Constitutionalism” was selected as the best submission in constitutional history by the Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum in 2006. Merkel is in the process of revising his Oxford doctoral thesis “Race, Liberty, and Law: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery, 1770-1800” for publication as a book to be titled Ambiguous Beginnings: Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism. Merkel has published numerous articles in journals including the Chicago-Kent Law Review, Connecticut Law Review, Lewis and Clark Law Review, Santa Clara Law Review, Seton Hall Law Review, Rutgers Law Review, and Law and History Review. His scholarship on the Second Amendment has been cited by many authors and jurists, including Justice Breyer in a dissenting opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago. In 2013, following the successful defense of his dissertation “The Second Amendment and the Constitutional Right to Self-Defense,” Merkel was awarded a J.S.D. degree by Columbia University.
Merkel is a member of the District of Columbia, New York, and United States Supreme Court Bars.
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is a visiting member of the Senior Common Room, New College, Oxford University and a Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford University. Mark is also a Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law. He hosts the Four Boxes Diner YouTube Channel (youtube.com/TheFourBoxesDiner), which addresses Second Amendment scholarship, cases, history and related issues, and whose videos have received almost 90 million views. Mark's scholarship has been cited by federal courts and by parties before the United States Supreme Court in Viramontes v. Cook County, New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen and in United States v. Rahimi. He is a graduate of the NYU School of Law. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author who appears frequently in the national media including on the Fox News Channel.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Amul R. Thapar serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. His judicial career began in 2007 when President George W. Bush nominated him to serve on the Eastern District of Kentucky, making him the first South Asian Article III judge in American history. In 2017, he became President Donald J. Trump’s first appellate court nominee.
Before joining the bench, Judge Thapar served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. While United States Attorney, Judge Thapar worked on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (“AGAC”) and chaired the AGAC’s Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture subcommittee. He also served on the Terrorism and National Security subcommittee, the Violent Crime subcommittee, and the Child Exploitation working group.
Judge Thapar has worked in private practice, at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cincinnati, Ohio. He also served as an Assistant United States Attorney in both the Southern District of Ohio and the District of Columbia.
Judge Thapar received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating, Judge Thapar worked as a law clerk to the Honorable S. Arthur Spiegel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Judge Thapar has also published in the Yale Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, and Catholic University Law Review. He teaches courses on originalism, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and legal writing at Notre Dame Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Vanderbilt Law School.
Managing Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
David Thompson is the Managing Partner of Cooper & Kirk and joined the firm at its founding. Mr. Thompson has extensive trial and appellate experience in a wide range of matters and has secured victories worth billions of dollars. He has successfully challenged numerous laws on Second Amendment grounds. He has also litigated cases in over 30 federal district courts, argued in each of the 13 federal circuit courts of appeal, and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as many state courts. Mr. Thompson was awarded an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1991, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1994, Mr. Thompson received a J.D. degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Amul R. Thapar serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. His judicial career began in 2007 when President George W. Bush nominated him to serve on the Eastern District of Kentucky, making him the first South Asian Article III judge in American history. In 2017, he became President Donald J. Trump’s first appellate court nominee.
Before joining the bench, Judge Thapar served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. While United States Attorney, Judge Thapar worked on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (“AGAC”) and chaired the AGAC’s Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture subcommittee. He also served on the Terrorism and National Security subcommittee, the Violent Crime subcommittee, and the Child Exploitation working group.
Judge Thapar has worked in private practice, at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cincinnati, Ohio. He also served as an Assistant United States Attorney in both the Southern District of Ohio and the District of Columbia.
Judge Thapar received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating, Judge Thapar worked as a law clerk to the Honorable S. Arthur Spiegel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Judge Thapar has also published in the Yale Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, and Catholic University Law Review. He teaches courses on originalism, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and legal writing at Notre Dame Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Vanderbilt Law School.
Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Tim Rosenberger serves as Senior Counsel at the United States Department of Education. He was previously a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Stanford University’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. He was also the founding COO of Verbum Labs and serves as a Chaplain with the Cleveland Division of Police. Before matriculating to law school, he was a legal policy fellow at the Cicero Institute, a parish pastor, and a management consultant with McKinsey & Company.
Tim has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The New York Post, and City Journal. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, testifies before state legislatures, and files dozens of amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court and various circuit courts.
He holds an AB from Georgetown University, a M.Div. from United Lutheran Seminary, a D.Min from the Rawlings School of Divinity, an LL.M. from Universität Wien, and a JD/MBA from Stanford University, where he was Federalist Society Chapter President and served on Law Review. Tim’s research interests lie at the intersection of law, faith, education and entrepreneurship—with a particular focus on leveraging policy to help America’s overlooked populations build lives of dignity.
Associate Professor, Charleston School of Law
Bill Merkel joined the Charleston School of Law faculty in 2012. Merkel graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in history in 1988 and proceeded to work as a cook in Baltimore and then as an analyst with the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C. before returning to graduate studies in history and law.
He completed his J.D. at Columbia Law School in 1996 and then worked in appellate litigation with Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington, D.C. from 1997-1998. Merkel is the author, with the late Richard Uviller, of The Militia and the Right to Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent (Duke University Press, 2002). He taught American history at Oxford University from 2001-2003 and Comparative Introduction to American Law to foreign trained LL.M. students at Columbia Law School from 2003-2005. From 2005-2011, Merkel was an Associate Professor of Law at Washburn Law School in Topeka, Kansas, where he was named Professor of the Year by the graduating class in 2008. At Washburn, Merkel taught Constitutional Law I & II, Comparative Constitutional Law, Public International Law, and International Criminal Law and the Law of War. He received a doctorate in history from Oxford University in 2007.
Merkel has held visiting positions at the University of North Dakota School of Law in 2009 and at the University of South Carolina School of Law in 2011-12. In 2013 and 2014, Merkel taught The United States and the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands as part of the Charleston School of Law’s summer school consortium program administered by Stetson University School of Law. At the Charleston School of Law, Merkel continues to teach courses in Constitutional Law, International Law, Comparative Law, and Legal History. Merkel’s article “Jefferson’s Failed Anti-Slavery Proviso of 1784 and the Nascence of Free Soil Constitutionalism” was selected as the best submission in constitutional history by the Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum in 2006. Merkel is in the process of revising his Oxford doctoral thesis “Race, Liberty, and Law: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery, 1770-1800” for publication as a book to be titled Ambiguous Beginnings: Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism. Merkel has published numerous articles in journals including the Chicago-Kent Law Review, Connecticut Law Review, Lewis and Clark Law Review, Santa Clara Law Review, Seton Hall Law Review, Rutgers Law Review, and Law and History Review. His scholarship on the Second Amendment has been cited by many authors and jurists, including Justice Breyer in a dissenting opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago. In 2013, following the successful defense of his dissertation “The Second Amendment and the Constitutional Right to Self-Defense,” Merkel was awarded a J.S.D. degree by Columbia University.
Merkel is a member of the District of Columbia, New York, and United States Supreme Court Bars.
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is a visiting member of the Senior Common Room, New College, Oxford University and a Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford University. Mark is also a Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law. He hosts the Four Boxes Diner YouTube Channel (youtube.com/TheFourBoxesDiner), which addresses Second Amendment scholarship, cases, history and related issues, and whose videos have received almost 90 million views. Mark's scholarship has been cited by federal courts and by parties before the United States Supreme Court in Viramontes v. Cook County, New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen and in United States v. Rahimi. He is a graduate of the NYU School of Law. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author who appears frequently in the national media including on the Fox News Channel.
Managing Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
David Thompson is the Managing Partner of Cooper & Kirk and joined the firm at its founding. Mr. Thompson has extensive trial and appellate experience in a wide range of matters and has secured victories worth billions of dollars. He has successfully challenged numerous laws on Second Amendment grounds. He has also litigated cases in over 30 federal district courts, argued in each of the 13 federal circuit courts of appeal, and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as many state courts. Mr. Thompson was awarded an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1991, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1994, Mr. Thompson received a J.D. degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Lawrence VanDyke serves as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to that appointment in January 2020, he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice. Before that, he served consecutively as the Solicitor General of two western states – Nevada and Montana. At the beginning of his legal career, he worked as an attorney in the Appellate and Constitutional Issues practice group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.
Judge VanDyke received his law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He has engineering and theology undergraduate degrees and a masters degree in engineering management. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge VanDyke and his wife Cheryl live in Reno, Nevada, and they have three children.
Secretary of State, Commonwealth of Kentucky
Joseph P. Chamberlain Professor of Legislation, Columbia Law
Since joining the Columbia Law School faculty in 1983, Richard Briffault has combined public and government service with teaching, research, and scholarship. He is the Law School’s authority on state and local government; the news media often turns to him for his expert insight into and analysis of issues central to democracy and the political process such as campaign finance reform, government ethics, gerrymandering, election administration, and fair elections. He is also a leading thinker on “the new preemption,” a critique of states that are increasingly passing ideological laws that override local ordinances. Working with the Local Solutions Support Center, he educates city and county government officials on how to respond to state preemption.
Briffault is a pillar of the Columbia Law School community. He has served as a vice dean at three different times during his career. He sits on the advisory board of The Max Berger ’71 Public Interest/Public Service Fellows Program and on the board of directors of the Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems.
A prodigious scholar, Briffault has written or coauthored more than 90 law review and journal articles as well as books and monographs, including Dollars and Democracy: A Blueprint for Campaign Finance Reform; Cleaning Up Hazardous Waste: Is There a Better Way?; the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth editions of the casebook State and Local Government Law; and The New Preemption Reader.
Before becoming an academic, Briffault was a clerk to Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, an assistant counsel to New York Governor Hugh L. Carey, and an associate at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. During his tenure at Columbia Law, he has served as a member of, or consultant to, an array of New York state and city commissions, including the New York State Moreland Act Commission to Investigate Public Corruption. From 2014 to 2020, Briffault served as chair of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board. He is the reporter for the American Law Institute’s Project on Principles of Government Ethics, vice-chair of the Citizens Union of the City of New York, and a member of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics.
Professor of Law, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Judge Hardiman was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on January 9, 2007 and was confirmed by the Senate (95-0) on March 15, 2007. Prior to becoming an appellate judge, Judge Hardiman served as a trial judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania as of November 1, 2003. In 2008, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Judge Hardiman to the Information Technology Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Judge Hardiman was appointed Chairman of the IT Committee in 2013 and served in that capacity until September 2021. In 2021 he was appointed by the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts to serve as Chair of the Judiciary IT Security Task Force, which completed its work in fall 2023. Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge Hardiman to the Board of the Federal Judicial Center to serve from March 2020 until March 2024. As part of his work with the Center, Judge Hardiman now serves as Editor in Chief for the Manual for Complex Civil Litigation, Fifth.
Before entering judicial service, Judge Hardiman handled a wide variety of litigation matters in state and federal trial and appellate courts as a partner at Reed Smith LLP (1999-2003), a partner at Titus & McConomy LLP (1996-1999), and as an associate with its predecessor firm, Cindrich & Titus (1992-1996). Judge Hardiman began his legal career as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (1990-1992).
A 1987 honors graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Judge Hardiman received his law degree in 1990 from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as a Notes and Comments Editor on the Georgetown Law Journal. In 2012, Judge Hardiman was elected as a member of the American Law Institute and was elected to its Council in 2019 and its Executive Committee in 2025. Judge Hardiman regularly teaches a seminar on Advanced Constitutional Law at Duquesne University School of Law and a one-week course entitled “Constitutional Law: the First and Second Amendments” at Georgetown University Law Center.
A native of Waltham, Massachusetts, Judge Hardiman has chambers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Lori married in 1992 and have three children.
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Richard H. Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. His acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (now in its fourth edition), helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. The Law of Democracy systematically explores legal and policy issues concerning the structure of democratic elections and institutions, such as the role of money in politics, the design of election districts, the regulation of political parties, the design of voting systems, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and similar issues. He has written extensively on the rise of political polarization in the United States, the Voting Rights Act, the dysfunction of America’s political processes, the role of the Supreme Court in overseeing American democracy, the powers of the American President and Congress, and he has criticized excessively “romantic” understandings of democracy. In addition to his scholarship on these issues, he has written on national-security law, the design of the regulatory state, and American constitutional history and theory.
Respect for his expertise in these areas is reflected in frequent citations of his work in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the translation of his work into many languages, and his frequent public lectures and appearances around the world, including his nomination with the NBC News Team for an Emmy Award for coverage of the 2000 Presidential election litigation.
His work has been translated and published in Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In addition to his scholarship, Professor Pildes plays an active role litigating in these areas. He has won two cases before the United States Supreme Court, including a 2015 victory in Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, a case involving race and redistricting. He served as counsel to a group of former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission in litigation defending the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; as counsel in election litigation to the Puerto Rico Electoral Commission; as counsel to the government of Puerto Rico; as a federal court-appointed independent expert on voting rights litigation; and as counsel in successful Supreme Court litigation that challenged the way the United States Tax Court operated. He was also a senior legal advisor to the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of President Obama.
Pildes received his A.B. in physical chemistry summa cum laude from Princeton, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he served as Supreme Court Note Editor on the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing law in Boston, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan Law School, before joining the NYU School of Law in 2001.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Director of Equality and Opportunity Litigation, Pacific Legal Foundation
Joshua directs the litigation for PLF’s Equality and Opportunity Program, where he fights to dismantle unconstitutional barriers to opportunity, freeing individuals to rise based on their choices, character, and ability.
Joshua joined PLF as an attorney in 2007. His litigation practice has covered all PLF subject areas with a particular focus on equality and opportunity. Joshua argued PLF’s 13th case before the United States Supreme Court, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, where the court ruled that a California regulation that allowed union organizers onto private property violated the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. Other litigation highlights of his include ending a decades-long racial quota in Hartford, Connecticut, lifting a ban on boys’ dancing in Minnesota, and vindicating an entrepreneur’s right to start a moving business in Kentucky.
Joshua’s writings have been published by the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. And his research has been published in journals such as Texas Review of Law & Politics, Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review, Journal of Civil Rights & Economic Development, and Northern Illinois University Law Review. He has appeared on national television and radio, including PBS Newshour, NPR’s All things Considered, Stossel, and Univision.
Joshua earned his BA with distinction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a triple major in political science, international relations, and German. He earned his JD cum laude from Michigan State College of Law where he was on the law review and trial practice institute. Joshua lives in Sacramento, California with his wife and three children. He loves playing chess and rooting for Wisconsin sports teams.
Joshua is a member of the bar only in the state of California.
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