Partner and Co-Chair, Public Policy Group, Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP
Mark Behrens co-chairs Shook's Washington, DC-based Public Policy Practice Group and is a leading national expert on civil justice issues with over thirty years of experience. A substantial part of his practice is working to improve the civil litigation environment through state and federal legislation; in the courts through amicus curiae briefs; through legal scholarship and judicial education; and in the court of public opinion.
Mark is actively involved in civil justice reform efforts at the federal and state levels. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and most state legislatures on behalf of business and civil justice organizations. Mark also has an active amicus brief practice specializing in tort liability and civil justice issues. He has authored or co-authored over 150 amicus briefs in cases before the United States Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts on behalf of business, civil justice, and defense lawyer organizations. In addition, Mark routinely files comments on behalf of business, civil justice, and defense lawyer organizations regarding potential changes to federal and state court rules. He chairs the International Association of Defense Counsel’s (IADC) Civil Justice Response Committee and serves on the Board of Directors of Lawyers for Civil Justice (LCJ).
Mark is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He received his J.D. in 1990 from Vanderbilt University Law School, where he was a member of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his B.A. in economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1987.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig LLP
Troy A. Eid focuses his litigation, mediation and transactional practice on government enforcement, investigations and compliance, environmental law, energy and natural resource development, and Federal Indian law and Native American and Alaska Native tribal law. Troy is a trusted advocate and mediator in the Rocky Mountain West and in federal, state and tribal trial and appellate courtrooms across the country.
President and CEO, The Buckeye Institute
Robert Alt is the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Buckeye Institute where he has catalyzed exponential growth since he took the organization’s helm in 2012. He has since founded Buckeye’s renowned Economic Research Center and established its impactful Legal Center.
Alt is a distinguished scholar and attorney with particular expertise in legal policy, criminal justice, national security, and constitutional law. He previously worked for former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, regularly provides commentary on television and radio programs, and his writings have appeared in countless outlets.
In 2004, Alt spent five months in Iraq as an embedded war correspondent.
Alt has testified before Congress multiple times—including at the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan—the Federal Election Commission regarding matters of constitutional and administrative law, and numerous state legislatures.
Alt serves as an officer on the boards of The Philadelphia Society and the Federalist Society’s Columbus Lawyers Chapter. He taught national security law, criminal law, and legislation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, as well as constitutional law and political parties and interest groups at Ashland University.
Alt earned his Doctor of Law degree from The University of Chicago Law School, where he was Symposium Editor and the winner of the Mulroy Prize for Excellence in Appellate Advocacy as well as research assistant to Professor Richard Epstein. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Alice Batchelder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Alt graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and political science magna cum laude from Azusa Pacific University where he also won the Outstanding Senior Award in Political Science.
Alt is an accomplished high-altitude alpinist and endurance athlete who has successfully climbed 6.75 of the famed Seven Summits of the World including Mount Everest. He is the creator of PROFOUND CLIMBING™ and a frequent speaker across the country and around the world on legal and public policy topics as well as effective leadership, management, decision-making, and teamwork in contexts ranging from extraordinary life/death situations to ordinary professional/business settings.
Partner, Spencer Fane LLP
Andy Lester has a civil litigation and appellate practice in both state and federal court. His fields of emphasis include complex business, civil rights, commercial, constitutional, and state and local government law. He has faced off against the White House over the use of Executive Privilege, has appeared as counsel before committees of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, and has been a featured guest on television shows such as Hardball with Chris Matthews and The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. He has also served as Acting General Counsel for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and has twice served as Chief Counsel to Special House Committees investigating public corruption.
While in law school, Lester served on President Ronald Reagan’s Transition Team for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2002, he chaired Governor Brad Henry’s Law Enforcement/Corrections Transition Team and, as a member of the Budget/Finance Transition Team, helped write Governor Henry’s first State budget.
He is a former United States Magistrate Judge for the Western District of Oklahoma, and has served as Adjunct Professor at Oklahoma City University School of Law, having taught State & Local Government, Employment Law, Criminal Law, and International Law. Lester has written over 100 articles and papers on professional and public policy issues, and has published one book, Constitutional Law and Democracy, a collection of speeches he gave in 1993 in the former Soviet Union.
Lester is a former member of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, and in 2019 was named a State Regent Emeritus. He served on the board of Eureka College (President Reagan’s alma mater), is a former chairman of the Oklahoma Advisory Committee for the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and is a past president, past board chairman, and current board member of the Tenth Circuit Historical Society. He co-chaired the bipartisan Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, which conducted the first-ever independent, objective, and thorough review of the state’s entire capital punishment system.
In 2012, Lester was named Citizen of the Year of Edmond, Oklahoma. He is a past president of the Rotary Club of Edmond, and in 2011 was named Rotarian of the Year.
Director, Commercial Freedom; Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
C. Jarrett Dieterle researches and writes on regulatory affairs, alcohol policy, occupational licensing and other commercial freedom issues. He also oversees the Institute’s postal, labor and disintermediation policy programs.
Jarrett previously worked as a regulatory attorney at a Washington law firm. In that role, he advised private companies on how to navigate complex regulatory regimes and helped them challenge overreaching regulations. He also practiced appellate advocacy, co-authoring several Supreme Court amicus briefs. He previously clerked for a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and has worked and written for numerous policy organizations and think tanks such as the Reason Foundation, Manhattan Institute, Mackinac Center, Federalist Society, Institute for Justice, Atlantic Legal Foundation and the Washington Legal Foundation.
Jarrett earned his bachelor’s from the University of Richmond, with a major in political science and minor in economics. He received his juris doctor from Georgetown University Law Center.
Jarrett currently lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife, Maria, and their Australian shepherd, Pepper.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig LLP
Troy A. Eid focuses his litigation, mediation and transactional practice on government enforcement, investigations and compliance, environmental law, energy and natural resource development, and Federal Indian law and Native American and Alaska Native tribal law. Troy is a trusted advocate and mediator in the Rocky Mountain West and in federal, state and tribal trial and appellate courtrooms across the country.
Senior Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Julie Marie Blake serves as senior counsel for regulatory litigation at Alliance Defending Freedom. Over the last decade, she has been on the front lines of high-profile, precedent-setting cases challenging federal overreach in courts across the country.
Blake served as deputy solicitor general for the state of Missouri from 2017 to 2020 and as assistant solicitor general for the state of West Virginia from 2013 to 2017. In these roles, she argued 26 federal and state appeals, including before the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. She received the Best Brief Award from National Association of Attorneys General for her U.S. Supreme Court advocacy.
Before entering government service in 2013, Blake was a litigation associate at Baker Botts L.L.P., where she served as volunteer amicus counsel in several ADF cases, including Town of Greece v. Galloway.
Following law school, she served as a law clerk for Judge Paul J. Kelly, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She received her J.D. magna cum laude from Notre Dame Law School in 2009. She received her B.A. in Politics and Theology & Religious Studies phi beta kappa from the Catholic University of America in 2006. She is a 2007 Blackstone Fellow.
Blake is admitted to practice in multiple states, the Supreme Court, and in many federal district and appellate courts.
Senior Counsel and VP, Appellate Advocacy, Alliance Defending Freedom
John Bursch is senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy with Alliance Defending Freedom. Bursch has argued 12 U.S. Supreme Court cases and more than 30 state supreme court cases since 2011, and a recent study concluded that among all frequent Supreme Court advocates who did not work for the federal government, he had the 3rd highest success rate for persuading justices to adopt his legal position.
Bursch served as solicitor general for the state of Michigan from 2011-2013. He has argued multiple Michigan Supreme Court cases in eight of the last ten terms and has successfully litigated hundreds of matters nationwide, including six with at least $1 billion at stake. As part of his private firm, Bursch Law PLLC, he has represented Fortune 500 companies, foreign and domestic governments, top public officials, and industry associations in high-profile cases, primarily on appeal. He was inducted into the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and serves as a member of the American Law Institute. His work has resulted in repeated listings in Michigan Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers.
Before entering private practice, Bursch served as a law clerk to the Honorable James B. Loken on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1997 from the University of Minnesota Law School, where he served as Chief Note & Comment Editor for the Minnesota Law Review. Prior to that, he attended Western Michigan University, where he received degrees in mathematics and music performance summa cum laude.
Attorney, EdChoice
Bryan Cleveland is an Attorney with EdChoice Legal Advocates, where he represents parents in defending school choice programs as part of EdChoice's partnership with the Institute for Justice.
Before joining EdChoice, Mr. Cleveland was the General Counsel for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, where he helped a newly elected state superintendent advance school choice and parental rights in Oklahoma. Prior to that role, he was the Deputy Solicitor General for the State of Oklahoma, where he handled the State’s most pressing cases in federal and state district courts and on appeal. He also previously was a law clerk for Judge Steve Grasz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, a law clerk for Judge Henry Morgan in the Eastern District of Virginia, and an associate at a top law firm in Washington, D.C.
He received a bachelor’s degree from Biola University and a law degree from Harvard Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Before law school, he advised a member of Congress on legislation and communications.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
2020 Civil Justice Update
Mark A. Behrens
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
McGirt v. Oklahoma: The Decision [SCOTUSbrief]
Troy A. Eid
Under the Major Crimes Act, Indian tribes have concurrent jurisdiction in their reservation territories for...
Criminal Law Update: A Survey of State Law Changes in 2019
Robert Alt
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
The Supreme Court in 2020: A Conversation with John Bursch
Jefferson City Lawyers Chapter - Online Event
Supreme Court Round Up (2019 - 2020)
Tulsa Lawyers Chapter
Tulsa, OKMcGirt v. Oklahoma - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Andy Lester
On July 9, the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma. Jimcy...
State Court Docket Watch: Institute For Responsible Alcohol Policy v. Oklahoma ex rel. Alcohol Beverage Laws Enforcement Comm.
Jarrett Dieterle
In January 2020, the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld a challenge under the Oklahoma Constitution to...
McGirt v. Oklahoma - Post-Argument SCOTUScast
Troy A. Eid
On May 11, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which...
The Supreme Court Declines to Consider a Constitutional Challenge to Wisconsin’s Unified Bar
On June 1, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Jarchow v. State...
Topics
New Op-Ed About Oklahoma Opioid Verdict
On August 26, 2019, Judge Thad Balkman, District Court of Cleveland County, State of Oklahoma,...