Professor of Law and the Mike and Teresa Baker College Professor, The University of Houston Law Center
Johnny Rex Buckles has been a faculty member of the University of Houston Law Center since August of 2000. He has also served as a Visiting Professor of Law at the Washington & Lee University School of Law. Professor Buckles has taught Taxation of Exempt Organizations, Federal Income Tax, Law & Theology, Estate Planning, Trusts & Wills, Contracts and Tax Policy Seminar. Professor Buckles’ primary research interests are in the law of tax and charity, and in law and theology. His publications include a number of law review articles and contributions to collective works. Professor Buckles holds a Juris Doctorate from the Harvard Law School, a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Bachelor of Science from Oklahoma State University.
T.J. Maloney Chair in Business Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Griffith is an expert in corporate and financial regulatory law. He writes and speaks on corporate law, political economy, and the constitutional rights of corporations and other business associations. In addition to his academic writing, he has authored or contributed to many amicus briefs, including: Iowa v SEC, NCPPR v SEC, AFBR v SEC, and In re Tesla.
Associate Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Ben Johnson is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He researches and writes on governance by committees. Sometimes, the governing committee is a board of directors. Other times, it is a committee of justices at the Supreme Court. His research has won awards from national organizations in law (AALS) and political science (APSA) and can be found in law reviews and peer reviewed outlets. His recent work on the Supreme Court has been published in the Columbia Law Review and Alabama Law Review. Earlier work on district judges with financial conflicts (published in the North Carolina Law Review) led to a large exposé in the Wall Street Journal. His game theoretic model of corporate fiduciary duties is forthcoming at the BYU Law Review. He has ongoing projects on the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket, corporate fiduciary duties, shareholder voting, and machine learning.
Professor Johnson teaches Corporations (the only course in the curriculum where students learn to build and maintain institutions that can make the world a better place long after they are gone), Empirical Methods for Lawyers, and topics on the federal judiciary.
Professor of Law and J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow, University of North Dakota School of Law
Michael S. McGinniss is Professor of Law and J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow at the University of North Dakota School of Law, where he joined the faculty in 2010 and served as the Dean from 2019 to 2022. He chairs the executive committee for the Federalist Society's Practice Group on Professional Responsibility and Legal Education.
Before entering the legal academy, Professor McGinniss served for twelve years as a Disciplinary Counsel for the Supreme Court of Delaware. He teaches courses including Professional Responsibility, Advanced Legal Ethics, Civil Procedure, and Federal Courts. He also serves as Faculty Advisor for the North Dakota Law Review and the UND Law Federalist Society student chapter.
Professor McGinniss’ research and scholarship interests are wide-ranging and include lawyer and judicial ethics, constitutional law (especially First Amendment, separation of powers, and federalism), and cultural challenges faced by conservatives in the law schools and the legal profession. His most recent law review article, Declaring Independence to Secure Integrity: The Supreme Court Justices' Code of Conduct, was published in the Federalist Society Review. His article Expressing Conscience with Candor: Saint Thomas More and First Freedoms in the Legal Profession, was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Professor McGinniss has spoken to Federalist Society lawyer and student chapters across the country about judicial independence and ethics, especially relating to the federal courts and the United States Supreme Court Justices. He has also provides talks addressing rising challenges to ideological diversity and targeting of conservative viewpoints in law schools and the legal profession, and his current research is focusing on the impacts of ideological biases and public policy disagreements on lawyer discipline processes.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship, Professor of Law, Liberty University
Timothy M. Todd, Ph.D., serves as Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship and Professor of Law. He also serves as the Director of the Wealth Management and Financial Planning Program at the law school, which has the distinction of being the first exclusively JD-based, CFP Board–registered program in the country.
He earned his Ph.D. in Personal Financial Planning from Kansas State University. He also earned a Master of Science (M.S.) in Applied Economics (with a concentration in Financial Economics) from the Johns Hopkins University. Moreover, he earned a Graduate Certificate in Applied Statistics from Kansas State University.
Dr. Todd has taught an array of courses, including individual income taxation; taxation of estates and gifts; wills, trusts, and estates; mergers and acquisitions; business planning; and bankruptcy, among others.
Todd graduated summa cum laude from Liberty University School of Law, where he graduated first in his class and served as managing editor of the law review. He clerked for the Honorable Eric G. Bruggink of the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Todd has the distinct privilege of being the first Liberty Law alumnus to join the law school faculty full time. Todd also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2016 to 2020, and he now serves as the first Associate Dean of Faculty Development & Scholarship at Liberty Law.
Dean Todd serves as a regular Forbes contributor, writing about taxes, tax planning, tax cases, and related areas.
In 2015 he was awarded an ATAX Research Fellowship, being named the 2015 John Raneri Fellow at the University of New South Wales School of Taxation and Business Law in Sydney, Australia.
Todd has been quoted in outlets such as Bloomberg, Bloomberg BNA Daily Tax Report, Tax Notes, Tax Notes Today, Accounting Today, and Business News Daily.
He is a former chair and vice chair of the ABA Section of Taxation’s Individual and Family Taxation Committee. He is a member of the AICPA National Financial Literacy Commission. He also serves as a council member for the Virginia Bar Association Taxation Section. Moreover, he has worked with the ABA’s Joint Task Force on Governance Issues for Distressed Companies, and he formerly served as a member of the AICPA’s Tax Practice and Procedures Committee.
Dr. Todd’s research and teaching interests include taxation, business planning, and corporate law, among other topics. His works have been published in Tax Notes, State Tax Notes, Texas A&M Law Review, Virginia Tax Review, Buffalo Law Review, University of Pittsburgh Law Review, Marquette Law Review, the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review, the Journal of Taxation, the University of Kansas Law Review, the South Carolina Law Review, the Charleston Law Review, the Journal of Tax Practice and Procedure, and the Liberty University Law Review.
In addition, he also holds an M.S. in Accounting, and he graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Business (specializing in finance) from Liberty University.
Todd is licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is admitted to the bars of the Supreme Court of Virginia, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the United States Court of Federal Claims, and the United States Tax Court. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar, the Virginia Bar Association, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the American Academy of Attorney-Certified Public Accountants.
Resident Fellow, Yale Law School
Lorianne Updike Toler is a constitutional legal historian and president of Libertas Constitutional Consulting, where she specializes in constitution-writing best practices, having worked and lived in Libya and the MENA region. She was the “midwife” to The Quill Project at Oxford and the founding president of The Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org) in Washington, DC. A graduate of Brigham Young University’s School of Communications and Law School (magna cum laude) and Oxford (MSt), she has published, spoken, and taught on US constitutional history, comparative constitutional history, intellectual property, Christianity, and religious freedom.
Partner, Goldstein & Russell PC
Thomas C. Goldstein has argued 28 cases before the Supreme Court, including matters involving federal patent law, class action practice, labor and employment, and disability law. In addition to practicing law, Tom teaches Supreme Court Litigation at Harvard Law School and taught at Stanford Law School as well from 2004-2012.
In the Supreme Court and elsewhere, Mr. Goldstein litigates and advises clients in a broad range of issues. For example, he regularly litigates and lectures on questions of federal patent law. Mr. Goldstein frequently advises clients, litigates, and consults on legislative matters relating to the First Amendment. And he regularly represents parties in questions relating to the game of poker, including its lawfulness as a matter of federal and state law. Tom's clients include plaintiffs, criminal defendants, and major corporations such as BG Group, Home Depot, Humana, IMS Health, Nike, PokerStars, POM Wonderful, and Pemex.
In addition to practicing law, Tom founded, and is the publisher of, SCOTUSblog, which in 2013 became the only weblog ever to receive the Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media. It also won the 2013 Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi) prize for deadline reporting for its coverage of the Supreme Court’s healthcare ruling. In 2010, it became the first blog to receive the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for fostering the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system.
Tom has been repeatedly recognized as a leading member of the bar. In 2010, The National Law Journal named him one of the 40 most influential lawyers of the decade; Tom notably was ten years younger than any other law firm partner listed. Legal Times named him one of the “90 Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Last 30 Years” and praised him for “transforming the practice” of law before the Supreme Court. He is also included in both of the National Law Journal’s most recent lists of the nation’s 100 most influential lawyers (2006 and 2013). He has been repeatedly recognized as one of the nation’s top appellate advocates. GQ Magazine named him one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.
Tom is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and a member of the American Law Institute. He is involved with a number of professional organizations. He serves as the vice chair of the Amicus Committee of the ABA’s Intellectual Property Section and previously served for two years on the ABA’s Standing Committee on Amicus Curiae Briefs. In those capacities, he has authored several Supreme Court amicus briefs for the ABA. In addition, Tom serves on the boards of advisors of the Washington Legal Foundation and the Georgetown University Supreme Court Institute.
Before founding Goldstein & Howe in 1999, Tom practiced law at Boies & Schiller, LLP and at Jones Day Reavis & Pogue. Tom left the firm he founded in 2006 to create the Supreme Court Practice at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where he also was a partner and principal co-chair of the firmwide litigation practice. He returned to what is now Goldstein & Russell in 2011.
Tom clerked for the Honorable Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
7 Minute Presentations of Works in Progress Panel 2-A
24th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
San Diego, CAMoot Court: Omnicare, Inc.
Delaware Chancery Court Addresses E-Discovery
Shauna Peterson
The Delaware Court of Chancery issued four decisions in late May and early June clarifying...