University Professor of Law and Executive Director, Liberty & Law Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
David Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Turin, and Hebrew University. Professor Bernstein teaches Constitutional Law, Evidence, and Products Liability.
A prolific author, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. He is the author of five books, and coauthor of two more. Professor Bernstein’s book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as “intellectual history in its highest form,” a “fresh perspective and a cogent analysis,” “delightful and informative,” “sharp and iconoclastic,” and “a terrific work of historical revisionism.” Columnist George Will praised Bernstein’s most recent book, Classified, The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, as “perhaps the most consequential American book of 2022.”
Professor Bernstein has also written dozens of articles and essays published in major law reviews, including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. An article he coauthored, Defending Daubert: It’s Time to Amend Federal Rule of Evidence 702, directly inspired a pending amendment to Rule 702.
Professor Bernstein blogs at the Instapundit.com, the Times of Israel, and the Volokh Conspiracy. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy.
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Roundup Weedkiller Litigation
David Bernstein
In a series of recent decisions, both federal and state courts have allowed the admission...
Colloquium: Junk Science, the Courts, and the Regulatory State (part II)
Jeffrey Bossert Clark
This article is part two of a two-part series covering the colloquium held on July...