Associate Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court (ret.)
Former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Barry Anderson is a 1976 graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota and a 1979 graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School. He was a member of the Minnesota Court of Appeals from August 1998 until his appointment to the Supreme Court. He was sworn in and joined the court on October 13, 2004, and served through to his retirement on May 10, 2024.
He previously was a partner in the Minneapolis and Hutchinson law firm of Arnold, Anderson & Dove, PLLP, and also served the City of Hutchinson as City Attorney from 1987 to 1998. He is certified by the Minnesota State Bar Association as a civil trial specialist.
Justice Anderson’s background includes substantial public service including as a board member and chair of variety of community organizations including service clubs, task forces and a local public access channel as well as a wide variety of other community activities.
Justice Anderson also served on the Minnesota Judicial Council, the managing body for the Minnesota Judicial Branch. He is also a frequent contributor to continuing legal education efforts on both appellate advocacy issues as well as general trial practice.
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Justice, Texas Supreme Court
Brett Busby was appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas in 2019, confirmed unanimously by the Texas Senate, and elected to a full term in 2020. He previously practiced as an appellate litigator in Houston, served on the Fourteenth Court of Appeals and the Texas Multi-District Litigation Panel, and taught at U.T. Law School as an adjunct professor.
Brett is a seventh-generation Texan, third-generation Eagle Scout, and life-long violinist who grew up in Amarillo and Austin. After graduating with high honors from Duke University and Columbia Law School, he served as a law clerk to Justices Byron R. White (Ret.) and John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court, and to Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat, U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
In private practice, Brett presented oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court and handled dozens of appeals in that Court, the Supreme Court of Texas, and federal and state appellate courts. He is board-certified in civil appellate law, and his fellow Texas appellate lawyers elected him as Chair of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section in 2018. He has also served as Chair of the Texas Bar Committee on Pattern Jury Charges (Business, Consumer, Insurance, and Employment) and as a Director of the Texas Young Lawyers Association.
Brett serves as the Court’s liaison to the Texas Access to Justice Commission and Foundation, which help assure that Texans with limited means have access to basic civil legal services. He received the 2022 Judicial Civic Education Award from the American Lawyers Alliance for his work on the Teach Texas judicial civics program, a partnership with the Houston Bar Association and the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society that sends lawyers and judges to teach seventh graders about our court system and Texas legal history. The Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists named him Appellate Judge of the Year in 2018.
Former Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court
Justice Daniel Kelly was appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Scott Walker in 2016 to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David T. Prosser, Jr.
A native of Santa Barbara, California, Kelly grew up in Arvada, Colorado. He came to Waukesha, Wisconsin to study at Carroll College (now Carroll University), where he earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Spanish in 1986. He earned his law degree from Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia in 1991.
Before joining the Court, Kelly had 19 years' experience as a private practice attorney in Wisconsin and represented clients in cases before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Kelly spent most of his private practice career at one of the largest and oldest law firms in Wisconsin. Subsequently, he served as vice president and general counsel for a philanthropic foundation, and then practiced law at a firm he owned and founded in Waukesha.
Early in his legal career, Kelly was a law clerk and then staff attorney for the Office of Special Masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, from 1992 to 1996. He worked as a law clerk for the late Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Ralph Adam Fine from 1991 to 1992.
Kelly is a member of the board of advisors and past president of the Milwaukee Lawyer's Chapter of the Federalist Society. He serves on the Carroll University President's Advisory Council and is a former member of the Wisconsin Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Kelly is married and has five children. He lives in North Prairie, Wisconsin.
Judge, District II, Wisconsin Court of Appeals
Partner, Stafford Rosenbaum, LLP
Jeff Mandell is a partner at Stafford Rosenbaum LLP, where he maintains a broad practice with specialties in election and political law, complex litigation and appeals, and issues related to the Wisconsin Fair Dealership Law. Jeff is also the co-founder and board president of Law Forward, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on defending and advancing democracy in Wisconsin. Jeff is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and, before entering practice, served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Partner, Eimer Stahl LLP
Ryan is a partner at Eimer Stahl LLP and is based in the firm’s Madison office. He focuses his practice on appellate and complex litigation in a wide variety of areas, including antitrust, constitutional law, corporate law, environmental, ERISA, products liability, and white collar. As part of his practice, Ryan devotes significant time to matters of legal strategy and the art of written and oral advocacy.
Ryan previously served as Chief Deputy Solicitor General of Wisconsin, securing numerous wins in the Supreme Court of the United States, in three federal courts of appeal, and in the state supreme court. Ryan built national, bipartisan coalitions of attorneys general and agencies in support of several lawsuits and briefing efforts, including a Wisconsin-led, 12-state coalition whose suit against the Federal Communications Commission prompted that agency to reverse a major new rule. When he left government, Ryan had a perfect win record in all of his cases to have reached final judgment.
Earlier in his career, Ryan worked in Washington D.C. as an associate in the appellate group of one of the world’s largest law firms.
Ryan also served as a law clerk on the U.S. Supreme Court for the Honorable Antonin Scalia and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for the Honorable Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain.
Ryan was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30: Law and Policy” list in 2017. His briefing has won awards from the National Association of Attorneys General and the International Municipal Lawyers Association. He has also won a “best brief” accolade from the State Bar of Wisconsin in the civil category for his written work defending Wisconsin’s right-to-work law.
Associate Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Robert Yablon is an Associate Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the State Democracy Research Initiative. His research interests include political and election law, constitutional law, federal and state courts, and statutory interpretation. He teaches Civil Procedure, Federal Jurisdiction, and the Law of Democracy.
Professor Yablon's recent publications have appeared in the NYU Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and Iowa Law Review. In 2018, UW Law students honored Professor Yablon with the Classroom Teacher of the Year Award, and in 2019 he received a University Distinguished Teaching Award.
Professor Yablon received his bachelor's degree in economics and political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his master's degree in social policy from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He then earned his J.D. at Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Following law school, Professor Yablon served as a law clerk for Judge William Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. He also worked in private practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. He has been the principal author of dozens of appellate and trial-level briefs, and has argued in a number of state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh
Chris W. Bonneau is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been since 2002. His research is primarily in the areas of judicial selection (specifically, judicial elections) and judicial decisionmaking. Professor Bonneau’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and he has published numerous articles, including in the American Journal of Political Science and Journal of Politics. He is also the coauthor of three books: Strategic Behavior and Policy Choice on the U.S. Supreme Court (2005), In Defense of Judicial Elections (2009), and the award-winning Voters’ Verdicts: Citizens, Campaigns, and Institutions in State Supreme Court Elections (2015).
Professor Bonneau teaches undergraduate classes in constitutional law, judicial politics, and research methods, as well as graduate classes in judicial politics and research design.
Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh
Chris W. Bonneau is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been since 2002. His research is primarily in the areas of judicial selection (specifically, judicial elections) and judicial decisionmaking. Professor Bonneau’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and he has published numerous articles, including in the American Journal of Political Science and Journal of Politics. He is also the coauthor of three books: Strategic Behavior and Policy Choice on the U.S. Supreme Court (2005), In Defense of Judicial Elections (2009), and the award-winning Voters’ Verdicts: Citizens, Campaigns, and Institutions in State Supreme Court Elections (2015).
Professor Bonneau teaches undergraduate classes in constitutional law, judicial politics, and research methods, as well as graduate classes in judicial politics and research design.
Judicial Elections and Free Speech
Barry Anderson, Clint Bolick, Brett Busby, Daniel Kelly
Judicial selection in the states is not uniform, but most states have some form of...
Panel II: The Future of the Wisconsin Supreme Court
Shelley A. Grogan, Jeffrey A. Mandell, Ryan J. Walsh, Robert Yablon
Panelists will offer their diverse perspectives on the current state of the Wisconsin Supreme Court...
A Survey of Empirical Evidence Concerning Judicial Elections
Chris W. Bonneau
The election of state judges is a controversial topic. Consider, for example, this quote from...
A Survey of Empirical Evidence Concerning Judicial Elections
Chris W. Bonneau
The election of state judges is a controversial topic. Consider, for example, this quote from...