Senior Research Fellow, Open Technology Institute, New America Foundation
As a Senior Research Fellow with New America's Open Technology Institute, Michael Calabrese focuses on developing and advocating policies to promote pervasive connectivity, including spectrum policy reform, wireless broadband deployment and IT investment and innovation more broadly. The founding director of New America's Wireless Future program, Mr. Calabrese also served as Vice President (2003-2010) and was instrumental in establishing the organization's programs in areas including retirement security, health policy and the Next Social Contract Initiative.
Previously, Mr. Calabrese served as General Counsel of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, as Director of Domestic Policy Programs at the Center for National Policy, and as pension and employee benefits counsel at the national AFL-CIO.
An attorney and graduate of both Stanford Business and Law Schools, Mr. Calabrese speaks and writes frequently on issues related to spectrum, wireless broadband, and Internet policy, as well as on Next Social Contract issues related to improving retirement security and health coverage. He has co-authored three books and published opinion articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly and other leading outlets.
H.H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics, Clemson College of Business
Thomas Hazlett is the Hugh H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics at Clemson University. He has previously held faculty positions at George Mason University, the University of California, Davis, and the Wharton School, and served as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission. A noted expert in regulatory economics and information markets, his research has appeared in academic forums such as the Journal of Law & Economics, RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Financial Economics, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the Columbia Law Review. He has also written for such popular periodicals as the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Slate, the N.Y. Times, N.Y. Daily News, Reuters.com, Business Week, The New Republic and the Financial Times. His most recent book, The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone, (Yale, 2017), was featured as one of the top tech books of the year at CES 2018.
President, The Free State Foundation
Randolph J. May is Founder and President of The Free State Foundation. The Free State Foundation is an independent, non-profit free market-oriented think tank founded in 2006.
From October 1999-May 2006, May was a Senior Fellow and Director of Communications Policy Studies at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. Prior to joining PFF, he practiced communications, administrative, and regulatory law as a partner at major national law firms. From 1978 to 1981, May served as Assistant General Counsel and Associate General Counsel at the Federal Communication Commission.
May has held numerous leadership positions in bar associations. He is a past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Mr. May also has served as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and currently is a Senior Fellow at ACUS.
Mr. May has published more than two hundred articles and essays on communications, administrative and constitutional law topics. He is author of A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform, and co-author of #CommActUpdate: A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age and The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property. Mr. May is editor of two books, Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age: The Next Five Years and New Directions in Communications Policy. In addition, he is the co-editor of two other books, Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated? and Communications Deregulation and FCC Reform. In the past, Mr. May has written regular columns on legal and regulatory affairs for Legal Times and the National Law Journal, leading national legal periodicals.
He received his A.B. from Duke University and his J.D. from Duke Law School, where he serves as a member of the Board of Visitors.
Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His law practice covers cybersecurity, data protection, homeland security, and travel and foreign investment regulation; he has been awarded one patent.
Mr. Baker has been General Counsel of the National Security Agency and General Counsel of the commission that investigated WMD intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. He is the author of Skating on Stilts, a book on terrorism, cybersecurity, and other technology issues; he also hosts the weekly Cyberlaw Podcast.
Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Her primary research interests include the federal budget, homeland security, taxation, tax competition, and financial privacy issues.
She writes a column for Reason magazine and is a regular contributor to The American, AEI's online magazine. She also blogs at The Corner at National Review Online and at Big Government.
She is the editor of the Mercatus Center publication series Mercatus on Policy.
She is the co-author of Action ou Taxation, published in Switzerland in 1996. She is currently on the board of directors of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.
She received her M.A. in economics from the University of Paris IX-Dauphine and her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She previously directed academic programs for the Institute for Humane Studies-Europe in France.
Founder and Principal, Fillmore Global Strategies LLC
Ambassador Nathan A. Sales is the founder and principal of Fillmore Global Strategies LLC, a consultancy that provides legal and strategic advisory services on matters at the intersection of law, policy, and diplomacy.
From 2017 to 2021, Ambassador Sales served at the U.S. Department of State as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (acting). He oversaw nine bureaus and offices led by Senate-confirmed principals, with 1,300 employees and a combined foreign assistance budget of more than $5 billion annually, and the mission of preventing and countering threats to civilian security, including terrorism, mass atrocities, and violations of human rights and the rule of law.
Concurrently, Ambassador Sales was Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism. After being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he was sworn in on August 10, 2017. He served as the principal adviser to the Secretary of State on international counterterrorism matters, and led the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, a 200-person team with an annual foreign assistance budget of $400 million. He was also the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, leading U.S. relations with the 83-member Coalition and efforts to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS in the Middle East and around the world.
While at the State Department, Ambassador Sales led the elements of the U.S. government’s China strategy promoting democratic values and human rights, including with respect to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. He oversaw the development and implementation of a wide range of U.S. government sanctions, including Global Magnitsky actions and Executive Order 13,936, targeting those responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy. Ambassador Sales was the architect of the landmark 2017 UN Security Council Resolution 2396 on terrorist travel, and successfully pressed NATO to make counterterrorism a core Alliance mission. He led diplomatic engagements to persuade a dozen key partners in Europe and the Americas to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization in its entirety. He launched the Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial, in which heads of state and minister-level officials meet bianually to coordinate efforts against terrorist threats in the region. He led the U.S. government’s international efforts to combat white supremacist terrorism. Under his leadership, the State Department imposed terrorism sanctions on the Russian Imperial Movement – the first-ever U.S. designation of white supremacist terrorists.
Before joining the State Department, Ambassador Sales was Of Counsel at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP (formerly Bancroft PLLC). He was also a tenured law professor, teaching and writing in the fields of administrative law, constitutional law, and national security law. His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times.
Ambassador Sales previously was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He led DHS’s efforts to draft and implement legislation that strengthened the security of and expanded the Visa Waiver Program (which allows citizens of certain countries to travel to the United States without a visa). He headed the U.S. delegation in talks with seven countries to implement the new security measures and was the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Special Envoy to South Korea.
Ambassador Sales also served at the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on regulatory initiatives, counterterrorism, and judicial confirmations. In 2005, he managed DOJ’s “war room” for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. He received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the Justice Department’s highest honor – for his role in drafting the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his work on judicial confirmations.
In addition to his work at Fillmore Global Strategies, Ambassador Sales is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior advisor at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy. He serves on a number of advisory boards, including for the Counter-Extremism Project (a nonprofit and nonpartisan international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies), the Secure Community Network (the official safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community), and the Sue J. Henry Center for Pre-Law Education at Miami University.
An Ohio native, Ambassador Sales received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke Law School, where he was Research Editor of the Duke Law Journal and joined the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.
Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.
His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.
Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.
Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Lecturer in Law, UCLA Law
Amjad Mahmood Khan teaches Fundamentals of U.S. Contract Law for Foreign Lawyers. A partner at Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP (bnsklaw.com), he represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of high-stakes business litigation, including disputes related to commercial contracts, civil fraud, business torts, intellectual property, energy, insurance, antitrust and unfair competition and the False Claims Act. Amjad's clients have included a range of high-profile corporations, executives and organizations, including mortgage lenders, energy companies, technology firms, major airlines, municipalities and religious establishments. Amjad has extensive stand-up trial experience, having won multiple significant jury verdicts, including an award of approximately $12.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Amjad has significant appellate experience briefing and arguing appeals in both state and federal courts across the nation. Amjad has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by Southern California Super Lawyers every year since 2012.
Amjad previously served as litigation counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, associate at Latham & Watkins LLP and judicial clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Amjad received his J.D. in 2004 from Harvard Law School. While in law school, Amjad served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Law Journal and as a teaching assistant to Professor Scott Brewer (Contracts, Jurisprudence). Amjad graduated summa cum laude from Claremont McKenna College in 2001, with a B.A. in Government and English (Literature).
In addition to his litigation practice, Amjad devotes a considerable portion of his time to pro bono matters. Amjad has special expertise in asylum and refugee law, deportation defense and providing legal aid to disaster victims. Amjad was co-chair of Latham & Watkins’ global human rights and refugee practice group. Amjad has first chaired over two dozen successful immigration and asylum matters. Amjad has received numerous awards and accolades for his pro bono work, which includes sharing the 2012 Muslim Advocates Thurgood Marshall Award. Amjad has also served as an expert witness in asylum cases and has testified five times before the U.S. House of Representatives on the human rights abuses of religious minorities in the Near East and South Asia. Amjad is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Amjad has published articles on qui tam and derivative suit litigation in Financial Fraud Law Report and Securities Regulation and Law Report. Amjad’s academic work focuses on transnational legal studies, comparative constitutional law and national security. He is a recognized expert on religious freedom in the Islamic world, and his scholarship has appeared in Harvard International Law Journal,Harvard National Security Law Journal, Harvard Human Rights Journaland Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business.
Director of Legal Affairs, Center for Political Studies
Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at the Center for Political Studies, a think tank based in Copenhagen, where he focuses on advocacy and academic research in the fields of human rights with a specific focus on freedom of expression. He is also an external lecturer in international human rights law at the University of Copenhagen. He has published numerous articles in academic journals as well as in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Globe and Mail, National Review, Reason, The Australian, South China Morning Post, Jerusalem Post, Hürriet Daily News, Voice of Russia, China Post, and Daily News (Egypt). His work has been mentioned in international media including the Economist, Courrier International and CBS.com. He is a frequent commentator for Danish TV and radio. In 2010 he was voted the most influential Danish public intellectual under the age of 40 by Danish newspaper Politiken.
Research Fellow, Hudson Institute
Before joining Hudson in 2011, Tadros was a Senior Partner at the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth, an organization that aims to spread the ideas of classical liberalism in Egypt. He has received his MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University and his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Mr. Tadros has previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked on the Muslim Brotherhood and worked as a consultant for the Hudson Institute on Moderate Islamic Thinkers, and most recently the Heritage Foundation on Religious Freedom in Egypt. In 2007 he was chosen by the State Department in its first Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in collaboration with Syracuse University's Maxwell School. His articles have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal, the American Thinker, the American Interest and the Weekly Standard. Mr. Tadros is a Professional Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Managing Partner, Brown Wegner LLP
Mr. Brown leads a law firm in California focused on trials and appeals in intellectual property and other complex commercial disputes. Previously, he practiced for more than a decade in the Intellectual Property Group at Jones Day, was an Adjunct Professor at Chapman University School of Law, and served a judicial law clerk to a federal district judge in Los Angeles. Mr. Brown has been named a Southern California Super Lawyer for ten years, was listed among the Top 50 Lawyers in Orange County several years. He is a Master in the Howard T. Markey Intellectual Property American Inn of Court.
Education
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His law practice covers cybersecurity, data protection, homeland security, and travel and foreign investment regulation; he has been awarded one patent.
Mr. Baker has been General Counsel of the National Security Agency and General Counsel of the commission that investigated WMD intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. He is the author of Skating on Stilts, a book on terrorism, cybersecurity, and other technology issues; he also hosts the weekly Cyberlaw Podcast.
Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Her primary research interests include the federal budget, homeland security, taxation, tax competition, and financial privacy issues.
She writes a column for Reason magazine and is a regular contributor to The American, AEI's online magazine. She also blogs at The Corner at National Review Online and at Big Government.
She is the editor of the Mercatus Center publication series Mercatus on Policy.
She is the co-author of Action ou Taxation, published in Switzerland in 1996. She is currently on the board of directors of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.
She received her M.A. in economics from the University of Paris IX-Dauphine and her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She previously directed academic programs for the Institute for Humane Studies-Europe in France.
Founder and Principal, Fillmore Global Strategies LLC
Ambassador Nathan A. Sales is the founder and principal of Fillmore Global Strategies LLC, a consultancy that provides legal and strategic advisory services on matters at the intersection of law, policy, and diplomacy.
From 2017 to 2021, Ambassador Sales served at the U.S. Department of State as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (acting). He oversaw nine bureaus and offices led by Senate-confirmed principals, with 1,300 employees and a combined foreign assistance budget of more than $5 billion annually, and the mission of preventing and countering threats to civilian security, including terrorism, mass atrocities, and violations of human rights and the rule of law.
Concurrently, Ambassador Sales was Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism. After being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he was sworn in on August 10, 2017. He served as the principal adviser to the Secretary of State on international counterterrorism matters, and led the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, a 200-person team with an annual foreign assistance budget of $400 million. He was also the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, leading U.S. relations with the 83-member Coalition and efforts to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS in the Middle East and around the world.
While at the State Department, Ambassador Sales led the elements of the U.S. government’s China strategy promoting democratic values and human rights, including with respect to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. He oversaw the development and implementation of a wide range of U.S. government sanctions, including Global Magnitsky actions and Executive Order 13,936, targeting those responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy. Ambassador Sales was the architect of the landmark 2017 UN Security Council Resolution 2396 on terrorist travel, and successfully pressed NATO to make counterterrorism a core Alliance mission. He led diplomatic engagements to persuade a dozen key partners in Europe and the Americas to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization in its entirety. He launched the Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial, in which heads of state and minister-level officials meet bianually to coordinate efforts against terrorist threats in the region. He led the U.S. government’s international efforts to combat white supremacist terrorism. Under his leadership, the State Department imposed terrorism sanctions on the Russian Imperial Movement – the first-ever U.S. designation of white supremacist terrorists.
Before joining the State Department, Ambassador Sales was Of Counsel at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP (formerly Bancroft PLLC). He was also a tenured law professor, teaching and writing in the fields of administrative law, constitutional law, and national security law. His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times.
Ambassador Sales previously was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He led DHS’s efforts to draft and implement legislation that strengthened the security of and expanded the Visa Waiver Program (which allows citizens of certain countries to travel to the United States without a visa). He headed the U.S. delegation in talks with seven countries to implement the new security measures and was the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Special Envoy to South Korea.
Ambassador Sales also served at the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on regulatory initiatives, counterterrorism, and judicial confirmations. In 2005, he managed DOJ’s “war room” for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. He received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the Justice Department’s highest honor – for his role in drafting the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his work on judicial confirmations.
In addition to his work at Fillmore Global Strategies, Ambassador Sales is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior advisor at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy. He serves on a number of advisory boards, including for the Counter-Extremism Project (a nonprofit and nonpartisan international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies), the Secure Community Network (the official safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community), and the Sue J. Henry Center for Pre-Law Education at Miami University.
An Ohio native, Ambassador Sales received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke Law School, where he was Research Editor of the Duke Law Journal and joined the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.
Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.
His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.
Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.
Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.
Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His law practice covers cybersecurity, data protection, homeland security, and travel and foreign investment regulation; he has been awarded one patent.
Mr. Baker has been General Counsel of the National Security Agency and General Counsel of the commission that investigated WMD intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. He is the author of Skating on Stilts, a book on terrorism, cybersecurity, and other technology issues; he also hosts the weekly Cyberlaw Podcast.
Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Her primary research interests include the federal budget, homeland security, taxation, tax competition, and financial privacy issues.
She writes a column for Reason magazine and is a regular contributor to The American, AEI's online magazine. She also blogs at The Corner at National Review Online and at Big Government.
She is the editor of the Mercatus Center publication series Mercatus on Policy.
She is the co-author of Action ou Taxation, published in Switzerland in 1996. She is currently on the board of directors of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.
She received her M.A. in economics from the University of Paris IX-Dauphine and her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She previously directed academic programs for the Institute for Humane Studies-Europe in France.
Founder and Principal, Fillmore Global Strategies LLC
Ambassador Nathan A. Sales is the founder and principal of Fillmore Global Strategies LLC, a consultancy that provides legal and strategic advisory services on matters at the intersection of law, policy, and diplomacy.
From 2017 to 2021, Ambassador Sales served at the U.S. Department of State as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (acting). He oversaw nine bureaus and offices led by Senate-confirmed principals, with 1,300 employees and a combined foreign assistance budget of more than $5 billion annually, and the mission of preventing and countering threats to civilian security, including terrorism, mass atrocities, and violations of human rights and the rule of law.
Concurrently, Ambassador Sales was Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism. After being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he was sworn in on August 10, 2017. He served as the principal adviser to the Secretary of State on international counterterrorism matters, and led the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, a 200-person team with an annual foreign assistance budget of $400 million. He was also the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, leading U.S. relations with the 83-member Coalition and efforts to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS in the Middle East and around the world.
While at the State Department, Ambassador Sales led the elements of the U.S. government’s China strategy promoting democratic values and human rights, including with respect to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. He oversaw the development and implementation of a wide range of U.S. government sanctions, including Global Magnitsky actions and Executive Order 13,936, targeting those responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy. Ambassador Sales was the architect of the landmark 2017 UN Security Council Resolution 2396 on terrorist travel, and successfully pressed NATO to make counterterrorism a core Alliance mission. He led diplomatic engagements to persuade a dozen key partners in Europe and the Americas to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization in its entirety. He launched the Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial, in which heads of state and minister-level officials meet bianually to coordinate efforts against terrorist threats in the region. He led the U.S. government’s international efforts to combat white supremacist terrorism. Under his leadership, the State Department imposed terrorism sanctions on the Russian Imperial Movement – the first-ever U.S. designation of white supremacist terrorists.
Before joining the State Department, Ambassador Sales was Of Counsel at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP (formerly Bancroft PLLC). He was also a tenured law professor, teaching and writing in the fields of administrative law, constitutional law, and national security law. His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times.
Ambassador Sales previously was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He led DHS’s efforts to draft and implement legislation that strengthened the security of and expanded the Visa Waiver Program (which allows citizens of certain countries to travel to the United States without a visa). He headed the U.S. delegation in talks with seven countries to implement the new security measures and was the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Special Envoy to South Korea.
Ambassador Sales also served at the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on regulatory initiatives, counterterrorism, and judicial confirmations. In 2005, he managed DOJ’s “war room” for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. He received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the Justice Department’s highest honor – for his role in drafting the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his work on judicial confirmations.
In addition to his work at Fillmore Global Strategies, Ambassador Sales is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior advisor at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy. He serves on a number of advisory boards, including for the Counter-Extremism Project (a nonprofit and nonpartisan international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies), the Secure Community Network (the official safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community), and the Sue J. Henry Center for Pre-Law Education at Miami University.
An Ohio native, Ambassador Sales received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke Law School, where he was Research Editor of the Duke Law Journal and joined the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.
Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.
His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.
Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.
Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Lecturer in Law, UCLA Law
Amjad Mahmood Khan teaches Fundamentals of U.S. Contract Law for Foreign Lawyers. A partner at Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP (bnsklaw.com), he represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of high-stakes business litigation, including disputes related to commercial contracts, civil fraud, business torts, intellectual property, energy, insurance, antitrust and unfair competition and the False Claims Act. Amjad's clients have included a range of high-profile corporations, executives and organizations, including mortgage lenders, energy companies, technology firms, major airlines, municipalities and religious establishments. Amjad has extensive stand-up trial experience, having won multiple significant jury verdicts, including an award of approximately $12.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Amjad has significant appellate experience briefing and arguing appeals in both state and federal courts across the nation. Amjad has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by Southern California Super Lawyers every year since 2012.
Amjad previously served as litigation counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, associate at Latham & Watkins LLP and judicial clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Amjad received his J.D. in 2004 from Harvard Law School. While in law school, Amjad served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Law Journal and as a teaching assistant to Professor Scott Brewer (Contracts, Jurisprudence). Amjad graduated summa cum laude from Claremont McKenna College in 2001, with a B.A. in Government and English (Literature).
In addition to his litigation practice, Amjad devotes a considerable portion of his time to pro bono matters. Amjad has special expertise in asylum and refugee law, deportation defense and providing legal aid to disaster victims. Amjad was co-chair of Latham & Watkins’ global human rights and refugee practice group. Amjad has first chaired over two dozen successful immigration and asylum matters. Amjad has received numerous awards and accolades for his pro bono work, which includes sharing the 2012 Muslim Advocates Thurgood Marshall Award. Amjad has also served as an expert witness in asylum cases and has testified five times before the U.S. House of Representatives on the human rights abuses of religious minorities in the Near East and South Asia. Amjad is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Amjad has published articles on qui tam and derivative suit litigation in Financial Fraud Law Report and Securities Regulation and Law Report. Amjad’s academic work focuses on transnational legal studies, comparative constitutional law and national security. He is a recognized expert on religious freedom in the Islamic world, and his scholarship has appeared in Harvard International Law Journal,Harvard National Security Law Journal, Harvard Human Rights Journaland Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business.
Director of Legal Affairs, Center for Political Studies
Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at the Center for Political Studies, a think tank based in Copenhagen, where he focuses on advocacy and academic research in the fields of human rights with a specific focus on freedom of expression. He is also an external lecturer in international human rights law at the University of Copenhagen. He has published numerous articles in academic journals as well as in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Globe and Mail, National Review, Reason, The Australian, South China Morning Post, Jerusalem Post, Hürriet Daily News, Voice of Russia, China Post, and Daily News (Egypt). His work has been mentioned in international media including the Economist, Courrier International and CBS.com. He is a frequent commentator for Danish TV and radio. In 2010 he was voted the most influential Danish public intellectual under the age of 40 by Danish newspaper Politiken.
Research Fellow, Hudson Institute
Before joining Hudson in 2011, Tadros was a Senior Partner at the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth, an organization that aims to spread the ideas of classical liberalism in Egypt. He has received his MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University and his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Mr. Tadros has previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked on the Muslim Brotherhood and worked as a consultant for the Hudson Institute on Moderate Islamic Thinkers, and most recently the Heritage Foundation on Religious Freedom in Egypt. In 2007 he was chosen by the State Department in its first Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in collaboration with Syracuse University's Maxwell School. His articles have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal, the American Thinker, the American Interest and the Weekly Standard. Mr. Tadros is a Professional Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Lecturer in Law, UCLA Law
Amjad Mahmood Khan teaches Fundamentals of U.S. Contract Law for Foreign Lawyers. A partner at Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP (bnsklaw.com), he represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of high-stakes business litigation, including disputes related to commercial contracts, civil fraud, business torts, intellectual property, energy, insurance, antitrust and unfair competition and the False Claims Act. Amjad's clients have included a range of high-profile corporations, executives and organizations, including mortgage lenders, energy companies, technology firms, major airlines, municipalities and religious establishments. Amjad has extensive stand-up trial experience, having won multiple significant jury verdicts, including an award of approximately $12.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Amjad has significant appellate experience briefing and arguing appeals in both state and federal courts across the nation. Amjad has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by Southern California Super Lawyers every year since 2012.
Amjad previously served as litigation counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, associate at Latham & Watkins LLP and judicial clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Amjad received his J.D. in 2004 from Harvard Law School. While in law school, Amjad served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Law Journal and as a teaching assistant to Professor Scott Brewer (Contracts, Jurisprudence). Amjad graduated summa cum laude from Claremont McKenna College in 2001, with a B.A. in Government and English (Literature).
In addition to his litigation practice, Amjad devotes a considerable portion of his time to pro bono matters. Amjad has special expertise in asylum and refugee law, deportation defense and providing legal aid to disaster victims. Amjad was co-chair of Latham & Watkins’ global human rights and refugee practice group. Amjad has first chaired over two dozen successful immigration and asylum matters. Amjad has received numerous awards and accolades for his pro bono work, which includes sharing the 2012 Muslim Advocates Thurgood Marshall Award. Amjad has also served as an expert witness in asylum cases and has testified five times before the U.S. House of Representatives on the human rights abuses of religious minorities in the Near East and South Asia. Amjad is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Amjad has published articles on qui tam and derivative suit litigation in Financial Fraud Law Report and Securities Regulation and Law Report. Amjad’s academic work focuses on transnational legal studies, comparative constitutional law and national security. He is a recognized expert on religious freedom in the Islamic world, and his scholarship has appeared in Harvard International Law Journal,Harvard National Security Law Journal, Harvard Human Rights Journaland Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business.
Director of Legal Affairs, Center for Political Studies
Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at the Center for Political Studies, a think tank based in Copenhagen, where he focuses on advocacy and academic research in the fields of human rights with a specific focus on freedom of expression. He is also an external lecturer in international human rights law at the University of Copenhagen. He has published numerous articles in academic journals as well as in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Globe and Mail, National Review, Reason, The Australian, South China Morning Post, Jerusalem Post, Hürriet Daily News, Voice of Russia, China Post, and Daily News (Egypt). His work has been mentioned in international media including the Economist, Courrier International and CBS.com. He is a frequent commentator for Danish TV and radio. In 2010 he was voted the most influential Danish public intellectual under the age of 40 by Danish newspaper Politiken.
Research Fellow, Hudson Institute
Before joining Hudson in 2011, Tadros was a Senior Partner at the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth, an organization that aims to spread the ideas of classical liberalism in Egypt. He has received his MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University and his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Mr. Tadros has previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked on the Muslim Brotherhood and worked as a consultant for the Hudson Institute on Moderate Islamic Thinkers, and most recently the Heritage Foundation on Religious Freedom in Egypt. In 2007 he was chosen by the State Department in its first Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in collaboration with Syracuse University's Maxwell School. His articles have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal, the American Thinker, the American Interest and the Weekly Standard. Mr. Tadros is a Professional Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Fortier is the principal contributor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission. A political scientist who has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Delaware, Boston College, and Harvard University, Mr. Fortier has written numerous scholarly and popular articles. His books include Second-Term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed (Brookings Institution Press, 2007); Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils (AEI Press, 2006); and After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College (AEI Press, 2004). Mr. Fortier writes a column for Politico and is a frequent radio and television commentator on the presidency, Congress, and elections.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Robert Frommer serves as a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. He joined the Institute in August 2008 and is currently litigating on behalf of SpeechNow.org, a group challenging the federal campaign finance laws regarding free speech.
Before joining IJ, Robert was an attorney with the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where he litigated both complex litigation and public-interest matters. He is a former law clerk to Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Robert received his law degree magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School in 2004, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as both a book review editor for the Michigan Law Review and president of the Federalist Society student chapter. Before going to law school, Robert earned a master's degree in economics from George Mason University.
Independent Analyst, None
Allison Hayward most recently served as the Head of Case Selection at the Oversight Board. Previously, she was a Commissioner at the California Fair Political Practices Commission, a Board Member at the Office of Congressional Ethics, and an Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. She also previously worked as Chief of Staff and Counsel in the office of Federal Election Commission Commissioner Bradley A. Smith and practiced election law in California and in Washington DC.
In 1994-1995, Professor Hayward was a judicial clerk for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs, United States Court of Appeal for the Sixth Circuit.
She is a member of the State Bar of California and the District of Columbia Bar.
Spectrum Policy in the Age of a Spectrum Crunch
TeleforumInternational: The War-on-Terror Government
Stewart A. Baker, Veronique de Rugy, Nathan A. Sales, Julian Sanchez, Benjamin Wittes
The International & National Security Law Practice Group hosted this panel on "The War-on-Terror Government"...
International: The War-on-Terror Government
Stewart A. Baker, Veronique de Rugy, Nathan A. Sales, Julian Sanchez, Benjamin Wittes
The International & National Security Law Practice Group hosted this panel on "The War-on-Terror Government"...
International: The War-on-Terror Government
2011 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCPanel I: The Muslim World
David F. Forte, James P. Kelly, Amjad M. Khan, Jacob Mchangama, Samuel Tadros
The 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the deadly 2006 Danish cartoon riots brought worldwide...
Panel I: The Muslim World
David F. Forte, James P. Kelly, Amjad M. Khan, Jacob Mchangama, Samuel Tadros
The 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the deadly 2006 Danish cartoon riots brought worldwide...
Panel I: The Muslim World
Silenced: Are Global Trends to Ban Religious Defamation, Religious Insult, and Islamophobia a New Challenge to First Amendment Freedoms?
Washington, DCChoosing Our Judges: A Panel Discussion on Iowa’s Judicial Selection System and the Appropriate Role of Retention Elections
Des Moines, IowaDoe v. Reed and the Role of Anonymity in a Democracy
John C. Fortier, Robert Frommer, Allison R. Hayward
In April 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Doe v. Reed. The...
Are Government Bailouts of Private Industry Necessary and Proper and for the Public Welfare?