Legal Fellow, Center for the Separation of Powers, Pacific Legal Foundation
Alison Somin joined Pacific Legal Foundation in May 2020 as a legal fellow in the Center for the Separation of Powers and part of the equality before the law practice group.
Before joining the Pacific Legal Foundation team, Alison was a special assistant and counsel for over a decade to Gail Heriot, a member of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also has deep roots in the liberty movement. Alison was a Koch Associate at the National Federation for Independent Business Legal Foundation and, during law school, completed summer clerkships at the Institute for Justice and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. She holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in history from Dartmouth College.
Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Journal, Texas Journal of Law and Politics, and The Federalist Society’s Engage magazine and blog.
She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Ilya; two children; and golden retriever Willow. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking and cooking, children’s art projects, and training and exercising Willow.
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. He was born in Washington, D.C., but spent most of his childhood in small towns in northwest Indiana. After earning a B.A. in Social Studies at Harvard, Sander in 1978 joined the federal Vista program and worked for a small neighborhood housing group on Chicago's south side. While organizing tenant unions and building receiverships, he was deeply impressed with the work of the South Shore Bank, an experimental, community-development bank owned by churches and foundations. Sander secured funding from three federal agencies and, with the Woodstock Institute, completed the first detailed study of the bank. South Shore Bank was widely imitated as an instrument for community revitalization in other urban areas over the next two decades.
Sander attended graduate school at Northwestern University from 1983 to 1988, earning degrees in law (J.D., 1988) and economics (M.A. 1985, Ph.D., 1990). In his law review comment and his dissertation, Sander sought to understand why fair housing laws had seemingly produced widespread integration in some American metropolitan areas, but very little integration in most. During much of this period, Sander served on the board of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee, and worked on the election effort and subsequent transition team of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor.
In 1989, Sander joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law. During this period, he continued his work on housing segregation, but also pursued two new interests: the reasons behind the American legal profession’s explosive growth since the mid-1960s, and the structure and effects of law school admissions policies. With Kris Knaplund, he published in 1995 the first comparative evaluation of academic support programs used in legal education. After California voters approved Propostion 209 in 1996 – banning the use of race in various government programs, including admissions at the University of California – Sander successfully argued for the adoption of class-based preferences in the law school’s admissions, and published a study on the results of this experiment in 1997.
During the 1990s, Sander was involved in several Los Angeles civic initiatives. He served as President of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California from 1984 to 1996; founded the Fair Housing Institute in 1996, and helped the City of Los Angeles design and implement in 1997 what was, at the time, the nation's most ambitious living wage law. Sander also persuaded regional authorities to develop outreach programs that sharply increased local usage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for LA's poorest working families.
Sander was one of seven UCLA faculty members and staff who launched the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, which created a distinct curriculum aimed at public interest students. From 1998 to 2004, Sander helped to steer the "After the JD" study, the first national panel study of law school graduates. In 1998-99, Sander and others at the School of Law launched the Empirical Research Group (ERG), an entity designed to help faculty members undertake ambitious empirical projects and introduce more quantitative and methodological sophistication into their policy-related work.
In 2004, Sander published a comprehensive study of affirmative action in American law schools, focusing particularly on the ways in which large preferences imposed unexpected but substantial costs on their intended beneficiaries.
Sander teaches courses in Property, Quantitative Methods, Urban Housing, and Policy Analysis. He is married to astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, and has a son, Robert. He lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. He was born in Washington, D.C., but spent most of his childhood in small towns in northwest Indiana. After earning a B.A. in Social Studies at Harvard, Sander in 1978 joined the federal Vista program and worked for a small neighborhood housing group on Chicago's south side. While organizing tenant unions and building receiverships, he was deeply impressed with the work of the South Shore Bank, an experimental, community-development bank owned by churches and foundations. Sander secured funding from three federal agencies and, with the Woodstock Institute, completed the first detailed study of the bank. South Shore Bank was widely imitated as an instrument for community revitalization in other urban areas over the next two decades.
Sander attended graduate school at Northwestern University from 1983 to 1988, earning degrees in law (J.D., 1988) and economics (M.A. 1985, Ph.D., 1990). In his law review comment and his dissertation, Sander sought to understand why fair housing laws had seemingly produced widespread integration in some American metropolitan areas, but very little integration in most. During much of this period, Sander served on the board of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee, and worked on the election effort and subsequent transition team of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor.
In 1989, Sander joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law. During this period, he continued his work on housing segregation, but also pursued two new interests: the reasons behind the American legal profession’s explosive growth since the mid-1960s, and the structure and effects of law school admissions policies. With Kris Knaplund, he published in 1995 the first comparative evaluation of academic support programs used in legal education. After California voters approved Propostion 209 in 1996 – banning the use of race in various government programs, including admissions at the University of California – Sander successfully argued for the adoption of class-based preferences in the law school’s admissions, and published a study on the results of this experiment in 1997.
During the 1990s, Sander was involved in several Los Angeles civic initiatives. He served as President of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California from 1984 to 1996; founded the Fair Housing Institute in 1996, and helped the City of Los Angeles design and implement in 1997 what was, at the time, the nation's most ambitious living wage law. Sander also persuaded regional authorities to develop outreach programs that sharply increased local usage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for LA's poorest working families.
Sander was one of seven UCLA faculty members and staff who launched the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, which created a distinct curriculum aimed at public interest students. From 1998 to 2004, Sander helped to steer the "After the JD" study, the first national panel study of law school graduates. In 1998-99, Sander and others at the School of Law launched the Empirical Research Group (ERG), an entity designed to help faculty members undertake ambitious empirical projects and introduce more quantitative and methodological sophistication into their policy-related work.
In 2004, Sander published a comprehensive study of affirmative action in American law schools, focusing particularly on the ways in which large preferences imposed unexpected but substantial costs on their intended beneficiaries.
Sander teaches courses in Property, Quantitative Methods, Urban Housing, and Policy Analysis. He is married to astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, and has a son, Robert. He lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. He was born in Washington, D.C., but spent most of his childhood in small towns in northwest Indiana. After earning a B.A. in Social Studies at Harvard, Sander in 1978 joined the federal Vista program and worked for a small neighborhood housing group on Chicago's south side. While organizing tenant unions and building receiverships, he was deeply impressed with the work of the South Shore Bank, an experimental, community-development bank owned by churches and foundations. Sander secured funding from three federal agencies and, with the Woodstock Institute, completed the first detailed study of the bank. South Shore Bank was widely imitated as an instrument for community revitalization in other urban areas over the next two decades.
Sander attended graduate school at Northwestern University from 1983 to 1988, earning degrees in law (J.D., 1988) and economics (M.A. 1985, Ph.D., 1990). In his law review comment and his dissertation, Sander sought to understand why fair housing laws had seemingly produced widespread integration in some American metropolitan areas, but very little integration in most. During much of this period, Sander served on the board of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee, and worked on the election effort and subsequent transition team of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor.
In 1989, Sander joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law. During this period, he continued his work on housing segregation, but also pursued two new interests: the reasons behind the American legal profession’s explosive growth since the mid-1960s, and the structure and effects of law school admissions policies. With Kris Knaplund, he published in 1995 the first comparative evaluation of academic support programs used in legal education. After California voters approved Propostion 209 in 1996 – banning the use of race in various government programs, including admissions at the University of California – Sander successfully argued for the adoption of class-based preferences in the law school’s admissions, and published a study on the results of this experiment in 1997.
During the 1990s, Sander was involved in several Los Angeles civic initiatives. He served as President of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California from 1984 to 1996; founded the Fair Housing Institute in 1996, and helped the City of Los Angeles design and implement in 1997 what was, at the time, the nation's most ambitious living wage law. Sander also persuaded regional authorities to develop outreach programs that sharply increased local usage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for LA's poorest working families.
Sander was one of seven UCLA faculty members and staff who launched the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, which created a distinct curriculum aimed at public interest students. From 1998 to 2004, Sander helped to steer the "After the JD" study, the first national panel study of law school graduates. In 1998-99, Sander and others at the School of Law launched the Empirical Research Group (ERG), an entity designed to help faculty members undertake ambitious empirical projects and introduce more quantitative and methodological sophistication into their policy-related work.
In 2004, Sander published a comprehensive study of affirmative action in American law schools, focusing particularly on the ways in which large preferences imposed unexpected but substantial costs on their intended beneficiaries.
Sander teaches courses in Property, Quantitative Methods, Urban Housing, and Policy Analysis. He is married to astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, and has a son, Robert. He lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. He was born in Washington, D.C., but spent most of his childhood in small towns in northwest Indiana. After earning a B.A. in Social Studies at Harvard, Sander in 1978 joined the federal Vista program and worked for a small neighborhood housing group on Chicago's south side. While organizing tenant unions and building receiverships, he was deeply impressed with the work of the South Shore Bank, an experimental, community-development bank owned by churches and foundations. Sander secured funding from three federal agencies and, with the Woodstock Institute, completed the first detailed study of the bank. South Shore Bank was widely imitated as an instrument for community revitalization in other urban areas over the next two decades.
Sander attended graduate school at Northwestern University from 1983 to 1988, earning degrees in law (J.D., 1988) and economics (M.A. 1985, Ph.D., 1990). In his law review comment and his dissertation, Sander sought to understand why fair housing laws had seemingly produced widespread integration in some American metropolitan areas, but very little integration in most. During much of this period, Sander served on the board of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee, and worked on the election effort and subsequent transition team of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor.
In 1989, Sander joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law. During this period, he continued his work on housing segregation, but also pursued two new interests: the reasons behind the American legal profession’s explosive growth since the mid-1960s, and the structure and effects of law school admissions policies. With Kris Knaplund, he published in 1995 the first comparative evaluation of academic support programs used in legal education. After California voters approved Propostion 209 in 1996 – banning the use of race in various government programs, including admissions at the University of California – Sander successfully argued for the adoption of class-based preferences in the law school’s admissions, and published a study on the results of this experiment in 1997.
During the 1990s, Sander was involved in several Los Angeles civic initiatives. He served as President of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California from 1984 to 1996; founded the Fair Housing Institute in 1996, and helped the City of Los Angeles design and implement in 1997 what was, at the time, the nation's most ambitious living wage law. Sander also persuaded regional authorities to develop outreach programs that sharply increased local usage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for LA's poorest working families.
Sander was one of seven UCLA faculty members and staff who launched the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, which created a distinct curriculum aimed at public interest students. From 1998 to 2004, Sander helped to steer the "After the JD" study, the first national panel study of law school graduates. In 1998-99, Sander and others at the School of Law launched the Empirical Research Group (ERG), an entity designed to help faculty members undertake ambitious empirical projects and introduce more quantitative and methodological sophistication into their policy-related work.
In 2004, Sander published a comprehensive study of affirmative action in American law schools, focusing particularly on the ways in which large preferences imposed unexpected but substantial costs on their intended beneficiaries.
Sander teaches courses in Property, Quantitative Methods, Urban Housing, and Policy Analysis. He is married to astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, and has a son, Robert. He lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. He was born in Washington, D.C., but spent most of his childhood in small towns in northwest Indiana. After earning a B.A. in Social Studies at Harvard, Sander in 1978 joined the federal Vista program and worked for a small neighborhood housing group on Chicago's south side. While organizing tenant unions and building receiverships, he was deeply impressed with the work of the South Shore Bank, an experimental, community-development bank owned by churches and foundations. Sander secured funding from three federal agencies and, with the Woodstock Institute, completed the first detailed study of the bank. South Shore Bank was widely imitated as an instrument for community revitalization in other urban areas over the next two decades.
Sander attended graduate school at Northwestern University from 1983 to 1988, earning degrees in law (J.D., 1988) and economics (M.A. 1985, Ph.D., 1990). In his law review comment and his dissertation, Sander sought to understand why fair housing laws had seemingly produced widespread integration in some American metropolitan areas, but very little integration in most. During much of this period, Sander served on the board of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee, and worked on the election effort and subsequent transition team of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor.
In 1989, Sander joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law. During this period, he continued his work on housing segregation, but also pursued two new interests: the reasons behind the American legal profession’s explosive growth since the mid-1960s, and the structure and effects of law school admissions policies. With Kris Knaplund, he published in 1995 the first comparative evaluation of academic support programs used in legal education. After California voters approved Propostion 209 in 1996 – banning the use of race in various government programs, including admissions at the University of California – Sander successfully argued for the adoption of class-based preferences in the law school’s admissions, and published a study on the results of this experiment in 1997.
During the 1990s, Sander was involved in several Los Angeles civic initiatives. He served as President of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California from 1984 to 1996; founded the Fair Housing Institute in 1996, and helped the City of Los Angeles design and implement in 1997 what was, at the time, the nation's most ambitious living wage law. Sander also persuaded regional authorities to develop outreach programs that sharply increased local usage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for LA's poorest working families.
Sander was one of seven UCLA faculty members and staff who launched the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, which created a distinct curriculum aimed at public interest students. From 1998 to 2004, Sander helped to steer the "After the JD" study, the first national panel study of law school graduates. In 1998-99, Sander and others at the School of Law launched the Empirical Research Group (ERG), an entity designed to help faculty members undertake ambitious empirical projects and introduce more quantitative and methodological sophistication into their policy-related work.
In 2004, Sander published a comprehensive study of affirmative action in American law schools, focusing particularly on the ways in which large preferences imposed unexpected but substantial costs on their intended beneficiaries.
Sander teaches courses in Property, Quantitative Methods, Urban Housing, and Policy Analysis. He is married to astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, and has a son, Robert. He lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
E. Grady Jolly is a federal judge on senior status with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He joined the court in 1982 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
General Counsel, The Center for Individual Rights
Michael E. Rosman is CIR’s General Counsel. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rochester in 1981, majoring in economics and political science. He received his J.D. in 1984 from Yale Law School. Mr. Rosman worked as an associate at Rosenman & Colin in New York City from 1984-93.
Mr. Rosman joined CIR in March 1994. Mr. Rosman is the author of several articles, including: “Ambiguity and the First Amendment: Some Thoughts On All-White Advertising,” 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 289 (1993); and “Standing Alone: Standing Under The Fair Housing Act,” 60 Mo. L. Rev. 547 (1995), “Thoughts on Bakke and Its Effect on Race- Conscious Decision-Making,” 2002 U. Chi. Legal F. 45 Book Review of Kent Greenawalt’s Fighting Words, 13 Constitutional Commentary 317 (1996)
Mr. Rosman has litigated throughout the federal court system, and has argued many times in the federal courts of appeals. He also successfully argued on behalf of CIR client Tony Morrison in the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case of United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000).
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. He was born in Washington, D.C., but spent most of his childhood in small towns in northwest Indiana. After earning a B.A. in Social Studies at Harvard, Sander in 1978 joined the federal Vista program and worked for a small neighborhood housing group on Chicago's south side. While organizing tenant unions and building receiverships, he was deeply impressed with the work of the South Shore Bank, an experimental, community-development bank owned by churches and foundations. Sander secured funding from three federal agencies and, with the Woodstock Institute, completed the first detailed study of the bank. South Shore Bank was widely imitated as an instrument for community revitalization in other urban areas over the next two decades.
Sander attended graduate school at Northwestern University from 1983 to 1988, earning degrees in law (J.D., 1988) and economics (M.A. 1985, Ph.D., 1990). In his law review comment and his dissertation, Sander sought to understand why fair housing laws had seemingly produced widespread integration in some American metropolitan areas, but very little integration in most. During much of this period, Sander served on the board of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee, and worked on the election effort and subsequent transition team of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor.
In 1989, Sander joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law. During this period, he continued his work on housing segregation, but also pursued two new interests: the reasons behind the American legal profession’s explosive growth since the mid-1960s, and the structure and effects of law school admissions policies. With Kris Knaplund, he published in 1995 the first comparative evaluation of academic support programs used in legal education. After California voters approved Propostion 209 in 1996 – banning the use of race in various government programs, including admissions at the University of California – Sander successfully argued for the adoption of class-based preferences in the law school’s admissions, and published a study on the results of this experiment in 1997.
During the 1990s, Sander was involved in several Los Angeles civic initiatives. He served as President of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California from 1984 to 1996; founded the Fair Housing Institute in 1996, and helped the City of Los Angeles design and implement in 1997 what was, at the time, the nation's most ambitious living wage law. Sander also persuaded regional authorities to develop outreach programs that sharply increased local usage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for LA's poorest working families.
Sander was one of seven UCLA faculty members and staff who launched the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, which created a distinct curriculum aimed at public interest students. From 1998 to 2004, Sander helped to steer the "After the JD" study, the first national panel study of law school graduates. In 1998-99, Sander and others at the School of Law launched the Empirical Research Group (ERG), an entity designed to help faculty members undertake ambitious empirical projects and introduce more quantitative and methodological sophistication into their policy-related work.
In 2004, Sander published a comprehensive study of affirmative action in American law schools, focusing particularly on the ways in which large preferences imposed unexpected but substantial costs on their intended beneficiaries.
Sander teaches courses in Property, Quantitative Methods, Urban Housing, and Policy Analysis. He is married to astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, and has a son, Robert. He lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Executive Director, American Association for Access Equity and Diversity (AAAED)
Shirley J. Wilcher, Mount Holyoke Class of 1973, is a leading authority on equal opportunity and diversity policy. After graduating from Mount Holyoke cum laude with a degree in Philosophy and French, she went on to receive her MA in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research and her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. While a student at Mount Holyoke she received a certificat pratique de langue Francaise from the Université de Paris. While a student at Harvard, Wilcher began a career in civil rights as clerk for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
After earning her law degree, she became staff attorney for the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C. She later moved to Capitol Hill as Associate Counsel for Civil Rights for the House Committee on Education and Labor. There, she was responsible for legislation and oversight of the federal agencies charged with enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and other laws relating to equal employment opportunity and labor standards. She served as principal staff person on major investigations of the civil rights enforcement activities of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, U.S. Department of Labor, and the Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education. Wilcher left Capitol Hill to serve as the Director for State Relations and General Counsel for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
During the Clinton Administration, Wilcher served a near seven-year term as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs in the Labor Department. There she directed a federal program that emphasized the elimination of systemic barriers to equal employment opportunity, the glass ceiling, and inequities in corporate compensation systems, testifying before both House and Senate Labor Committees. Following her service in the Clinton Administration, Wilcher established her consulting firm, Wilcher Global LLC, and served as Executive Director of Americans for a Fair Chance, a consortium of six civil rights legal organizations formed to serve as an educational resource on affirmative action. Wilcher also taught as adjunct Associate Professor of Law at Washington College of Law of American University and worked as Attorney Advisor for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Currently, Wilcher is the Executive Director of the American Association for Access Equity and Diversity (AAAED), formerly the American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA), founded in 1974. AAAED is an organization of equal opportunity, diversity and affirmative action professionals working for academic institutions, the private sector and government. Wilcher is also President and CEO of the Fund for Leadership, Equity, Access and Diversity (LEAD Fund), the nonprofit affiliate of AAAED.
Shirley is the recipient of the NAACP’s Keeper of the Flame Award, AAAED’s Rosa Parks Award and the special Drum Major for Justice and President’s Awards for AAAA/AAAED. Wilcher also served as the first Recording Secretary of the National Political Congress of Black Women, founded in 1984 by former U.S. Representative Shirley Chisholm, and was on the board of Wider Opportunities for Women. Wilcher is an Advisory Board Member, Oxford Women’s Leadership Program, Oxford, UK. In 2018, Shirley Wilcher received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from her alma mater, Mount Holyoke College.
Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University School of Law
One of America's best known scholars and popular commentators on the law, Professor Douglas W. Kmiec holds the endowed chair in constitutional law at Pepperdine Law School. He came to this position after serving several years as dean and St. Thomas More Professor of Law at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and for nearly two decades, on the law faculty at the University of Notre Dame. As dean at Catholic University, Professor Kmiec did what many said would be impossible; he greatly increased academic quality and student selectivity at the same time he deepened the school's religious commitment. During his tenure, the law school moved into the upper tier of the U.S. News ranking from tier three. At Notre Dame, he was director of Notre Dame's Center on Law & Government, and the founder of its Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. Beyond the university setting, Kmiec served Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush during 1985-89 as constitutional legal counsel (Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice).
A wide-ranging writer and engaging speaker, Professor Kmiec writes a syndicated column for the Catholic News Service, and for several years wrote a regular column in the Chicago Tribune. He is also a frequent contributor to the pages of the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals. He is the co-author (with legal historian Stephen Presser of Northwestern) of three books on the Constitution -- The American Constitutional Order; Individual Rights and the American Constitution and The History, Structure and Philosophy of the American Constitution. Another recent book, Cease-Fire on the Family (Crisis Books/Notre Dame) attracted scholarly and popular acclaim for proposing realistic ways for families to "end the culture war" by renewing personal virtue and civic responsibility within itself. He has also written The Attorney General's Lawyer (Praeger 1992), and several respected legal treatises.
Professor Kmiec's scholarly research spans legal and non-legal subjects, from the Constitution and the federal system, to land use and the organization of America society. He is a frequent guest on national news programs, such as Nightline, the Newshour, and NPR's Talk of the Nation, analyzing constitutional questions.
A White House Fellow (1982-83), Professor Kmiec is one of a few individuals who has received the Distinguished Service Award from two cabinet departments —the Department of Justice in 1987 and Housing and Urban Development in 1983. In 1988, he was awarded the Edmund J. Randolph Award by the attorney general. He has lectured on the U.S. Constitution in Asia as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar.
An honors graduate of Northwestern, Professor Kmiec received his law degree from the University of Southern California, where he served on the Law Review and received the Legion Lex Commencement Prize for Legal Writing. He is a member of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court and the state bars of Illinois and California.
B.A., with honors, Northwestern University, 1973
J.D., University of Southern California, 1976
Author and FoxNews.com Contributor
John R. Lott, Jr. is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. He has published over 100 articles in academic journals. He also is the author of six books including More Guns, Less Crime, Freedomnomics, The Bias Against Guns, and Are Predatory Commitments Credible? He has just released another book entitled "Debacle: Obama's war on jobs and growth and what we can do now to regain our future." Lott is a FoxNews.com contributor and a weekly columnist for them. Opinion pieces by Prof. Lott have appeared in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune. He has appeared on such television programs as the ABC and NBC National Evening News broadcasts, Fox News, "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," and the "Today Show." He received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1984.
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. He was born in Washington, D.C., but spent most of his childhood in small towns in northwest Indiana. After earning a B.A. in Social Studies at Harvard, Sander in 1978 joined the federal Vista program and worked for a small neighborhood housing group on Chicago's south side. While organizing tenant unions and building receiverships, he was deeply impressed with the work of the South Shore Bank, an experimental, community-development bank owned by churches and foundations. Sander secured funding from three federal agencies and, with the Woodstock Institute, completed the first detailed study of the bank. South Shore Bank was widely imitated as an instrument for community revitalization in other urban areas over the next two decades.
Sander attended graduate school at Northwestern University from 1983 to 1988, earning degrees in law (J.D., 1988) and economics (M.A. 1985, Ph.D., 1990). In his law review comment and his dissertation, Sander sought to understand why fair housing laws had seemingly produced widespread integration in some American metropolitan areas, but very little integration in most. During much of this period, Sander served on the board of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee, and worked on the election effort and subsequent transition team of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor.
In 1989, Sander joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law. During this period, he continued his work on housing segregation, but also pursued two new interests: the reasons behind the American legal profession’s explosive growth since the mid-1960s, and the structure and effects of law school admissions policies. With Kris Knaplund, he published in 1995 the first comparative evaluation of academic support programs used in legal education. After California voters approved Propostion 209 in 1996 – banning the use of race in various government programs, including admissions at the University of California – Sander successfully argued for the adoption of class-based preferences in the law school’s admissions, and published a study on the results of this experiment in 1997.
During the 1990s, Sander was involved in several Los Angeles civic initiatives. He served as President of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California from 1984 to 1996; founded the Fair Housing Institute in 1996, and helped the City of Los Angeles design and implement in 1997 what was, at the time, the nation's most ambitious living wage law. Sander also persuaded regional authorities to develop outreach programs that sharply increased local usage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for LA's poorest working families.
Sander was one of seven UCLA faculty members and staff who launched the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, which created a distinct curriculum aimed at public interest students. From 1998 to 2004, Sander helped to steer the "After the JD" study, the first national panel study of law school graduates. In 1998-99, Sander and others at the School of Law launched the Empirical Research Group (ERG), an entity designed to help faculty members undertake ambitious empirical projects and introduce more quantitative and methodological sophistication into their policy-related work.
In 2004, Sander published a comprehensive study of affirmative action in American law schools, focusing particularly on the ways in which large preferences imposed unexpected but substantial costs on their intended beneficiaries.
Sander teaches courses in Property, Quantitative Methods, Urban Housing, and Policy Analysis. He is married to astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, and has a son, Robert. He lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
A Lady or a Tiger?: Thoughts on Fisher v. University of Texas and the Future of Race Preferences in America
Alison E. Somin
Note from the Editor: This article is about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Fisher...
Affirmative Action
Fisher, Mismatch, and the Future of Affirmative Action
Los Angeles, CaliforniaBook Reviews: Mismatch and Wounds That Will Not Heal
Roger B. Clegg
Note from the Editor: This feature reviews two new books on affirmative action in anticipation...
Fisher v. UT Event
Dallas, TexasThe Fisher Case: Mismatch & the Future of Affirmative Action - Podcast
Richard H. Sander, Dean Reuter
To listen, please right click on the audio file you wish to hear and then...
The Fisher Case: Mismatch & the Future of Affirmative Action
Law Firm Hiring Practices and Diversity
2006 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCRacial Preferences in Law Schools
2005 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC