Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History at Northwestern University School of Law
Stephen Presser is a leading American legal historian and expert on shareholder liability for corporate debts. He is frequently an invited witness before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on issues of constitutional law. He holds a joint appointment with the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and also teaches in Northwestern's history department.
Senior Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Andrew D. Graham is senior counsel for academic and professional affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom. He develops ADF’s academic initiatives and training programs, including the Blackstone Legal Fellowship. He also regularly speaks at academic gatherings, universities, and think tanks on law, politics, and culture, and creates professional opportunities for ADF’s Blackstone Fellows.
Previously, Graham was a partner at Jackson Walker LLP, a more than 130-year-old law firm with more than 400 lawyers across Texas, where he achieved an extensive record of success in high-stakes litigation in both trial and appellate courts and was named a “Super Lawyers—Rising Star” multiple times.
Graham is an elected member and trustee of The Philadelphia Society, an elected member of The Mont Pelerin Society, and a member of The Federalist Society and the Society for Classical Learning. Additionally, he is a senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute, a member of the board of governors of the John Jay Institute, and a member of the advisory council for the Dallas Forum on Law, Politics, and Culture.
Graham earned his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude at Southern Methodist University (SMU), where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and the Hyer Society. He then earned master’s degrees at Oxford University, where he was a member of Oriel College, and The University of Chicago before returning home to Texas to earn his law degree at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
He is a member of the State Bar of Texas and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Graham is the first person in his family to go to college and is a first-generation American who holds dual American–Australian citizenship. He and his wife, Molly (a classical Christian school educator), have three children and live in Dallas, Texas.
Associate Professor of Government, Van Andel Graduate School of Government, Hillsdale College in Washington, DC
Bradley C.S. Watson is Associate Professor of Government at the Van Andel Graduate School of Government of Hillsdale College in Washington, DC. Professor Watson’s books include Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea (Notre Dame, 2022/2020), Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution: A New Republic (Cambridge, 2020/2017), and Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence (ISI, 2020/2009).
Partner, King & Spalding PLLC
Will Barnette is a partner in the Atlanta office of King & Spalding, where he is a member of the firm’s business litigation practice and class action defense group. During his 30-year career, Will has consistently led clients to successful outcomes in their most sensitive and high exposure class action, MDL, and related regulatory matters. From litigating high-stakes tobacco class actions at the turn of the century, to defending massive data breach litigation in the last decade, and winning several lucrative antitrust opt-out settlements more recently, Will has played a key role in much of the leading complex litigation of the era and led clients to tremendous success on both sides of the “v.” In particular, he has deep experience in litigating consumer, products, and antitrust class actions, commercial disputes, and managing internal investigations.
Prior to rejoining King & Spalding, where he worked earlier in his career, Will served as Associate General Counsel for The Home Depot and was a member of the company’s Legal Senior Leadership Team. As leader of The Home Depot’s commercial litigation team for more than ten years, he was responsible for the company’s most significant commercial and business litigation, which frequently challenged core aspects of the company’s business. During his 21-year tenure with The Home Depot, Will led the successful defense of several hundred class actions, created and led the company’s recovery litigation program, and successfully managed multiple high-profile investigations and favorably resolved significant related regulatory matters, including with the United States Department of Justice, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and multi-state Attorney General groups.
A recognized thought leader in complex litigation, Will argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2019 term—one of the few in-house counsel to do so. He received the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Corporate Counsel Award for Advocacy in 2016 and has authored seven law review articles. His recent works, Misunderstanding Original Jurisdiction and There Is No Conservative Case for Class Actions, ranked among the top SSRN downloads in Federal Courts and Jurisdiction. He frequently lectures on class actions, MDL litigation, and internal investigations, and teaches Complex Litigation at the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, where he earned the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Adjunct Professor Award in 2025.
Will chairs the Board of Georgians for Lawsuit Reform, which was instrumental in passing Georgia’s 2025 tort reform legislation. He also serves as Chair of the Class Actions Section for the State Bar of Georgia and is a former President of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. Will played varsity college basketball at Sewanee.
Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History at Northwestern University School of Law
Stephen Presser is a leading American legal historian and expert on shareholder liability for corporate debts. He is frequently an invited witness before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on issues of constitutional law. He holds a joint appointment with the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and also teaches in Northwestern's history department.
Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law, Colorado Law
Robert Nagel joined the faculty of CU Law School in 1975, leaving a position as a deputy attorney general in Pennsylvania. Since that time, he has focused on constitutional law and theory. For an audience of legal scholars, Professor Nagel has written prolifically, including four books and over 50 law review articles. However, he has also contributed to the popular debate on constitutional issues, including free speech, hate codes, and federalism, by addressing his ideas to the general citizenry in articles and opinion pieces in publications such as The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, First Things, and Washington Monthly. Much of his work has focused on the relationship between the judiciary (and its interpretation of the Constitution) and the wider context of American political culture. His two earlier books on this topic, Constitutional Cultures: The Mentality and Consequences of Judicial Review and Judicial Power and American Character: Censoring Ourselves in an Anxious Age, were widely read and reviewed. He has recently completed The Implosion of American Federalism, a book on the cultural and constitutional ramifications of political centralization. Professor Nagel has testified before several congressional committees. He was formerly the director of the Law School's Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Amy Wax's work addresses issues in social welfare law and policy as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. By bringing to bear her training in biomedical sciences and appellate practice as well as her interest in economic analysis, Wax has developed a uniquely insightful approach to problems in her areas of expertise.
Wax's career has been stellar. As an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wax argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court. She taught for seven years at the University of Virginia Law School before joining the Penn Law faculty in 2001.
Wax has published widely in law journals, including Chicago, Virginia, Villanova, Indiana, Emory, the Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law, Yale Journal on Regulation and the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. Papers in press address liberal theory and welfare work requirements as well as the economics of federal disability laws. Current work in progress includes articles on law and evolutionary psychology, the political psychology of social security reform, and economic models of the family-friendly workplace. Wax has also received the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course.
Judge William Hawley Atwell Chair of Constitutional Law, SMU Dedman School of Law
Professor Carpenter is the Judge William Hawley Atwell Chair of Constitutional Law. He previously served as the Charles J. and Inez Wright Murray Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at SMU, teaching Constitutional Law I as well as LGBT Rights and the Law. This fall he will teach Constitutional Law II.
Prior to joining SMU, Professor Carpenter taught for 16 years at the University of Minnesota, where he served as a Distinguished University Teaching Professor and the Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law. He won multiple teaching awards. He is also an editor of Constitutional Commentary.
The Texas native received his B.A. degree in history, magna cum laude, from Yale College and received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review. After serving as a law clerk for Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, he practiced at the firms Vinson & Elkins LLP in Houston, and at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin, P.C. in San Francisco.
As the author of numerous articles and an award-winning book —FLAGRANT CONDUCT: THE STORY OF LAWRENCE V. TEXAS (W.W. Norton & Co., 2012), about the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that invalidated America's sodomy laws — he is often asked by the media to comment on constitutional law, the First Amendment, and LGBT Rights and the Law. Since 2005, he has been an active blogger on the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, which is hosted by the Washington Post.
John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
Andrew Koppelman is John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and Philosophy Department Affiliated Faculty at Northwestern University. He received the Walder Award for Research Excellence from Northwestern, the Hart-Dworkin award in legal philosophy from the Association of American Law Schools, and the Edward S. Corwin Prize from the American Political Science Association. His scholarship focuses on issues at the intersection of law and political philosophy. He has written more than 100 scholarly articles and eight books, most recently Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed, (St. Martin’s Press). His column appears regularly at The Hill. You can find his recent work at andrewkoppelman.com.
The Past Is Not a Foreign Country: How a Historical Critique of Originalism Misses That the Past Is Prologue
Stephen B. Presser
A review of Jonathan Gienapp, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique (2024) This review is...
The Wisdom of Our Ancestors
Andrew D. Graham
A review of Graham James McAleer & Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul, The Wisdom of Our Ancestors:...
What Is Conservative Constitutionalism? A Fractured History Reveals an Uncertain Path Forward
Bradley C. S. Watson
A review of Johnathan O’Neill, Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism Since the New Deal (Johns Hopkins...
There Is No Conservative Case for Class Actions
William P. Barnette
A review of The Conservative Case for Class Actions, by Brian T. Fitzpatrick (Chicago), https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo43233299.html (Read...
The Principled Scalia: A Liberal Friend on Scalia’s Liberal Opinions
Stephen B. Presser
A Review of: The Unexpected Scalia: A Conservative Justice’s Liberal Opinions, by David M. Dorsen...
Conservative & Libertarian Legal Scholarship: Constitutional Law
[Return to Table of Contents] V. Constitutional Law Note: The Heritage Foundation has published a...
The Conservative Mind and the Foundation of Ethics
Birmingham, AlabamaEthics and Conservatism
The Soul of Private Practice
Same Sex Marriage
Robert F. Nagel, Amy Wax, Dale A. Carpenter, Andrew Koppelman
University of Minnesota Law's Dale Carpenter, Colorado Law's Robert Nagel, Northwestern University Law's Andy Koppelman, and the University...