Nick Ohnell Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a member of the Council on Criminal Justice. His first book, Criminal (In)Justice, was released in July 2022. He has authored and coauthored a number of MI reports and op-eds on issues ranging from urban crime and jail violence to broader matters of criminal and civil justice reform. His work has been featured and mentioned in a wide array of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, New York Post, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and City Journal. Mangual also regularly appears on Fox News and has made a number of national and local television and radio appearances on outlets such as C-SPAN and Bloomberg Radio. In 2020, he was appointed to serve a four-year term as a member of the New York State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Prior to joining MI in 2015, Rafael worked in corporate communications for the International Trademark Association. He holds a B.A. in corporate communications from the City University of New York’s Baruch College and a J.D. from DePaul University in Chicago, where he was president of the Federalist Society and vice president of the Appellate Moot Court team. After graduating from law school, Mangual was inducted into the Order of the Barristers, a national honor society for excellence in oral and written advocacy.
Staff Attorney, Eighth Texas Court of Appeals
David Vandenberg is a staff attorney with the Eighth Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso. He is also the President-Elect of the Texas Association of Appellate Court Attorneys. Prior to working at the Texas Court of Appeals, he was Supervising Attorney for the Third Judicial District Court in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the second largest court of general jurisdiction in the state. He served as summer clerk at the Supreme Court of Micronesia, a former American territory, and at the Texas Third Court of Appeals in Austin. In addition to his law degree from John Marshall School of Law in Atlanta, he earned a doctorate in philosophy with a concentration in epistemology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with highest awards of the graduate faculty. He is the author of a highly cited article on royalty determination for horizontal and stacked (fracked) oil and gas wells in cross-boundary contexts with the Journal of World Business and Energy Law at Oxford University Press and is a designated reporter for developments in American law for OUP. He has been invited to speak on legal aspects of fracking technology at international energy conferences in Europe and Asia.
Former CEO, Vascular Solutions
Howard Root is the recently-retired Chief Executive Officer of Vascular Solutions, Inc., a company he founded in 1997, took public in 2000, and grew into a worldwide medical device company that he sold to Teleflex for $1 billion in February 2017. Over the company’s 20 years, Howard led Vascular Solutions in inventing, developing and launching over 100 new medical devices that are used daily to improve the lives of patients suffering from cardiovascular disease. In 2014, Vascular Solutions and Howard were indicted on felony charges alleging the company’s salespeople had promoted off-label an FDA-cleared medical device that made up only 0.1% of the company’s sales and never harmed a single patient. After surviving an arduous legal process, with 121 attorneys charging $25 million in legal fees, in February 2016 the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on all charges, even though the defense didn’t call a single witness to testify in the four-week trial.
Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Josh Blackman is a national thought leader on constitutional law and the United States Supreme Court. Josh’s work was quoted during two presidential impeachment trials. He has testified before Congress and advises federal and state lawmakers. Josh regularly appears on TV, including NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the BBC. Josh is also a frequent guest on NPR and other syndicated radio programs. He has published commentaries in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and leading national publications.
Since 2012, Josh has served as a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. He holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law. Josh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Josh has written more than seven dozen law review articles that have been cited more than a thousand times. Josh was selected as the Jurist of the Year by the Texas Journal of Law & Public Policy, received the inaugural Meese III Originalism Award, and was awarded the Inaugural Joseph Story Award. Josh was selected by Forbes Magazine for the “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy. Josh is the President of the Harlan Institute, and founded FantasySCOTUS, the Internet’s Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracyand posts@JoshMBlackman.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Counsel to Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee
Kathleen Hunker is a senior policy analyst with the Center for Economic Freedom at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She is also a managing editor of the Foundation’s research and publications.
During her time at the Foundation, Ms. Hunker has testified nearly two-dozen times before the Texas Legislature and has become a respected expert on the law surrounding consumer protection, property rights, and the Texas civil court system.
A Texan by choice, not birth, Ms. Hunker previously worked as a legal associate at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, where she conducted rigorous research and writing on a wide-range of federal and state cases in order to advance the Center’s mission of a constitutionally limited government.
The Claremont Institute selected her in 2014 for their prestigious John Marshall Fellowship on American political thought and jurisprudence.
Ms. Hunker graduated from Columbia University School of Law and the University College London with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) and Masters of Law (LL.M) respectively. She received her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) from Hofstra University.
A former editor for the Columbia Journal of European Law, Ms. Hunker has written for such publications as Forbes, Townhall.com, Austin American-Statesman, and Ethika Politika, among others. Her legal research also has appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and the Cornell International Law Journal Online. Ms. Hunker specializes in comparative constitutional law and natural rights.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Staff Attorney, Eighth Texas Court of Appeals
David Vandenberg is a staff attorney with the Eighth Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso. He is also the President-Elect of the Texas Association of Appellate Court Attorneys. Prior to working at the Texas Court of Appeals, he was Supervising Attorney for the Third Judicial District Court in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the second largest court of general jurisdiction in the state. He served as summer clerk at the Supreme Court of Micronesia, a former American territory, and at the Texas Third Court of Appeals in Austin. In addition to his law degree from John Marshall School of Law in Atlanta, he earned a doctorate in philosophy with a concentration in epistemology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with highest awards of the graduate faculty. He is the author of a highly cited article on royalty determination for horizontal and stacked (fracked) oil and gas wells in cross-boundary contexts with the Journal of World Business and Energy Law at Oxford University Press and is a designated reporter for developments in American law for OUP. He has been invited to speak on legal aspects of fracking technology at international energy conferences in Europe and Asia.
Former CEO, Vascular Solutions
Howard Root is the recently-retired Chief Executive Officer of Vascular Solutions, Inc., a company he founded in 1997, took public in 2000, and grew into a worldwide medical device company that he sold to Teleflex for $1 billion in February 2017. Over the company’s 20 years, Howard led Vascular Solutions in inventing, developing and launching over 100 new medical devices that are used daily to improve the lives of patients suffering from cardiovascular disease. In 2014, Vascular Solutions and Howard were indicted on felony charges alleging the company’s salespeople had promoted off-label an FDA-cleared medical device that made up only 0.1% of the company’s sales and never harmed a single patient. After surviving an arduous legal process, with 121 attorneys charging $25 million in legal fees, in February 2016 the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on all charges, even though the defense didn’t call a single witness to testify in the four-week trial.
Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Josh Blackman is a national thought leader on constitutional law and the United States Supreme Court. Josh’s work was quoted during two presidential impeachment trials. He has testified before Congress and advises federal and state lawmakers. Josh regularly appears on TV, including NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the BBC. Josh is also a frequent guest on NPR and other syndicated radio programs. He has published commentaries in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and leading national publications.
Since 2012, Josh has served as a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. He holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law. Josh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Josh has written more than seven dozen law review articles that have been cited more than a thousand times. Josh was selected as the Jurist of the Year by the Texas Journal of Law & Public Policy, received the inaugural Meese III Originalism Award, and was awarded the Inaugural Joseph Story Award. Josh was selected by Forbes Magazine for the “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy. Josh is the President of the Harlan Institute, and founded FantasySCOTUS, the Internet’s Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracyand posts@JoshMBlackman.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Counsel to Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee
Kathleen Hunker is a senior policy analyst with the Center for Economic Freedom at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She is also a managing editor of the Foundation’s research and publications.
During her time at the Foundation, Ms. Hunker has testified nearly two-dozen times before the Texas Legislature and has become a respected expert on the law surrounding consumer protection, property rights, and the Texas civil court system.
A Texan by choice, not birth, Ms. Hunker previously worked as a legal associate at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, where she conducted rigorous research and writing on a wide-range of federal and state cases in order to advance the Center’s mission of a constitutionally limited government.
The Claremont Institute selected her in 2014 for their prestigious John Marshall Fellowship on American political thought and jurisprudence.
Ms. Hunker graduated from Columbia University School of Law and the University College London with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) and Masters of Law (LL.M) respectively. She received her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) from Hofstra University.
A former editor for the Columbia Journal of European Law, Ms. Hunker has written for such publications as Forbes, Townhall.com, Austin American-Statesman, and Ethika Politika, among others. Her legal research also has appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and the Cornell International Law Journal Online. Ms. Hunker specializes in comparative constitutional law and natural rights.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
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