Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
San Diego Councilman, District 5
On June 3, 2008 Carl DeMaio was elected to the San Diego City Council to represent District 5. DeMaio made history as a non-incumbent taking a Council seat by the widest margin in a primary-winning 66% of the vote.
Prior to winning his seat on the City Council, DeMaio was best known in San Diego as the City Hall Watchdog. He helped uncover the city's financial and ethical problems. After years of prodding city leaders to enact reforms, a frustrated DeMaio decided to run for City Council.
DeMaio's pledge to the voters was simple: Clean Up City Hall. His platform includes balancing the budget, reforming the pension system, fixing crumbling infrastructure, and restoring ethics and accountability to every level of city government.
Refusing to shed his watchdog roots, DeMaio pledges "to continue to serve as the eyes and ears of the taxpayers on the City Council."
Outside of his work as a local government watchdog, DeMaio was a businessman who founded two multi-million dollar companies by the age of 30. In 2000, he founded the Performance Institute, a non-partisan, private think tank dedicated to reforming government through the principles of performance, transparency, competition and accountability. DeMaio built the organization into the largest government reform think tank in the nation and the leading authority on performance-based management in government, law enforcement, non-profits and schools.
In 2003, DeMaio founded the American Strategic Management Institute (ASMI), which provides training and education in corporate financial and performance management. DeMaio sold both companies to Thompson Publishing Group in late 2007 so he could focus his efforts on turning the City of San Diego around.
Carl DeMaio is an active member of the community helping with numerous non-profit organizations in San Diego. He serves as Chairman of San Diego Citizens for Accountable Government, helping sponsor ballot initiatives and voter education efforts each election.
DeMaio also serves on the Board of Directors of the SAFENOWProject - a non-profit dedicated to creating, promoting and advocating for community-based strategies and resources to eliminate child sexual abuse. DeMaio also is active in raising money for a number of charitable causes, including Rotary, Mama's Kitchen, and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
DeMaio has put constituent service as a top priority in his Council office and is working to improve the quality of neighborhoods in his District, which include Rancho Bernardo, Carmel Mountain Ranch, Sabre Springs, Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch, San Pasqual Valley, and Sorrento Mesa.
General Manager, San Diego Municipal Employees Association
Mike joined MEA in 2009 as a negotiations consultant, and became General Manager in October 2009. Mike implements policies as directed by MEA's Officers, Executive Committee and Board of Directors. He also helps develop legal, political and strategic direction for the organization. In addition, Mike oversees staff, works with MEA's legal counsel on legal and negotiation matters and communicates with the City Council and other City officials regarding MEA business.
From 1998-2002, Mike worked as the Government Affairs Director for the San Diego City Fire Fighters Union. Mike then served as the San Diego City Councilmember for the Second District from 2002 to 2005.
Mike graduated from UCSB with degrees in business economics and environmental studies in 1992. He then completed his master's in Environmental Economics at Duke University in 1994.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Robert Post is Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Before coming to Yale, he taught at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. Dean Post’s subject areas are constitutional law, First Amendment, legal history, and equal protection. He has written and edited numerous books, including Citizens Divided: A Constitutional Theory of Campaign Finance Reform (2014), which was originally delivered as the Tanner Lectures at Harvard in 2013. Other books include, Democracy, Expertise, Academic Freedom: A First Amendment Jurisprudence for the Modern State (2012); For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (with Matthew M. Finkin, 2009); Prejudicial Appearances: The Logic of American Antidiscrimination Law (with K. Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Thomas C. Grey & Reva Siegel, 2001); and Constitutional Domains: Democracy, Community, Management (1995).
He publishes regularly in legal journals and other publications; recent articles and chapters include “Theorizing Disagreement: Reconceiving the Relationship Between Law and Politics” (California Law Review, 2010); “Constructing the European Polity: ERTA and the Open Skies Judgments” in The Past and Future of EU Law: The Classics of EU Law Revisited on the 50th Anniversary of the Rome Treaty (Miguel Poiares Maduro & Loïc Azuolai eds., 2010); “Roe Rage: Democratic Constitutionalism and Backlash” (with Reva Siegel, Harvard Civil-Rights Civil-Liberties Law Review, 2007); “Federalism, Positive Law, and the Emergence of the American Administrative State: Prohibition in the Taft Court Era” (William & Mary Law Review, 2006); “Foreword: Fashioning the Legal Constitution: Culture, Courts, and Law” (Harvard Law Review, 2003); and “Subsidized Speech” (Yale Law Journal, 1996). He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society.
Book Review: The War on Cops
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