Managing Director, Lexpat Global Services
Adam R. Pearlman is the Founder and Managing Director of Lexpat Global Services, an international law and consulting services firm specializing in security, defense, investigations, compliance, and training. A Special Advisor to and member of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group, he is National Security Law expert and a proven senior leader with more than fifteen years of experience across the U.S. Departments of Justice, Defense, and State, in the White House, and with the U.S. Federal Judiciary.
Most recently, he served as the Senior Advisor for Legal Policy in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, where he counseled senior officials on matters covering the entire spectrum of programs and operations to counter terrorism and violent extremism. While participating in sensitive diplomatic engagements and helping to coordinate military operations, he also advised in the development of sanctions policy and initiatives to build legal and operational capacity in partner nations. Mr. Pearlman also managed the Bureau’s participation in federal litigation and led U.S. delegations in multilateral forums concerning criminal justice and rule of law.
A former Associate Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Mr. Pearlman was agency counsel for complex civil and criminal national security matters in federal and military courts, and led the Supreme Court and appellate unit of the team dedicated to litigating classified counterterrorism cases. His earlier service in the Department of Justice spanned four litigating divisions and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. His diverse experience included reviewing complex international transactions and mergers, and advising on immigration removal proceedings, human rights abuses, and terrorist financing investigations. Mr. Pearlman also served with distinction in Iraq as an early advisor to the Iraqi High Tribunal’s prosecution of Saddam Hussein. He was a law clerk for The Honorable Royce C. Lamberth, and during law school interned in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Mr. Pearlman is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, a member of the American Bar Association’s Africa Law Initiative Council, and a member of the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues. He is a former National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, vice chairman of the ABA Section of International Law’s committees on national security, and aerospace and defense, and also previously served as a liaison to the Board of Directors of the ABA’s Rule of Law Initiative. He has been co-editor of the U.S. Intelligence Community Law Sourcebook since 2011 and has published articles in the Harvard National Security Journal, Stanford Law & Policy Review, and Intelligence & National Security.
Mr. Pearlman earned his B.A., with honors, from UCLA, and his J.D., with honors, from The George Washington University Law School, where he was a member of the International Law Review. He also earned a Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence degree from the National Intelligence University, where he was the inaugural recipient of the Kornblum Award for national security law and ethics. Mr. Pearlman speaks and reads Portuguese at the intermediate level and holds certificates in international human rights law from the University of Oxford and in U.S. and international anti-corruption law from American University’s Washington College of Law. He is admitted to the State Bars of California and Virginia, as well as to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court.
Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Professor Friedman is one of the country’s leading authorities on constitutional law and the federal courts. He is a prolific scholar, working at the intersections of law, politics and history. Friedman teaches a wide variety of courses including Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, and Criminal Procedure. He writes extensively about judicial review, constitutional law and theory, federal jurisdiction and judicial behavior. His scholarship appears regularly in the nation’s top law and peer-edited reviews. He is the author of widely-recognized The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2009), which examines the history of the relationship between popular opinion and the Supreme Court, from 1776 to the present. Along with his co-author Stephen Burbank, Friedman co-edited and contributed to Judicial Independence at the Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Approach, which questions common assumptions about the nature of judicial independence and how it can be protected. The book has been cited and relied upon countless times by scholars and policymakers alike. Professor Friedman is a frequent contributor to the nation's leading journals, both on-line and print. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, Politico andThe New Republic, among others.
Professor Friedman is a frequent speaker at events of all sorts. Given the interdisciplinary nature of his work, Professor Friedman regularly appears at conferences in law, political science and history. He is a founder and co-convener of the “roughly biennial” Constitutional Theory Conference. He organizes many multi-disciplinary conferences, including one on Modeling Law, and another – done under the auspices of the American Constitution Society – on Reconstruction: America’s Second Founding. He presents papers regularly at home and abroad. He has been a visiting scholar and lecturer at the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Groupe d’Etudes et de Recherches sur law Justice Constitutionnelle Aix-en-Provence, Sciences-Po in Aix-en-Provence, and Hong Kong University.
Professor Friedman regularly serves as a litigator or litigation consultant in a variety of matters in the federal and state courts. He has represented a wide range of clients, both public and private. Notably, he represents both civil liberties claimants and state and local governments. He has been active in the areas of reproductive rights, the jurisdictional allocation of cases between the federal and state courts, and the proper scope of the federal government’s commerce power. He has filed a number of amicus briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Actively engaged in a range of important service activities, at NYU Professor Friedman created the Academic Careers Program and founded and is now co-director of the Furman Academic Program. Both programs are dedicated to preparing young scholars for academic careers. In the past he was extensively involved with the American Judicature Society, was President of the Tennessee Civil Liberties Union, served on the Board of the State and Local Legal Center, and on the steering committee of New York University’s Institute for Law and Society. He recently completed a term as Vice Dean of New York University School of Law.
Professor Friedman graduated from the University of Chicago and received his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center. He clerked for the Honorable Phyllis A. Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and also worked as a litigation associate at Davis, Polk & Wardwell in Washington D.C. He was a professor at Vanderbilt Law School before joining the NYU faculty in 2000. In 1995 he won the Clarence Darrow Award from the ACLU of Tennessee for his work in defense of civil liberties.
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 1982
B.A., University of Chicago, 1978
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Former Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law, University of Illinois College of Law
The University of Illinois College of Law community mourns the loss of Professor Larry E. Ribstein, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair, Associate Dean for Research, and Co-Director of the Illinois Business Law and Policy Program, who passed away on December 24, 2011 in Fairfax, Virginia.
A member of the Illinois law faculty since 2002, Ribstein was a prodigious and pioneering scholar across a vast range of subjects, including partnerships and limited liability companies, corporate and securities law, choice of law, financial regulation, white-collar crime, legal ethics, and the legal profession. Among his over 170 publications, he was the author of The Rise of the Uncorporation (Oxford University Press, 2010),The Law Market (Oxford University Press, 2009) (with Erin A. O’Hara), The Sarbanes-Oxley Debate (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2006) (with Henry N. Butler), The Constitution and the Corporation (American Enterprise Institute Press, 1995) (with Butler), leading treatises (including Ribstein & Keatinge on Limited Liability Corporations and Bromberg & Ribstein on Partnerships), and two casebooks (Business Associations (4th ed. 2003, Lexis/Nexis) (with Peter V. Letsou) andUnincorporated Business Entities (4th ed. 2009, Lexis/Nexis) (with Jeffrey M. Lipshaw)). His latest book, The Rise of the Uncorporation, which examines the emergence and significance of non-corporate forms of business organization, was recently described in the Michigan Law Review as a “fascinating” study that “takes the traditional law and economics story of the corporation and turns it on its head.” A prominent commentator on law and business, Ribstein was the founder of Ideoblog (www.ideoblog.org) and the leading contributor to Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com), which was recently ranked by the ABA Journal as one of the 100 top law blogs.
Professor Ribstein taught a variety of courses at the College of Law, including business organizations, unincorporated business entities, and market regulation. He also taught an innovative colloquium on corporate law that brought together students and leading scholars to discuss current issues in the field.
“Larry was a scholar of incandescent intellect, breathtaking range, and unflagging energy,” said Dean Bruce Smith. “He cared passionately about his students and about transforming legal education to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. He invested selflessly in the professional development of junior faculty members – whether at Illinois or at other institutions. He cared deeply about the College of Law and contributed incalculably to it through his ideas, his engagement, and his counsel. And he cherished his family with a love that was boundless. Larry was a towering figure and an incomparable person, and he will be dearly missed.”
After earning his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, Ribstein practiced for three years as an associate at McDermott, Will & Emery in Chicago. He began his teaching career at Mercer University Law School (1975-87), later serving on the faculty at George Mason University School of Law (1987-2002), including as George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law (1993-2002). He also held visiting professorships at New York University Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, Washington University School of Law, and St. Louis University School of Law. He served the legal-academic community in a variety of capacities, including on the Executive Committee of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Securities Regulation, as chair of the AALS Section on Agency, Partnership and LLCs, and as editor and co-editor of The Supreme Court Economic Review.
Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law
Howard M. Wasserman joined the College of Law in 2003. He graduated magna cum laude from the Northwestern University School of Law, where he was an associate articles editor of the Law Review and was named to the Order of the Coif. Following law school, he clerked for Chief Judge James T. Giles of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Judge Jane R. Roth of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He also has been a visiting professor at Saint Louis University School of Law and Florida State University College of Law. Professor Wasserman teaches civil procedure, evidence, federal courts, civil rights, and First Amendment; his scholarship focuses on the freedom of speech and on the role of procedure and jurisdiction in public-law and civil-rights litigation. He blogs at PrawfsBlawg and at Sports-Law Blog and is the Section Editor for the Courts Law Section of JOTWELL. Professor Wasserman is a loyal Chicago Cubs fan.
Member, Caplin & Drysdale
Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs, Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Martin S. Flaherty is a longtime is Visiting Professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where he was Fellow in the Program in Law and Public Affairs. He is also Leitner Family Professor of International Human Rights Law and Founding Co-Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. Professor Flaherty also currently teaches at Columbia Law School and Barnard College. Previously he has taught at China University of Political Science and Law and the National Judges College in Beijing, Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Queen’s University Belfast. Professor Flaherty earlier served as a law clerk for Justice Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge John Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Flaherty received a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was Book Reviews and Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review, an M.A. and M.Phil., with distinction, from Yale (in history), and B.A. summa cum laude from Princeton. For the Leitner Center, Human Rights First, and the New York City Bar Association, he has led or participated in human rights missions to Northern Ireland, Turkey, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia, Kenya, Romania and China. Professor Flaherty is currently the President of the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists, https://www.aaicj.org, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a legal expert advisor at the Sixth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly.
Flaherty’s scholarly publications focus upon international human rights, foreign affairs, and constitutional law and history, and appear in such journals as the Columbia Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, the Harvard Journal of Law and Policy, and the Harvard Human Rights Journal. He has written, appeared, or been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Daily News, Newsday, the PBS Newshour, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. He is also the author of the Restoring the Global Judiciary: Why the Supreme Court Should Rule in Foreign Affairs (Princeton University Press, 2019).
Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, Columbia Law School
A leading administrative and constitutional law scholar, Gillian Metzger ’96 writes and teaches in the areas of administrative law, constitutional law, and federal courts, with an emphasis on federalism and privatization. In 2023-2024, she served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.
Metzger's recent work covers topics ranging from constitutional attacks on the administrative state to appropriations, administrative law under the Roberts Court, and the role of administrative agencies in a polarized world. In 2015, Metzger won the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section Annual Scholarship Award for “The Constitutional Duty to Supervise,” which examined presidential control and oversight of the modern administrative state. She is a co-editor of Gellhorn & Byse’s Administrative Law: Cases and Comments, 13th ed. (Foundation Press, 2023), a seminal administrative law casebook.
Professor Metzger was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States. In 2020, she was awarded Columbia University's Faculty Mentorship Award and in 2014, the Law School’s graduating class awarded Metzger the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching, recognizing, among many other accomplishments, her commitment to mentoring new generations of law students.
In 2012, Metzger helped launch Columbia Law School’s Center for Constitutional Governance (CCG)—where she now serves as faculty director—a nonpartisan legal and policy organization devoted to the study of constitutional structure and authority. CCG brings together a diverse group of constitutional scholars to explore policy areas such as health care, civil rights, immigration, financial regulation, and national security.
Metzger also has co-authored and filed numerous amicus briefs in major constitutional and administrative law challenges before the Supreme Court and other courts. Most recently, Metzger filed a brief in Seila Law Center v. CFPB, a separation of powers challenge, and in Kisor v. Wilkie, a case involving judicial deference to agencies. She has also filed briefs in cases involving reproductive rights and the Affordable Care Act, among others.
Previously, Metzger served as vice dean of intellectual life at Columbia Law School. Before joining the Law School, she worked as an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice. Metzger also clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 and Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In 2018, Metzger moderated a panel discussion with Justice Ginsburg on impact litigation at Columbia Law School.
C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Professor Nagy joined the law school faculty in 2006 as the C. Ben Dutton Professor of Business Law. She began her teaching career in 1994 at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, where she served as Interim Dean from 2004-05 and as Associate Dean for Faculty Development from 2002-04. In Spring 2001, she was a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, and was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Canterbury School of Law in Christchurch, New Zealand in Spring 2002.
Professor Nagy teaches and writes in the areas of securities litigation, securities regulation, and corporations. Her scholarship includes articles in the Cornell Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Ohio State Law Journal as well as two co-authored books, one on the law of insider trading and a casebook on Securities Litigation and Enforcement. She is a frequent speaker on securities regulation and litigation topics at law schools and professional conferences. She also served as Chair of the AALS Section on Securities Regulation in 2004-05; as Chair of the AALS Standing Committee on Sections and the Annual Meeting in 2007-08; and as a Vice President and Member of the Board of Trustees of the SEC Historical Society from 2008-11.
Prior to teaching, Professor Nagy was an associate with Debevoise & Plimpton in Washington, D.C., specializing in securities enforcement and litigation. She was named interim executive associate dean for academic affairs in August 2013 and executive associate dean in January 2014.
Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law, Moritz Colleg, The Ohio State University
Professor Shane came to Ohio State in 2003 from Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. He is an internationally recognized scholar in administrative law, with a specialty in separation of powers law, and has co-authored leading casebooks on each subject. He has served on the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law and was dean at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
In addition to his outstanding law teaching and scholarship, Professor Shane has received a National Science Foundation grant for interdisciplinary study related to cyberspace and democracy. At Ohio State, he provides strong leadership in interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching.
Senior Counsel, YetterColeman LLP
Chris’s practice focuses on complex appeals. He has represented major corporations in a variety of industries—including energy, insurance, and financial services—as well as governmental entities and private parties in litigation against governmental entities in federal and state courts throughout the country and in the U.S. Supreme Court. He has briefed numerous successful appeals and orally argued in federal and state appellate courts. Chris is admitted to practice in Texas, the United States Supreme Court, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fifth, Ninth, and District of Columbia Circuits, and the United States District Courts of Texas. Chris was a law clerk for the Honorable Will Garwood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before attending law school, he worked as a Latin teacher, for the Republican Party of Texas, and for Texas State Senator Jane Nelson.
Professor of Law, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Tuan Samahon teaches and writes in the areas of federal courts and constitutional law. His articles have been published in the Stanford Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Hastings Law Journal, William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, University of Chicago Legal Forum, Denver Law Review, and Villanova Law Review, among others.
Beyond his scholarship, Tuan is engaged in interpreting and fashioning federal constitutional law. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, and has served as counsel in separation-of-powers and Freedom of Information Act litigation in federal trial and appellate courts. Recently, Tuan prevailed against the CIA in a civil action for the release of the draft fifth volume of its secret history of the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. In addition to representing others, for a book he is researching, Tuan successfully sued the FBI for the release of agency records detailing high-ranking executive and judicial officers' abuses of power.
Tuan received his B.A. from Brigham Young University and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an Olin Law and Economics Research Fellow and was co-awarded the Olin Prize in Law and Economics. Prior to entering teaching, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson on the Eastern District of Virginia and for U.S. Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee on the Ninth Circuit. He also practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling. Professor Samahon was named "Professor of the Year" by his students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He teaches civil procedure, federal courts, and constitutional law subjects.
During spring 2017, Tuan served as a Fulbright scholar with the law faculty at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Paul S. Atkins was sworn into office as the 34th Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 21, 2025, after being nominated by President Donald J. Trump on January 20, 2025, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 9, 2025.
Prior to returning to the SEC, Chairman Atkins was most recently chief executive of Patomak Global Partners, a company he founded in 2009. Chairman Atkins helped lead efforts to develop best practices for the digital asset sector. He served as an independent director and non-executive chairman of the board of BATS Global Markets, Inc. from 2012 to 2015.
Chairman Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a Commissioner of the SEC from 2002 to 2008. During his tenure, he advocated for transparency, consistency, and the use of cost-benefit analysis at the agency. Chairman Atkins also represented the SEC at meetings of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets and the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Economic Council. From 2009 to 2010, he was appointed a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Before serving as an SEC Commissioner, Chairman Atkins was a consultant on securities and investment management industry matters, especially regarding issues of strategy, regulatory compliance, risk management, new product development, and organizational control.
From 1990 to 1994, Chairman Atkins served on the staff of two chairmen of the SEC, Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt, ultimately as chief of staff and counselor, respectively. He received the SEC’s 1992 Law and Policy Award for work regarding corporate governance matters.
Chairman Atkins began his career as a lawyer in New York, focusing on a wide range of corporate transactions for U.S. and foreign clients, including public and private securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He was resident for 2½ years in his firm's Paris office and admitted as conseil juridique in France.
A member of the New York and Florida bars, Chairman Atkins received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1983 and was Senior Student Writing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Wofford College in 1980.
Originally from Lillington, North Carolina, Chairman Atkins grew up in Tampa, Florida. He and his wife Sarah have three sons.
Senior Attorney and Counsel for Special Projects, Competitive Enterprise Institute
CEI’s Counsel for Special Projects is Hans Bader. Coming to CEI in 2003, Hans’s prior casework has included suits involving the First Amendment, federalism, and civil rights issues. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in economics and history, and later earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Just before joining CEI, Hans was Senior Counsel at the Center for Individual Rights.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Professor of Law Michael S. Greve joined the faculty of the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University in fall 2012 after having served as John G. Searle Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specialized in constitutional law, courts, and business regulation and served as chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI, Greve was founder and co-director of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm specializing in constitutional litigation.
Greve has served previously as an adjunct professor at a number of universities, including Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities, and has been a visiting professor at Boston College since 2004. He was awarded a PhD and an MA in government by Cornell University. Greve also earned a Diploma from the University of Hamburg in Germany.
A prolific writer, Greve is the author of nine books and a multitude of articles appearing in scholarly publications, as well as numerous editorials, short articles, and book reviews. He is a frequent speaker for professional and scholarly organizations and has made many appearances on radio and television.
In addition Greve has provided congressional and state legislative testimony, has lobbied and consulted in federal agency proceedings, and has provided litigation services and management in over 30 cases, including matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law
Jeffrey P. Mahoney joined the Council of Institutional Investors ("Council") in 2006 as General Counsel. As General Counsel, Mahoney responsibilities include advocating the Council's membership approved policies before standard setters, regulators, Members of Congress, and other policy makers. Prior to joining the Council, Mahoney was Counsel to the Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB"). Since 1996, he served FASB and, its parent entity, the Financial Accounting Foundation, in a variety of research, technical and administrative matters and was primarily responsible for the FASB's Washington, DC liaison activities. Prior to joining the FASB, Mahoney was a corporate/securities lawyer at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, a law clerk to the Honorable James G. Exum, Jr., Chief Justice, of the North Carolina Supreme Court, and an auditor at Arthur Andersen LLP.
Mahoney holds a J.D. degree, served on the North Carolina Law Review, and was named to the Order of the Coif. He also holds a B.B.A. degree and an A.A. degree. He is a member of the District of Columbia and North Carolina Bar Associations. He also is a certified public accountant in North Carolina and Michigan and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
Mahoney is currently a member and was the initial Co-Chair of the FASB's Investors Technical Advisory Committee, Vice Chair of the Investor Rights Committee of the Corporation, Finance, and Securities Law Section of the DC Bar, a member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's Standing Advisory Group, and a member of the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Hearing Panel. Mahoney holds a J.D. degree and served on the North Carolina Law Review. He also holds a B.B.A. degree and an A.A. degree. He is a member of the District of Columbia and North Carolina Bar Associations. He also is a certified public accountant in North Carolina and Michigan and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
Mahoney is currently the Co-Chair of the FASB's Investor Technical Advisory Committee, Vice Chair of the Investor Rights Committee of the Corporation, Finance, and Securities Law Section of the DC Bar, a member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's Standing Advisory Group, and a member of the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Hearing Panel.
Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, Columbia Law School
A leading administrative and constitutional law scholar, Gillian Metzger ’96 writes and teaches in the areas of administrative law, constitutional law, and federal courts, with an emphasis on federalism and privatization. In 2023-2024, she served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.
Metzger's recent work covers topics ranging from constitutional attacks on the administrative state to appropriations, administrative law under the Roberts Court, and the role of administrative agencies in a polarized world. In 2015, Metzger won the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section Annual Scholarship Award for “The Constitutional Duty to Supervise,” which examined presidential control and oversight of the modern administrative state. She is a co-editor of Gellhorn & Byse’s Administrative Law: Cases and Comments, 13th ed. (Foundation Press, 2023), a seminal administrative law casebook.
Professor Metzger was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States. In 2020, she was awarded Columbia University's Faculty Mentorship Award and in 2014, the Law School’s graduating class awarded Metzger the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching, recognizing, among many other accomplishments, her commitment to mentoring new generations of law students.
In 2012, Metzger helped launch Columbia Law School’s Center for Constitutional Governance (CCG)—where she now serves as faculty director—a nonpartisan legal and policy organization devoted to the study of constitutional structure and authority. CCG brings together a diverse group of constitutional scholars to explore policy areas such as health care, civil rights, immigration, financial regulation, and national security.
Metzger also has co-authored and filed numerous amicus briefs in major constitutional and administrative law challenges before the Supreme Court and other courts. Most recently, Metzger filed a brief in Seila Law Center v. CFPB, a separation of powers challenge, and in Kisor v. Wilkie, a case involving judicial deference to agencies. She has also filed briefs in cases involving reproductive rights and the Affordable Care Act, among others.
Previously, Metzger served as vice dean of intellectual life at Columbia Law School. Before joining the Law School, she worked as an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice. Metzger also clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 and Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In 2018, Metzger moderated a panel discussion with Justice Ginsburg on impact litigation at Columbia Law School.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The Washington Post
Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987. He joined the paper to cover Maryland politics, and has served in various editing positions including metropolitan editor and national political editor . He has covered the Supreme Court since November 2006. He gave up law school plans for a life in newspapers after taking a journalism class in college. It did not occur to him, as it apparently did to others, that he could do both.
Partner, O'Melveny & Myers LLP
Walter Dellinger is an influential authority on appellate and Supreme Court decisions, lending his experience as a former Solicitor General and decades of legal knowledge to amicus briefs, a multitude of pro bono clients, and public and private companies involved in bet-the-company litigation. A frequent commentator for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and major television networks, Walter holds the designation of the Douglas B. Maggs Emeritus Professor of Law at Duke University. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal and recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Lawyer.
Walter, who formerly served as O’Melveny’s Diversity and Inclusion Partner, helped convince the US Supreme Court that proponents of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, did not have standing to appeal a court order invalidating it. That ruling, Hollingsworth v. Perry, cleared the way for marriage equality in California and eventually nationwide.
Walter served as Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 1993 to 1996. He was acting Solicitor General for the 1996-97 Term of the US Supreme Court. During that time, Walter argued nine cases before the Court, the most by any Solicitor General in more than 20 years. His arguments included cases dealing with physician-assisted suicide, the line item veto, the cable television act, the Brady Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the constitutionality of remedial services for parochial school children.
Walter has served as Special Counsel to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange in connection with the NYSE’s transformation into a publicly held company and its acquisition of an electronic trading company.
After serving in early 1993 in the White House as an advisor to the President on constitutional issues, Walter was nominated by the President to be Assistant Attorney General. He was confirmed by the Senate in October 1993 and served for three years. As head of the OLC, Walter issued opinions on a wide variety of issues, including: the President's authority to deploy United States forces in Haiti and Bosnia; whether the trade agreements required treaty ratification; and a major review of separation of powers questions. He provided extensive legal advice on questions arising out of the shutdown of the federal government, on national debt ceiling issues, and on loan guarantees for Mexico.
Walter has published articles on constitutional issues for scholarly journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Duke Law Journal, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New Republic, and the London Times. He has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Belgium and has given lectures to university faculties in Florence, Siena, Nuremberg, Copenhagen, Leiden, Utrecht, Tilburg, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, and has delivered major lectures at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Chicago, and other US law schools. He has testified more than 25 times before committees of Congress.
In private practice, Walter’s arguments before the United States Supreme Court have included Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. v. Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Alabama v. North Carolina, Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, Heller v. District of Columbia, Jackson v. Birmingham School District, Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington, US Airways v. Barnett, Utah v. Evans, Hunt v. Cromartie, and Hunt v. Easley. His most notable Court of Appeals and state supreme court arguments include Martha Stewart v. United States, Whiteside v. United States, and Exxon v. Alabama, LCI v. Phillips.
Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Orin S. Kerr is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, where he teaches and writes in the areas of criminal procedure and computer crime law. Kerr earned mechanical engineering degrees from Princeton University and Stanford University before graduating with a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the United States Supreme Court and Judge Leonard I. Garth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Partner (retd.), Foley & Lardner LLP
Cleta Mitchell was a partner and political law attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Foley & Lardner LLP and a member of the firm’s Political Law Practice. With more than 40 years of experience in law, politics and public policy, Ms. Mitchell advised nonprofit and issue organizations, corporations, candidates, campaigns, and individuals on state and federal campaign finance law, election law, and compliance issues related to lobbying, ethics and financial disclosure. Ms. Mitchell practiced before the Federal Election Commission, the ethics committees of the US House and Senate and similar state and local enforcement bodies and agencies.
Ms. Mitchell has extensive experience on the federal lobbying and ethics law enacted by Congress in 2007, having taught dozens of seminars on the subject since its passage. In 2008, Ms. Mitchell authored The Lobbying Compliance Handbook, published by Columbia Books, Inc.
Ms. Mitchell represented numerous candidates, campaigns and members of Congress, as well as state and national political party committees. She has served as legal counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Ms. Mitchell served as co-counsel for the National Rifle Association in the Supreme Court case involving the 2002 federal campaign finance law.
Ms. Mitchell has testified before Congress on numerous occasions related to election law, campaign finance and lobbying and ethics laws, and is a frequent speaker and guest commentator on political law. In 1999, she authored "The Rise of America’s Two National Pastimes: Baseball and the Law," published by the University of Michigan Law Review, and in 2012, Ms. Mitchell authored “Donor Disclosure: Undermining The First Amendment,” published by the Minnesota Law Review. In 2013, she was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, “How to Investigate the IRS.”
Ms. Mitchell served on the advisory council to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law and as an advisor on the American Law Institute's Election Law Project entitled, “Principles of Election Law: Dispute Resolution.” She serves on the board of directors of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, is chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation, and has served as the president of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Ms. Mitchell was a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976-1984 where she chaired the House Appropriations and Budget Committee. She served on the executive committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Ms. Mitchell was in private law practice in Oklahoma City in litigation and administrative law until 1991 when she became director and general counsel of the Term Limits Legal Institute in Washington, D.C. She litigated cases in state and federal courts nationwide on congressional term limits and served as co-counsel with former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell in the Supreme Court of the United States case on term limits for members of Congress.
Ms. Mitchell earned both her B.A., magna cum laude, and J.D. from the University of Oklahoma.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz teaches constitutional law and federal jurisdiction, and he writes articles for the Harvard Law Review and the Stanford Law Review.
He is currently developing a new theory of constitutional interpretation and judicial review. The first installment, entitledThe Subjects of the Constitution, was published in the Stanford Law Review in May of 2010, and it is among the most downloaded articles about constitutional interpretation, judicial review, and/or federal courts in the history of SSRN. The second installment, The Objects of the Constitution, was published in May of 2011, also in the Stanford Law Review. And the comprehensive version is forthcoming as a book by Oxford University Press.
Rosenkranz has served and advised the federal government in a variety of capacities. He clerked for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (1999-2000) and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the U.S. Supreme Court (October Term 2001). He served as an Attorney-Advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice (November 2002 - July 2004). He often testifies before Congress as a constitutional expert—most recently before the House Financial Services Oversight Subcommittee, regarding the Obama Administration's use of bank settlement agreements to circumvent the Appropriations Clause. He has also filed briefs and presented oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. His most recent Supreme Court brief, in Los Angeles v. Patel, was cited by Justice Alito in dissent.
Rosenkranz is a member of the New York Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is a founding member of Heterodox Academy and a member of its Executive Committee. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Federalist Society and as the faculty advisor to the Georgetown chapter.
Partner, Schaerr Jaffe LLP
Gene Schaerr specializes in handling—and usually winning—civil appeals, writ proceedings and similar matters, both in appellate courts and in the law-focused proceedings at the trial-court or agency level that often determine success or failure on appeal. He has argued and won dozens of cases in a variety of forums—including the U.S. Supreme Court (where he has argued six cases), every federal circuit, and numerous federal district courts and state appellate courts. His win rate in the dozens of federal appeals he has argued in the past six years is over 75 percent.
He was a coordinator of Sidley Austin's appellate practice from 1993 until 2005, and from 2005 until 2014 was the chair of the nationwide appellate practice at Winston & Strawn—a practice he led to numerous recognitions in such publications as the Appellate Hot List. His personal practice successes have won him repeated recognition in such publications as Best Lawyers in Washington, D.C., Legal 500, D.C. Superlawyers, and Best Lawyers in America. In January 2014, Mr. Schaerr formed his own boutique litigation firm so that he could serve his clients without the conflicts and inefficiencies inherent in big-firm law practice.
Substantively, Mr. Schaerr's experience includes not only virtually every area of federal law, defamation, higher education law, immigration, insurance coverage, labor and employment, patent and trademark, privacy, product liability and warranty, statutory interpretation and tax.He has represented clients in virtually every sector, including automotive, communications, energy, financial services, health care, higher education, insurance, maritime, pharmaceuticals, technology and state and local government. He also teaches courses in Supreme Court litigation, religious freedom litigation and advanced litigation skills as an adjunct professor of law at the Brigham Young University law school.
Mr. Schaerr began law practice in 1987 following clerkships on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia) and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (for then- Judge Kenneth Starr). He graduated in 1985 from the Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal on Regulation and Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1991 to 1993, he served in the White House as Associate Counsel to the President, where he had responsibility for a wide range of constitutional and administrative-law issues, including those involving economic regulation, higher education, separation of powers, federalism and religious freedom. He serves as Chairman of the Constitutional Sources Project, a digital resource providing free public access to historical materials relevant to the U.S. Constitution.
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