Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law
Professor Opderbeck's work focuses on the regulation of access to scientific and technological information. His published work has employed the tools of game theory, classical microeconomics, and statistical analysis to address issues such as intellectual property restrictions on essential medicines in developing countries, open source biotechnology, patent damages reform, and the interaction of law and social norms concerning music file sharing.
In addition to his traditional legal scholarship, Professor Opderbeck is interested in the philosophical and moral foundations of information policy and other aspects of the law. He has written on a virtue ethics approach to biotechnology law, and most recently has explored the philosophical aspects of information policy in a groundbreaking essay that seeks to apply a critical realist approach to the ontology of information. He is a principal organizer of a conference on "Religious Legal Theory: State of the Art" that will be held at the Law School in 2009.
Professor Opderbeck graduated cum laude from Seton Hall Law School in 1991 and earned an LL.M. in Trade Regulation from New York University Law School in 1998. He previously was a Partner in the Intellectual Property / Trade Regulation group at McCarter & English, LLP, where he represented clients in the life sciences, consumer products, telecommunications, computer software, and other industries. Representative litigated cases include Wedeco UV Technologies, Inc. v. Calgon Corp, 2006 WL 1867201 (D.N.J. 2006); Bamberger v. Rohm & Hass Corp., 1998 WL 684263, 40 Fed.R.Serv.3d 667 (D.N.J. 1998); McCall v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 956 F. Supp. 1172 (D.N.J. 1996).
Economics Department, Loyola University New Orleans
Chairman, Supreme Court and Constitutional Law Practice, Baker Botts LLP
Aaron Streett is the Chairman of Baker Botts’ Supreme Court and Constitutional Law Practice. He has presented oral argument in scores of appeals, covering the U.S. Supreme Court and courts around the country—including over 40 arguments between the Fifth and D.C. Circuits alone. Mr. Streett’s practice involves virtually all substantive areas of the law, including commercial litigation, statutory interpretation, constitutional law, administrative law, securities, and jurisdictional issues. Mr. Streett maintains an active practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, having represented parties in merits cases seven times since 2010, as well as filing numerous amicus and certiorari-stage briefs. Mr. Streett was named one of only six “Appellate MVPs” for 2014 by Law360, which had previously recognized him in 2011 as one of the top five appellate “Rising Stars” under age 40. Mr. Streett has been featured on National Law Journal’s Appellate Hot List three times in recent years and in 2021 was named Houston’s “Lawyer of the Year” for Appellate Practice by Best Lawyers magazine. Mr. Streett is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Fifth Circuit Bar Association and previously served as President of the Houston Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. Mr. Streett speaks regularly on the Supreme Court and constitutional law to attorneys and law students around the country. Following graduation from Hillsdale College and University of Texas School of Law, Mr. Streett served as a law clerk to the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and to the Honorable William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.
Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama (Retired); Professor of Law, Belmont University College of Law?
William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law, Washington University Law
Professor Brian Z. Tamanaha is a renowned jurisprudence scholar and the author of eight books and numerous scholarly articles, including his groundbreaking book, Beyond the Formalist–Realist Divide: The Role of Politics in Judging. His articles have appeared in a variety of leading journals, and his publications have been translated into eight languages. Also an expert in law and society, he has delivered lectures in Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, France, the Netherlands, Colombia, Singapore, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He spent a year in residence as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Professor Tamanaha is the recipient of several book prizes and awards, including Professor of the Year, and a frequent speaker and lecturer at legal conferences throughout the United States and abroad. His professional affiliations include serving as a past member of the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association. Before becoming a law professor, he clerked for the Hon. Walter E. Hoffman, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He also practiced law in Hawaii and Micronesia, where he served as legal counsel for the Micronesian Constitutional Convention, Assistant Attorney General for the Yap State, and Assistant Federal Public Defender for the District of Hawaii. He then earned a doctorate of juridical science at Harvard Law School.?
His latest book, Failing Law Schools, is available at http://www.amazon.com/Failing-Schools-Chicago-Series-Society/dp/0226923614. ?
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Professor of Law, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
Professor Engel is a national authority on mortgage finance and regulation, subprime and predatory lending, and housing discrimination. Her many publications, some of which she wrote with her frequent co-author, Professor Patricia McCoy, include articles in Texas Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Washington University Law Quarterly, Connecticut Law Review, and Housing Policy Debate. Professor Engel presents her research in academic, banking, and policy forums throughout the country and around the world. Her analysis of financial services markets and the laws that regulate them regularly catches the attention of the press; Business Week, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal have all cited her work. In addition, her research has garnered her both University and national awards.
Professor Engel is an honors graduate from Smith College and the University of Texas School of Law. Following graduation from law school, Professor Engel clerked for Judge Homer Thornberry of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Austin, Texas. She then practiced law at Burnham & Hines in Boston, where she primarily represented plaintiffs in civil rights, and housing and employment discrimination cases. Prior to joining the faculty at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Professor Engel taught at Northeastern University and Case Western Reserve University.
Professor Engel serves as referee for several academic journals, and is a member of the Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services, the Board of Directors of Americans for Fairness in Lending, and the Board of Advisors of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (Northeast Ohio Chapter). She is a consultant to the Department of Housing and Urban Development Study of High Cost Loans and Fair Lending Compliance and numerous state attorneys general.
Professor Engel teaches courses on torts, civil procedure, employment law, and employment discrimination, and a predatory lending seminar.
Taking Stock of the Second Amendment
Are American Law Schools Failing?: An Exchange Between Brian Tamanaha & Harold See
Harold F. See, Brian Z. Tamanaha
The Collapsing Economics of Legal Education Brian Z. Tamanaha* Introduction Many law schools around the...
Margaret Thatcher
Medical Socialism
Boumediene v. Bush: Should Guantanamo Detainees Have Habeus Corpus Rights in US Federal Courts?
Subprime Lending & Financial Services Reform
Todd J. Zywicki, Melissa Jacoby, Kathleen C. Engel
In recent months, there has been a lot of discussion about the “sub-prime mortgage crisis”,...