Publius comes from the pen name Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay used when they wrote 85 publicly printed letters now known as the Federalist Papers. Hamilton chose “Publius” as a name that would represent friends of the newly proposed American republic - Publius Valeria Publicola was a Roman general who helped to found the Roman Republic. The Federalist Society continues the tradition of publishing things under the name Publius in celebration of our constitutional roots and recognition that author credit is not always necessary.
Professor, The Ohio State University
Professor Cornell has written A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America and The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828. He has also published Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect? part of the Bedford Book's "Historians At Work" series. He has written articles in the Journal of American History, American Studies, William and Mary Quarterly, William and Mary Law Review,Constitutional Commentary, and others. His book reviews have appeared in the Journal of the Early Republic, Reviews in American History, and many others. Prof. Cornell is a co-author of a forthcoming textbook, Visions of America: A History of the American Nation.
His first book won the Society of the Cincinnati Prize and was a Choice Outstanding Book. His most recent book won the 2006 Langum Prize in legal history. He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture. He has held an NEH fellowship and ACLS fellowship. He has delivered invited lectures at Oxford University, Columbia University, Duke, NYU Law School, UCLA Law School, Stanford Law School, and Vanderbilt University Law School. He has presented papers at meetings of the American Historical Association, the American Society of Legal History, the American Studies Association, the Organization of American Historians, and many others. He has published editorials in the New York Times and the Detroit Free Press, and appeared on PBS, C-SPAN, and Fox and Friends
He has a strong interest in teaching with technology. He has written about new media in the AHA's Perspectivesand is on the Board of Advisers of Pearson's website, The History Place. He has guest blogged on the Oxford University Press Blog and at Balkinization.
Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee College of Law
Professor Reynolds is one of the most prolific scholars on the UT faculty. His special interests are law and technology and constitutional law issues and his work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Columbia Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Wisconsin Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, The Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Law and Policy in International Business, Jurimetrics, the Journal of Space Law, and the High Technology Law Journal. Professor Reynolds has also written in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, Road & Track, Urb, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as other popular publications. He was for many years a contributing editor at Popular Mechanics magazine, and today writes a regular column for USA Today. He is the co-author of Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy, and The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society. His most recent books are The Social Media Upheaval, The Judiciary’s Class War, and The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.
Professor Reynolds has testified before Congressional committees on space law, international trade, and domestic terrorism. He has been executive chairman of the National Space Society and a member of the White House Advisory Panel on Space Policy. A member of the UT faculty since 1989, Professor Reynolds has received the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Faculty Scholarship Award in W. Allen Separk Outstanding Faculty Scholarship Award, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Scholarship.
A songwriter and producer for such bands as Mobius Dick, The Nebraska Guitar Militia, and The Defenders Of The Faith, Professor Reynolds is a member of the American Society of Composers and Performers and a former member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Professor Reynolds blogs at InstaPundit.com.
Vice President, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Dennis A. Henigan is the Vice President of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and Founder of its Legal Action Project. He is the author of Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009).
For twenty years, he has been a leading advocate for stronger gun laws, appearing dozens of times on national television and radio shows, including 60 Minutes, The Today Show, Nightline, Larry King Live and Dateline. He also has written and spoken extensively on liability and constitutional issues relating to gun laws and gun violence, including testifying before several Congressional Committees.
Under his direction, Brady Center lawyers have recovered millions of dollars in damages for gun violence victims, as well as winning precedent-setting decisions on the liability of gun sellers. In 2004, he was named one of the top ten "Lawyers of the Year" by Lawyers' Weekly magazine. His work as a public interest lawyer has been profiled in The New Yorker.
Henigan received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1973 and his law degree in 1977 from the University of Virginia School of Law. Prior to joining the Brady Center in 1989, he was a partner in the law firm of Foley & Lardner.
Henigan received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1973 and his law degree in 1977 from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Executive Director, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Mr. Horwitz is a graduate of the University of Michigan and received his law degree from the George Washington University. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is working on a book examining the relationship between guns and democracy which will be published by the University of Michigan Press in 2008.
Vice President for Litigation, Institute for Free Speech
Alan joined the Institute for Free Speech as Vice President for Litigation in February 2021. In this role, Alan directs the Institute’s litigation and legal advocacy, leads our in-house legal team, and manages and works to expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
Prior to joining the Institute, Alan litigated complex federal matters for twenty years, in his own practice and as a partner in various Washington-area firms. He argued and won landmark constitutional cases in the United States Supreme Court and has appeared before numerous appellate and district courts throughout the country. Alan often speaks at law schools and continuing legal education seminars. He also teaches strategic/public interest litigation as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Alan began his career clerking for the Hon. Terrence W. Boyle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley Austin, and as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Alan earned his J.D. at Georgetown (1995) and his B.A. at Cornell University (1992). He is an active member in good standing of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and California bars, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and various federal appellate and district court bars.
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.
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
Wendy Keefer is an attorney at Barnwell, Whaley, Patterson, and Helms in Charleston, SC.
Partner, Wise Carter Child & Caraway -- Jackson, Miss.
Professor, Cumberland School of Law, Samford University
Michael DeBow joined the Cumberland faculty in 1988. He regularly teaches courses in Property, Business Organizations, Administrative Law, Legislation, and Local Government.
Professor DeBow is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Alabama (1976, 1978). He graduated from the Yale Law School in 1980, and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
DeBow's career included a stint in private practice in Washington, D.C., followed by a judicial clerkship with Judge Kenneth W. Starr of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1983-84. DeBow then served as an attorney-advisor to Federal Trade Commission chairman James C. Miller III (1984-85), and a special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Douglas Ginsburg, in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (1985-86). He began his teaching career at the University of Georgia business school, where he taught for two years prior to coming to Samford.
From 2000 to 2004, DeBow also acted in a part-time capacity as special assistant for legal policy to Alabama attorney general Bill Pryor. He was a visiting professor of law at George Mason University in 1999. He was a (nonresident) Salvatori Fellow of The Heritage Foundation during 1993-95, and a member of the executive committee of the Association of Private Enterprise Education during 1995-99. DeBow attended summer institutes in quantitative methods for law professors (George Mason Law & Economics Center, 1990), Austrian economics (NYU Department of Economics, 1997), and the study of freedom (Templeton Foundation Freedom Project, 2000). In 2008 he was named an Adjunct Fellow of the Alabama Policy Institute.
Professor DeBow has taught several undergraduate courses at Samford, including one which received a supporting grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Most recently, he taught an undergraduate course in law and economics for the Samford's Brock School of Business. He has also taught public health law for the UAB School of Public Health on several occasions.
DeBow's articles have appeared in such journals as the Texas Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Regulation, Policy Review, The Freeman, and the Journal of Law & Politics. He co-edits the Federalist Society's Pre-Law Reading List and its annotated bibliography of conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.
Partner, Wise Carter Child & Caraway -- Jackson, Miss.
Professor, Cumberland School of Law, Samford University
Michael DeBow joined the Cumberland faculty in 1988. He regularly teaches courses in Property, Business Organizations, Administrative Law, Legislation, and Local Government.
Professor DeBow is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Alabama (1976, 1978). He graduated from the Yale Law School in 1980, and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
DeBow's career included a stint in private practice in Washington, D.C., followed by a judicial clerkship with Judge Kenneth W. Starr of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1983-84. DeBow then served as an attorney-advisor to Federal Trade Commission chairman James C. Miller III (1984-85), and a special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Douglas Ginsburg, in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (1985-86). He began his teaching career at the University of Georgia business school, where he taught for two years prior to coming to Samford.
From 2000 to 2004, DeBow also acted in a part-time capacity as special assistant for legal policy to Alabama attorney general Bill Pryor. He was a visiting professor of law at George Mason University in 1999. He was a (nonresident) Salvatori Fellow of The Heritage Foundation during 1993-95, and a member of the executive committee of the Association of Private Enterprise Education during 1995-99. DeBow attended summer institutes in quantitative methods for law professors (George Mason Law & Economics Center, 1990), Austrian economics (NYU Department of Economics, 1997), and the study of freedom (Templeton Foundation Freedom Project, 2000). In 2008 he was named an Adjunct Fellow of the Alabama Policy Institute.
Professor DeBow has taught several undergraduate courses at Samford, including one which received a supporting grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Most recently, he taught an undergraduate course in law and economics for the Samford's Brock School of Business. He has also taught public health law for the UAB School of Public Health on several occasions.
DeBow's articles have appeared in such journals as the Texas Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Regulation, Policy Review, The Freeman, and the Journal of Law & Politics. He co-edits the Federalist Society's Pre-Law Reading List and its annotated bibliography of conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Merit Selection and School Reform
Publius
Few areas of law are the source of more contentious litigation than education cases, particularly...
Parker v. District of Columbia: DC Gun Ban Case
Saul Cornell, Glenn Reynolds, Dennis A. Henigan, Joshua Horwitz, Alan Gura, Clark Neily
Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled...
West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Finds Significant Economic Presence Test Better Indicator for Nexus than Physical Presence Requirement
Dean A. Heyl
Nexus has been a vexing issue for the business community and state revenue departments for...
Bar Watch Bulletin February 12, 2007
Today, we report from the ABA House of Delegates Meeting. Most of the recommendations were...
The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative and the Future of Racial Preferences
Roger B. Clegg
On November 7, 2006, the people of Michigan voted by an overwhelming 58-42% margin in...
Bar Watch Bulletin August 7, 2006
The American Bar Association's Annual Meeting takes place in Honolulu from Thursday, August 3 to...
New Limit on Punitive Damages? A Look At State Farm v. Campbell
Wendy Keefer
In April of 2003, the United States Supreme Court again undertook to define what limits...
The Case for Partisan Judicial Elections
Diane Brey, Erick Kaardal, John J. Soroko, Frank B. Strickland, Michael B. Wallace, Michael DeBow
Views expressed in this paper are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily represent...
The Case for Partisan Judicial Elections
Diane Brey, Erick Kaardal, John J. Soroko, Frank B. Strickland, Michael B. Wallace, Michael DeBow
Views expressed in this paper are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily...
South Dakota's Eminent Domain Experiment to Curb Private Condemnation by Railroads
Donald J. Kochan
The government’s eminent domain power is an extreme one, grounded in the nature of sovereignty...