Chief Legal Officer, Pacem Solutions International
Prior to his current position as the Chief Legal Officer for PACEM Solutions, Mr. Schmitz served as a foreign policy/national security advisor to Donald J. Trump from March 2016 through the November 2016 election. His government service includes service as the 5th Senate-confirmed Inspector General of the Department of Defense from April 2002 to September 2005. For his service as Inspector General, Mr. Schmitz was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award presented by the Secretary of Defense to non-career federal employees.
In 2013, Mr. Schmitz published “The Inspector General Handbook: Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Other Constitutional ‘Enemies, Foreign and Domestic’,” the first-ever handbook for the inspector general profession – written also for those who work with inspectors general. Mr. Schmitz has extensive anti-corruption experience in overseeing compliance with various international and security-related laws, including but not limited to the Inspector General Act, Intelligence Oversight laws, the Posse Comitatus Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), and laws administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Prior to his service as Inspector General of the Department of Defense, Mr. Schmitz was a Partner in the international law firm of Patton Boggs LLP, serving as head of the Aviation Practice Group, and at the same time a Captain in the United States Naval Reserves, serving as Inspector General of the Naval Reserve Intelligence Command. After his Inspector General service, Mr. Schmitz served as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of the Prince Group in McLean, Virginia, after which he served as Managing Director in the Washington D.C. Office of Freeh Group International. His pre-Inspector General public service included: twenty-seven years of naval service, first on active duty and then as a reserve officer; law clerk to the Honorable James L. Buckley, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, the Honorable Edwin Meese III.
Mr. Schmitz has published numerous articles and has testified as a constitutional expert before U.S. Senate committees, and before various state legislature committees. From 1995 until 2002, he was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he developed and taught a seminar on advanced Constitutional Law.
Mr. Schmitz graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978, and received his Doctor of Jurisprudence from Stanford University in 1986. He is a Senior Fellow for the Center for Security Policy, and a regular Newsmax “Insider” on constitutional issues under the banner, “Support and Defend.” In 2013, Mr. Schmitz was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame (Virginia Chapter) as an “Outstanding American.” Joe and his wife of 40 years, Mollie, have raised six sons and two daughters.
Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law (on leave); Senior Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice
Professor Dolin’s scholarship centers on patent law with a specific focus on how the patent regime affects innovation, especially in bio-pharmaceutical areas. His work in these areas includes a number of scholarly articles, presentations, amicus briefs, and congressional testimony.
Dr. Dolin is currently on leave from his academic duties while he serves as Senior Counsel in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.
From January 2020 to January 2022, Professor Dolin served as a resident Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau. In this role, he (together with other members of the Court) heard appeals in civil, criminal, administrative, and constitutional law matters.
Prior to joining the University of Baltimore School of Law, Professor Dolin held visiting appointments in other law schools. He also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Pauline Newman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the late Hon. H. Emory Widener Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Rumors that he has a real Russian bear in his office are entirely true.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Austin E. Owen Research Scholar & Professor of Law, The University of Richmond School of Law
Dean Kristen Jakobsen Osenga teaches and writes in the areas of patent law, antitrust, and legislation and regulation. Some of her recent scholarship focuses on standard development organizations, patent eligible subject matter, patent licensing firms, litigation and remedies for patent infringement, and patent law reform. She has written numerous law review articles on these and other topics, as well as book chapters and op eds on various aspects of patent law. Additionally, she has spoken on these issues at many academic conferences and bar events. Dean Osenga is Chief Policy Counselor for the Inventors Defense Alliance, as well as an active member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
Dean Osenga received a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, and a J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she graduated magna cum laude. After law school, she practiced at the law firm of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, & Dunner LLP, (now Finnegan) where she did patent prosecution and litigation. She then clerked for the Judge Richard Linn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. After clerking, she entered academia, teaching first at Chicago-Kent College of Law and then at the University of Richmond, where she has been since 2006. She has also been a Visiting Professor at Emory University School of Law and at William & Mary School of Law.
Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law
Professor Michael Risch joined the Villanova faculty in 2010 from the West Virginia University College of Law, where he directed the Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Law Program. Prior to joining the West Virginia faculty, he served as an Olin Fellow in Law at Stanford Law School. Professor Risch’s teaching and scholarship focus on intellectual property and internet law, with an emphasis on patents, trade secrets and information access. His articles have been published in the Stanford Law Review and Duke Law Journal, among others; online in the Yale Law Journal Online and PENNumbra; and less formally at the Madisonian, Prawfsblawg, and Patently-O blogs. Two of his articles have been cited by the United States Supreme Court. Professor Risch received his A.B. with honors and distinction in Public Policy and with distinction in Quantitative Economics from Stanford University, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School. Prior to entering academia, he was a partner at intellectual property boutique Russo & Hale LLP in Palo Alto, California.
Fellow, Center for Law and the Biosciences, Stanford Law School
Jacob S. Sherkow is a Fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Law and the Biosciences. Jake's current research focuses on the intersection of patent law, biotechnology, and agency regulation. His legal scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Online, while his science scholarship has appeared in Science, Nature Biotechnology, and PLoS ONE. In addition, Jake is the author of popular pieces in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Houston Chronicle, and the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
Prior to joining CLB, Jake was a patent litigation associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York where he, and a team of attorneys, won the Frank Wheat Memorial Award for pro bono service. Jake was also a law clerk for Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and an intern for Judge Paul L. Friedman on the U.S. District District Court for the District of Columbia.
Jake graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School in 2008, where he served as an editor of the Michigan Law Review and was the recipient of the Fred L. Leckie and James N. Adler Scholarships. Jake holds a Masters in Biotechnology from Columbia University; his thesis focused on social, legal, and ethical aspects of race-specific heart medications. He also holds a Bachelor of Science from McGill University, where he majored in Molecular Biology and English Literature.
In addition to his legal training, Jake has several years of experience as a research scientist in molecular biology. He has held scientific research positions at Columbia University, the University of Edinburgh, McGill University, the Montreal General Hospital, the Montreal Neurological Institute, and Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law & Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Institute, University of Chicago Law School
William Baude is a Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Institute at the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches federal courts, constitutional law, and conflict of laws. His current research interests include different aspects of the Fourteenth Amendment (particularly both Section One and Section Three) and the nature of judicial discretion.
Among his other activities Baude is: the co-editor of two textbooks, The Constitution of the United States and Hart & Wechsler's Federal Courts in the Federal System; an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism; a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance; a member of the American Law Institute; an occasional blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy; and a podcaster on Divided Argument. He also recently served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor Baude received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and his JD from Yale Law School. He then clerked for then-Judge Michael McConnell on the United States Court of Appeals, and Chief Justice John Roberts on the United States Supreme Court. Before joining the Chicago faculty, he was a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, and a lawyer in Washington, DC.
William F. Baxter-Visa International Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Marcus Cole is a leading scholar of the empirical law and economics of commerce and finance, and teaches courses in the areas of Bankruptcy, Banking, Contracts, and Venture Capital. Professor Cole’s writings have explored questions such as why corporate bankruptcies are increasingly filed in Delaware, and what drives the financial structure of firms backed by venture capital. His current research interests involve the ways in which the world’s poor are using technology to solve their own problems, often in the face of government restrictions hindering such solutions. Professor Cole has served as a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and is a Fellow at the University of Amsterdam Center for Law and Economics. He has been a Visiting Professor at a number of institutions around the world, including the University of Amsterdam, the University of Vienna, the University of Leiden, Bucerius University in Hamburg, Germany, Northwestern University, Korea University, and Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen. Professor Cole has also served on the boards of several civic and charitable organizations, including that of the Central Pacific Region of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and Businesses United in Lending and Development (“BUILD”). He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Cato Supreme Court Review, the Academic Advisory Board of Bar-Bri, the Advisory Board of the Independent Institute’s Center on Culture and Civil Society, and is President of the Board of Directors of Rocketship Education, a national, non-profit charter school network, operating California’s most successful charter schools for low-income children. Before joining the Stanford Law faculty in 1997, Professor Cole was an associate with the Chicago law firm of Mayer Brown, and he clerked for Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
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.
President and CEO, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, Freedom From Speech, and FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus. Most recently, he co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Jonathan Haidt. This New York Times best-seller expands on their September 2015 Atlantic cover story of the same name. Greg is also an Executive Producer of Can We Take a Joke? (2015), a feature-length documentary that explores the collision between comedy, censorship, and outrage culture, both on and off campus, and of Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020), a feature-length film about the life and career of former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser.
Greg has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and numerous other publications. He frequently appears on TV shows and radio programs, including the CBS Evening News, The Today Show, and NPR’s Morning Edition. In 2008, he became the first-ever recipient of the Playboy Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Award, and he has testified before both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives about free speech issues on America’s college campuses.
Inez Milholland Professor of Civil Liberties, New York University School of Law
Burt Neuborne is the Inez Milholland Professor of Civil Liberties and founding Legal Director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. For 45 years, he has been one of the nation's foremost civil liberties lawyers, serving as National Legal Director of the ACLU from 1981-86, Special Counsel to the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1990-1996, and as a member of the New York City Human Rights Commission from 1988-1992. He has argued numerous Supreme Court cases, and has litigated literally hundreds of important constitutional cases in the state and federal courts. He challenged the constitutionality of the Vietnam War, pioneered the flag burning cases, worked on the Pentagon Papers case, worked with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she headed the ACLU Women's Rights Project, anchored the ACLU's legal program during the Reagan years, and defended the Legal Services program against unconstitutional attacks. He currently directs the legal program of the Brennan Center, especially its efforts to reinforce American democracy and secure campaign finance reform. The Brennan Center was established in 1994 to honor Justice William Brennan, Jr.’s monumental contribution to American Law.
At the same time, Professor Neuborne has forged a national reputation as a constitutional scholar and teacher. In 1990, he was the recipient of the University-wide Distinguished Teacher Award at New York University for his work in teaching Civil Procedure, Evidence, Federal Courts and Constitutional Law. He is the author of three books and over 20 law review articles on diverse areas of constitutional law and procedure. Among his best known scholarly works is the two-volume Political and Civil Rights in the United States, which he co-authored with NYU colleagues Norman Dorsen and Sylvia Law and the Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, Paul Bender. His 1992 lectures on American law at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona have been translated and published in Spanish. In 2001, in recognition of his scholarship and his work in the courts, Professor Neuborne was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1996, Professor Neuborne appeared as Jerry Falwell's lawyer in Milos Forman's The People v. Larry Flynt.
For the past 14 years, Professor Neuborne has served as a principal counsel in a series of lawsuits seeking to recover property unjustly taken from Holocaust victims by Swiss banks and German corporations during the Nazi era. The litigation has succeeded in assembling more than $8.5 billion for distribution to Holocaust victims and their families throughout the world. Professor Neuborne was appointed by the Court to oversee the $1.25 Swiss bank settlement, and was appointed by the United States to serve on the Board of Trustees of the German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future,” established to distribute the $5.2 billion settlement in the German slave labor litigation.
Professor Neuborne is married to Helen Redleaf Neuborne.
William F. Baxter-Visa International Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Marcus Cole is a leading scholar of the empirical law and economics of commerce and finance, and teaches courses in the areas of Bankruptcy, Banking, Contracts, and Venture Capital. Professor Cole’s writings have explored questions such as why corporate bankruptcies are increasingly filed in Delaware, and what drives the financial structure of firms backed by venture capital. His current research interests involve the ways in which the world’s poor are using technology to solve their own problems, often in the face of government restrictions hindering such solutions. Professor Cole has served as a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and is a Fellow at the University of Amsterdam Center for Law and Economics. He has been a Visiting Professor at a number of institutions around the world, including the University of Amsterdam, the University of Vienna, the University of Leiden, Bucerius University in Hamburg, Germany, Northwestern University, Korea University, and Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen. Professor Cole has also served on the boards of several civic and charitable organizations, including that of the Central Pacific Region of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and Businesses United in Lending and Development (“BUILD”). He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Cato Supreme Court Review, the Academic Advisory Board of Bar-Bri, the Advisory Board of the Independent Institute’s Center on Culture and Civil Society, and is President of the Board of Directors of Rocketship Education, a national, non-profit charter school network, operating California’s most successful charter schools for low-income children. Before joining the Stanford Law faculty in 1997, Professor Cole was an associate with the Chicago law firm of Mayer Brown, and he clerked for Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Prior to his joining the faculty, he was a visiting law professor at NYU from 2007 through 2009. He served as the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2000 to 2024. Since 2024 to the present he is a senior lecturer at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas—Austin. Epstein is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His initial law school appointment was at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972. Epstein received an LL.D., h.c. from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and was a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences, also from 1983. to 2022 He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991-2001. From 2001 to 2010 he was a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago.
His newest book, The Myth of Birthright Citizenship: What the Fourteenth Amendment Really Says was published in 2026 (Encounter Books). Prior to that he has published many books including, The Dubious Morality of the Modern Administrative State (Roman & Littlefield 2020).Earlier he published th Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (Harvard 2014) iHis previous books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (Harvard 2011); The Case Against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection of Property Rights (Oxford 2008); Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less is More (AEI 2007); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press. 2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Cato 2006); Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 8th ed. 2004); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago, 2003); Torts (Aspen Law & Business 1999); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books, 1998): Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care (Addison-Wesley, 1997); Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995); Bargaining With the State (Princeton, 1993); Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard , 1992); Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985); and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980). He has also edited(with Catherine M. Sharkey) Cases and Materials on the Law of Torts (10th edition 2012).
Professor Epstein has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects. He has taught courses in administrative law, antitrust law, civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers' compensation.
Professor Epstein also writes a regular column for Civitas Institute, which also sponsors his podcast, The Libertarian with Charles C.W. Cooke, and Law Talk, with Cooke and John Yoo. He also does a podcast with John Batchelor. And appears regularly on the Freedom File with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
Vinton G. Cerf has served as vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google since October 2005. In this role, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced, Internet-based products and services from Google. He is also an active public face for Google in the Internet world.
Cerf is the former senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI. In this role, Cerf was responsible for helping to guide corporate strategy development from the technical perspective. Previously, Cerf served as MCI’s senior vice president of Architecture and Technology, leading a team of architects and engineers to design advanced networking frameworks including Internet-based solutions for delivering a combination of data, information, voice and video services for business and consumer use.
Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. Kahn and Cerf were named the recipients of the ACM Alan M. Turing award in 2004 for their work on the Internet protocols. The Turing award is sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science.” In November 2005, President George Bush awarded Cerf and Kahn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their work. The medal is the highest civilian award given by the United States to its citizens. In April 2008, Cerf and Kahn received the prestigious Japan Prize.
Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, Cerf was vice president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.
During his tenure from 1976-1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related packet data and security technologies.
Vint Cerf serves as Chairman of StopBadWare and President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and served as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2000-2007. Cerf also served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995 and in 1999 served a term as chairman of the Board. In addition, Cerf is honorary chairman of the IPv6 Forum, dedicated to raising awareness and speeding introduction of the new Internet protocol. Cerf served as a member of the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and serves on several national, state and industry committees focused on cyber-security. Cerf sits on the Board of Directors for the Americas Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), StopBadWare, the Gorilla Foundation and Advisory Board for CosmosID. Cerf also sits on the Board of Associates of Gallaudet University. He serves on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Advisory Committee and is a distinguished visiting scientist there. He serves as Chair of the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. He also serves as Vice Chairman and Treasurer of the National Science & Technology Medals Foundation and President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Cerf is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum, the Annenberg Center for Communications at USC, the Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, the Hasso Platner Institute and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. In 2011, he was made Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet. These include the Marconi Fellowship, Charles Stark Draper award of the National Academy of Engineering, the Prince of Asturias award for science and technology, the National Medal of Science from Tunisia, the St. Cyril and St. Methodius Order (Grand Cross) of Bulgaria, the Alexander Graham Bell Award presented by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, the NEC Computer and Communications Prize, the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunications Union, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the ACM Software and Systems Award, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, the Computer and Communications Industries Association Industry Legend Award, installation in the Inventors Hall of Fame, the Yuri Rubinsky Web Award, the Kilby Award , the Rotary Club International Paul P. Harris Medal, the Joseph Priestley Award from Dickinson College, the Yankee Group/Interop/Network World Lifetime Achievement Award, the George R. Stibitz Award, the Werner Wolter Award, the Andrew Saks Engineering Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Computerworld/Smithsonian Leadership Award, the J.D. Edwards Leadership Award for Collaboration, World Institute on Disability Annual award and the Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend medal. Cerf was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006. He was made an Eminent Member of the IEEE Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) honor society in 2009. In 2010 he received a Lifetime Webby Award. In February 2011 he was named a Stanford Engineering School “Hero” for his work on the Internet and received a lifetime achievement award from the Oxford Internet Institute. In December, 1994, People magazine identified Cerf as one of that year's "25 Most Intriguing People."
In addition to his work on behalf of Google and the Internet, Cerf has served as a technical advisor to production for "Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict" and made a special guest appearance on the program in May 1998. Cerf has appeared on television programs NextWave with Leonard Nimoy and often co-hosted World Business Review with Alexander Haig and Caspar Weinberger. Cerf also holds an appointment as distinguished visiting scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he is working on the design of an interplanetary Internet.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Prior to his joining the faculty, he was a visiting law professor at NYU from 2007 through 2009. He served as the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2000 to 2024. Since 2024 to the present he is a senior lecturer at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas—Austin. Epstein is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His initial law school appointment was at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972. Epstein received an LL.D., h.c. from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and was a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences, also from 1983. to 2022 He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991-2001. From 2001 to 2010 he was a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago.
His newest book, The Myth of Birthright Citizenship: What the Fourteenth Amendment Really Says was published in 2026 (Encounter Books). Prior to that he has published many books including, The Dubious Morality of the Modern Administrative State (Roman & Littlefield 2020).Earlier he published th Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (Harvard 2014) iHis previous books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (Harvard 2011); The Case Against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection of Property Rights (Oxford 2008); Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less is More (AEI 2007); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press. 2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Cato 2006); Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 8th ed. 2004); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago, 2003); Torts (Aspen Law & Business 1999); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books, 1998): Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care (Addison-Wesley, 1997); Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995); Bargaining With the State (Princeton, 1993); Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard , 1992); Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985); and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980). He has also edited(with Catherine M. Sharkey) Cases and Materials on the Law of Torts (10th edition 2012).
Professor Epstein has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects. He has taught courses in administrative law, antitrust law, civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers' compensation.
Professor Epstein also writes a regular column for Civitas Institute, which also sponsors his podcast, The Libertarian with Charles C.W. Cooke, and Law Talk, with Cooke and John Yoo. He also does a podcast with John Batchelor. And appears regularly on the Freedom File with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Solicitor General, Montana Attorney General's Office
Christian is currently Solicitor General of Montana, where he serves as the chief litigator and principal legal advisor to Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen. In that capacity, he manages litigation before the federal district courts, courts of appeal, and the United States Supreme Court, as well as the Montana Supreme Court. He previously served in the Trump Administration as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to government service, he was a public interest constitutional litigator at Mountain States Legal Foundation and a fellow at the Institute for Justice. He clerked for Justice Caleb Stegall on the Kansas Supreme Court. He also served as Director of Publications for the Federalist Society's national headquarters.
Christian earned his B.A. in Political Science in 2009 from the University of Pennsylvania before attending the University of Kansas School of Law. Christian is admitted to practice law in Kansas and Montana. A Kansas native, he is a die-hard fan of the Kansas Jayhawks, Kansas City Chiefs, and Kansas City Royals.
Christian is a member of the Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group's Executive Committee.
Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law (on leave); Senior Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice
Professor Dolin’s scholarship centers on patent law with a specific focus on how the patent regime affects innovation, especially in bio-pharmaceutical areas. His work in these areas includes a number of scholarly articles, presentations, amicus briefs, and congressional testimony.
Dr. Dolin is currently on leave from his academic duties while he serves as Senior Counsel in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.
From January 2020 to January 2022, Professor Dolin served as a resident Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau. In this role, he (together with other members of the Court) heard appeals in civil, criminal, administrative, and constitutional law matters.
Prior to joining the University of Baltimore School of Law, Professor Dolin held visiting appointments in other law schools. He also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Pauline Newman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the late Hon. H. Emory Widener Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Rumors that he has a real Russian bear in his office are entirely true.
Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law
Professor Michael Risch joined the Villanova faculty in 2010 from the West Virginia University College of Law, where he directed the Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Law Program. Prior to joining the West Virginia faculty, he served as an Olin Fellow in Law at Stanford Law School. Professor Risch’s teaching and scholarship focus on intellectual property and internet law, with an emphasis on patents, trade secrets and information access. His articles have been published in the Stanford Law Review and Duke Law Journal, among others; online in the Yale Law Journal Online and PENNumbra; and less formally at the Madisonian, Prawfsblawg, and Patently-O blogs. Two of his articles have been cited by the United States Supreme Court. Professor Risch received his A.B. with honors and distinction in Public Policy and with distinction in Quantitative Economics from Stanford University, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School. Prior to entering academia, he was a partner at intellectual property boutique Russo & Hale LLP in Palo Alto, California.
Fellow, Center for Law and the Biosciences, Stanford Law School
Jacob S. Sherkow is a Fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Law and the Biosciences. Jake's current research focuses on the intersection of patent law, biotechnology, and agency regulation. His legal scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Online, while his science scholarship has appeared in Science, Nature Biotechnology, and PLoS ONE. In addition, Jake is the author of popular pieces in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Houston Chronicle, and the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
Prior to joining CLB, Jake was a patent litigation associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York where he, and a team of attorneys, won the Frank Wheat Memorial Award for pro bono service. Jake was also a law clerk for Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and an intern for Judge Paul L. Friedman on the U.S. District District Court for the District of Columbia.
Jake graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School in 2008, where he served as an editor of the Michigan Law Review and was the recipient of the Fred L. Leckie and James N. Adler Scholarships. Jake holds a Masters in Biotechnology from Columbia University; his thesis focused on social, legal, and ethical aspects of race-specific heart medications. He also holds a Bachelor of Science from McGill University, where he majored in Molecular Biology and English Literature.
In addition to his legal training, Jake has several years of experience as a research scientist in molecular biology. He has held scientific research positions at Columbia University, the University of Edinburgh, McGill University, the Montreal General Hospital, the Montreal Neurological Institute, and Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Austin E. Owen Research Scholar & Professor of Law, The University of Richmond School of Law
Dean Kristen Jakobsen Osenga teaches and writes in the areas of patent law, antitrust, and legislation and regulation. Some of her recent scholarship focuses on standard development organizations, patent eligible subject matter, patent licensing firms, litigation and remedies for patent infringement, and patent law reform. She has written numerous law review articles on these and other topics, as well as book chapters and op eds on various aspects of patent law. Additionally, she has spoken on these issues at many academic conferences and bar events. Dean Osenga is Chief Policy Counselor for the Inventors Defense Alliance, as well as an active member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
Dean Osenga received a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, and a J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she graduated magna cum laude. After law school, she practiced at the law firm of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, & Dunner LLP, (now Finnegan) where she did patent prosecution and litigation. She then clerked for the Judge Richard Linn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. After clerking, she entered academia, teaching first at Chicago-Kent College of Law and then at the University of Richmond, where she has been since 2006. She has also been a Visiting Professor at Emory University School of Law and at William & Mary School of Law.
Former President & CEO, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Eugene B. Meyer, former President and CEO of the Federalist Society, has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for more than 40 years. He is responsible for shepherding the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law. The Society now includes a Student Chapter at nearly every ABA-accredited law school in the country and Lawyers Chapters in 220 major cities across the nation. Gene earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Gene currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society. He holds the title of International Chess Master.
Benghazi: An Insider’s Perspective on What Really Happened
Tampa, FloridaThe Myriad Decision and Patented Innovation in the Biotech Industry - Podcast
Christian Corrigan, Gregory Dolin, Michael Risch, Jacob S. Sherkow, Kristen Osenga
On June 13, the Supreme Court decided ACLU v. Myriad Technologies, one of the more...
The Myriad Decision and Patented Innovation in the Biotech Industry
TeleforumUnderstanding Clarence Thomas: The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Restoration
2012 Annual Report
Eugene B. Meyer
Dear Friends and Supporters: The events that have taken place during the past twelve months...
The Financial Crisis
Stanford, CAFree Speech on College Campuses
Employment Discrimination
Stanford, CAHow Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It
A Conversation on Freedoms
Palo Alto, California