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.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
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.
Partner, Clement & Murphy, PLLC
Paul served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. Before his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for over three years.
Paul has argued over 100 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, United States v. Booker, MGM v. Grokster, Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Rucho v. Common Cause, Facebook v. Duguid, and TransUnion v. Ramirez. Paul has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. He has also argued many important cases in the lower courts, including Walker v. Cheney, United States v. Moussaoui and NFL v. Brady.
Paul’s practice focuses on appellate matters, constitutional litigation and strategic counseling. He represents a broad array of clients in the Supreme Court and in federal and state appellate courts. Last year, for example, he successfully argued Supreme Court cases involving significant issues of energy regulation, statutory interpretation, state sovereign immunity and Article III standing, and successfully argued a trademark appeal in the Fourth Circuit, and a constitutional appeal before the en banc Eleventh Circuit.
Paul focuses on high-stakes appeals. In recent years, he successfully defended a $1.2 billion jury verdict for clients in a Tenth Circuit case, while securing the reversal of an over $2 billion jury verdict for another client in the Seventh Circuit and the approval of a nearly $1 billion dollar class action settlement in the Third Circuit. He has initiated major administrative law challenges and constitutional litigation against the federal government, such as the successful challenge to the HHS drug-pricing rule and threatened challenges that led to the withdrawal of the Treasury Department’s proposed cryptocurrency regulations. He also counsels clients on a variety of strategic legal questions, whether arising from pending legislation, government inquiries or ongoing litigation.
Paul has undertaken substantial pro bono engagements in the Supreme Court, such as twice successfully representing the defendant in Bond v. United States and successfully representing the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska v. Parker, the guardian ad litem in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, the defendant in Sekhar v. United States, a high school football coach in Kennedy v. Bremerton, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. Paul’s pro bono representation also precipitated the federal government’s confession of error in United States v. Rojas.
Following law school, Paul clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, he went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights.
Paul is a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught in various capacities since 1998. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute. He is the Justice Joseph Story Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Gray Center at Scalia Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Britt C. Grant is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Grant was appointed to the federal bench in August 2018 after serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Prior to her judicial appointment, she served as the Solicitor General of Georgia and practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Grant served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She earned her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School, where she was the Co-Founder of the Stanford National Security and the Law Society, and the President of the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Before enrolling in law school, Judge Grant served in The White House in a variety of domestic policy roles as well as on the staff of Congressman Nathan Deal. Judge Grant earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three children.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Carl and Shelia Spaeth Professor of Law; Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life, Stanford Law School
Bernadette Meyler, JD ’03, is a scholar of British and American constitutional law and of law and the humanities. She returned in 2013 to Stanford Law School, where she had previously served as Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights. Her research and teaching bring together the sometimes surprisingly divided fields of legal history and law and literature. They also examine the long history of constitutionalism, reaching back into the English common law ancestry of the U.S. Constitution. Professor Meyler’s current book projects stem from these respective areas of her scholarship. Theaters of Pardoning (Cornell UP, forthcoming 2019) demonstrates that the representation of pardoning tracks changing conceptions of sovereignty within the plays and politics of seventeenth-century England. In doing so, the book considers how the shared audiences of dramatic and historical tragicomedy—whether Kings, students at the Inns of Court, or potential jurors—brought concepts from the literary into the legal arena and back again. Common Law Originalism shifts to the American context, looking at the multiple eighteenth-century common law meanings—both colonial and English—of various constitutional terms and phrases. Based on this variety, as well as on the practices of common law interpretation with which members of the Founding generation were familiar, the book argues that we should, in large part, reject the pursuit of a singular and determinate original meaning; instead, it contends, we must embrace a more vigorous debate in the present over contested constitutional meanings. Professor Meyler is also the co-editor of several collections of essays in law and the humanities designed to introduce scholars and students to the field, including, with Elizabeth Anker, New Directions in Law and Literature (Oxford UP, 2017) and, with Simon Stern and Maksymilian Del Mar, The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Humanities (Oxford UP, forthcoming 2019).
After receiving her BA in Literature with a focus on Classics at Harvard University, Professor Meyler obtained her JD from Stanford Law School and completed a PhD in English at UC, Irvine as a Mellon Fellow in Humanistic Studies and a Chancellor’s Fellow. Following law school, Professor Meyler clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Professor Meyler previously taught at Cornell University, where she served, most recently, as Professor of Law and English and Faculty Director of Research at the Cornell Law School. She also visited Princeton University as the inaugural Mellon/LAPA Fellow in Law and the Humanities.
Attorney General of Virginia
In 2021, Jason Miyares was elected Attorney General and became the first Hispanic-American to hold statewide office in Virginia. From 2015 to 2021, Miyares served in the House of Delegates, and was a conservative voice in Richmond, standing up against the Defund the Police movement and proudly standing with the law enforcement community. Recognized as a “Champion of Free Enterprise” by the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, then-Delegate Miyares consistently opposed higher taxes and regulations that make it hard for small business owners to expand and thrive. Prior to his service in the House of Delegates, Miyares served as a prosecutor (Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney) for the City of Virginia Beach.
President, Constitutional Accountability Center
Elizabeth is Constitutional Accountability Center’s President. From 2008-2016, she served as CAC's Chief Counsel, representing the Center as well as clients including preeminent constitutional scholars and historians, state and local government organizations, and groups such as the League of Women Voters and the AARP. She frequently participates in Supreme Court litigation and her legal brief writing has been recognized as “exemplary” by the Green Bag Almanac & Reader. Elizabeth has also argued several important cases in the federal courts of appeals on a range of issues, including immigration law, habeas corpus, and sovereign immunity. She joined CAC from private practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in San Francisco, where she was an attorney working with former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan in the firm’s Supreme Court/appellate practice. Previously, Elizabeth was a supervising attorney and teaching fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center appellate litigation clinic, a law clerk for Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and a lawyer at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a law firm in Washington. She has appeared as a legal expert for NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, Current TV, and NPR, among other outlets. Elizabeth has been quoted extensively in the print media and is a regular contributor to the ABA’s Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, Politico, CNN.com, Slate, and on numerous political and legal blogs, such as Huffington Post, SCOTUSblog, and ACSblog. She has also published in the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Syracuse Law Review, The Cato Institute’s Supreme Court Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law. Elizabeth is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
Partner, Clement & Murphy, PLLC
Paul served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. Before his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for over three years.
Paul has argued over 100 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, United States v. Booker, MGM v. Grokster, Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Rucho v. Common Cause, Facebook v. Duguid, and TransUnion v. Ramirez. Paul has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. He has also argued many important cases in the lower courts, including Walker v. Cheney, United States v. Moussaoui and NFL v. Brady.
Paul’s practice focuses on appellate matters, constitutional litigation and strategic counseling. He represents a broad array of clients in the Supreme Court and in federal and state appellate courts. Last year, for example, he successfully argued Supreme Court cases involving significant issues of energy regulation, statutory interpretation, state sovereign immunity and Article III standing, and successfully argued a trademark appeal in the Fourth Circuit, and a constitutional appeal before the en banc Eleventh Circuit.
Paul focuses on high-stakes appeals. In recent years, he successfully defended a $1.2 billion jury verdict for clients in a Tenth Circuit case, while securing the reversal of an over $2 billion jury verdict for another client in the Seventh Circuit and the approval of a nearly $1 billion dollar class action settlement in the Third Circuit. He has initiated major administrative law challenges and constitutional litigation against the federal government, such as the successful challenge to the HHS drug-pricing rule and threatened challenges that led to the withdrawal of the Treasury Department’s proposed cryptocurrency regulations. He also counsels clients on a variety of strategic legal questions, whether arising from pending legislation, government inquiries or ongoing litigation.
Paul has undertaken substantial pro bono engagements in the Supreme Court, such as twice successfully representing the defendant in Bond v. United States and successfully representing the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska v. Parker, the guardian ad litem in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, the defendant in Sekhar v. United States, a high school football coach in Kennedy v. Bremerton, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. Paul’s pro bono representation also precipitated the federal government’s confession of error in United States v. Rojas.
Following law school, Paul clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, he went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights.
Paul is a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught in various capacities since 1998. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute. He is the Justice Joseph Story Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Gray Center at Scalia Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Britt C. Grant is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Grant was appointed to the federal bench in August 2018 after serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Prior to her judicial appointment, she served as the Solicitor General of Georgia and practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Grant served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She earned her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School, where she was the Co-Founder of the Stanford National Security and the Law Society, and the President of the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Before enrolling in law school, Judge Grant served in The White House in a variety of domestic policy roles as well as on the staff of Congressman Nathan Deal. Judge Grant earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three children.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Carl and Shelia Spaeth Professor of Law; Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life, Stanford Law School
Bernadette Meyler, JD ’03, is a scholar of British and American constitutional law and of law and the humanities. She returned in 2013 to Stanford Law School, where she had previously served as Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights. Her research and teaching bring together the sometimes surprisingly divided fields of legal history and law and literature. They also examine the long history of constitutionalism, reaching back into the English common law ancestry of the U.S. Constitution. Professor Meyler’s current book projects stem from these respective areas of her scholarship. Theaters of Pardoning (Cornell UP, forthcoming 2019) demonstrates that the representation of pardoning tracks changing conceptions of sovereignty within the plays and politics of seventeenth-century England. In doing so, the book considers how the shared audiences of dramatic and historical tragicomedy—whether Kings, students at the Inns of Court, or potential jurors—brought concepts from the literary into the legal arena and back again. Common Law Originalism shifts to the American context, looking at the multiple eighteenth-century common law meanings—both colonial and English—of various constitutional terms and phrases. Based on this variety, as well as on the practices of common law interpretation with which members of the Founding generation were familiar, the book argues that we should, in large part, reject the pursuit of a singular and determinate original meaning; instead, it contends, we must embrace a more vigorous debate in the present over contested constitutional meanings. Professor Meyler is also the co-editor of several collections of essays in law and the humanities designed to introduce scholars and students to the field, including, with Elizabeth Anker, New Directions in Law and Literature (Oxford UP, 2017) and, with Simon Stern and Maksymilian Del Mar, The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Humanities (Oxford UP, forthcoming 2019).
After receiving her BA in Literature with a focus on Classics at Harvard University, Professor Meyler obtained her JD from Stanford Law School and completed a PhD in English at UC, Irvine as a Mellon Fellow in Humanistic Studies and a Chancellor’s Fellow. Following law school, Professor Meyler clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Professor Meyler previously taught at Cornell University, where she served, most recently, as Professor of Law and English and Faculty Director of Research at the Cornell Law School. She also visited Princeton University as the inaugural Mellon/LAPA Fellow in Law and the Humanities.
Attorney General of Virginia
In 2021, Jason Miyares was elected Attorney General and became the first Hispanic-American to hold statewide office in Virginia. From 2015 to 2021, Miyares served in the House of Delegates, and was a conservative voice in Richmond, standing up against the Defund the Police movement and proudly standing with the law enforcement community. Recognized as a “Champion of Free Enterprise” by the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, then-Delegate Miyares consistently opposed higher taxes and regulations that make it hard for small business owners to expand and thrive. Prior to his service in the House of Delegates, Miyares served as a prosecutor (Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney) for the City of Virginia Beach.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
President, Constitutional Accountability Center
Elizabeth is Constitutional Accountability Center’s President. From 2008-2016, she served as CAC's Chief Counsel, representing the Center as well as clients including preeminent constitutional scholars and historians, state and local government organizations, and groups such as the League of Women Voters and the AARP. She frequently participates in Supreme Court litigation and her legal brief writing has been recognized as “exemplary” by the Green Bag Almanac & Reader. Elizabeth has also argued several important cases in the federal courts of appeals on a range of issues, including immigration law, habeas corpus, and sovereign immunity. She joined CAC from private practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in San Francisco, where she was an attorney working with former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan in the firm’s Supreme Court/appellate practice. Previously, Elizabeth was a supervising attorney and teaching fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center appellate litigation clinic, a law clerk for Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and a lawyer at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a law firm in Washington. She has appeared as a legal expert for NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, Current TV, and NPR, among other outlets. Elizabeth has been quoted extensively in the print media and is a regular contributor to the ABA’s Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, Politico, CNN.com, Slate, and on numerous political and legal blogs, such as Huffington Post, SCOTUSblog, and ACSblog. She has also published in the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Syracuse Law Review, The Cato Institute’s Supreme Court Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law. Elizabeth is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Trial Attorney, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice (incoming)
Adam Griffin is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law. During law school, he served as a research assistant to Professor Stephen E. Sachs and UNC Law Dean Martin Brinkley. After law school, he spent two years litigating for liberty at the Institute for Justice as an inaugural Law and Liberty Fellow. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Richard E. Myers in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and is now a separation-of-powers attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation.
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.
Tocqueville Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies and directs Notre Dame's Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life.
Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and the American Founding. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities.
Muñoz's current project is a scholarly monograph on the natural right of religious liberty and the original meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law.
Trial Attorney, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice (incoming)
Adam Griffin is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law. During law school, he served as a research assistant to Professor Stephen E. Sachs and UNC Law Dean Martin Brinkley. After law school, he spent two years litigating for liberty at the Institute for Justice as an inaugural Law and Liberty Fellow. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Richard E. Myers in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and is now a separation-of-powers attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation.
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.
Tocqueville Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies and directs Notre Dame's Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life.
Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and the American Founding. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities.
Muñoz's current project is a scholarly monograph on the natural right of religious liberty and the original meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law.
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.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
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.
Partner, Clement & Murphy, PLLC
Paul served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. Before his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for over three years.
Paul has argued over 100 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, United States v. Booker, MGM v. Grokster, Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Rucho v. Common Cause, Facebook v. Duguid, and TransUnion v. Ramirez. Paul has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. He has also argued many important cases in the lower courts, including Walker v. Cheney, United States v. Moussaoui and NFL v. Brady.
Paul’s practice focuses on appellate matters, constitutional litigation and strategic counseling. He represents a broad array of clients in the Supreme Court and in federal and state appellate courts. Last year, for example, he successfully argued Supreme Court cases involving significant issues of energy regulation, statutory interpretation, state sovereign immunity and Article III standing, and successfully argued a trademark appeal in the Fourth Circuit, and a constitutional appeal before the en banc Eleventh Circuit.
Paul focuses on high-stakes appeals. In recent years, he successfully defended a $1.2 billion jury verdict for clients in a Tenth Circuit case, while securing the reversal of an over $2 billion jury verdict for another client in the Seventh Circuit and the approval of a nearly $1 billion dollar class action settlement in the Third Circuit. He has initiated major administrative law challenges and constitutional litigation against the federal government, such as the successful challenge to the HHS drug-pricing rule and threatened challenges that led to the withdrawal of the Treasury Department’s proposed cryptocurrency regulations. He also counsels clients on a variety of strategic legal questions, whether arising from pending legislation, government inquiries or ongoing litigation.
Paul has undertaken substantial pro bono engagements in the Supreme Court, such as twice successfully representing the defendant in Bond v. United States and successfully representing the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska v. Parker, the guardian ad litem in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, the defendant in Sekhar v. United States, a high school football coach in Kennedy v. Bremerton, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. Paul’s pro bono representation also precipitated the federal government’s confession of error in United States v. Rojas.
Following law school, Paul clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, he went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights.
Paul is a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught in various capacities since 1998. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute. He is the Justice Joseph Story Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Gray Center at Scalia Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Britt C. Grant is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Grant was appointed to the federal bench in August 2018 after serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Prior to her judicial appointment, she served as the Solicitor General of Georgia and practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Grant served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She earned her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School, where she was the Co-Founder of the Stanford National Security and the Law Society, and the President of the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Before enrolling in law school, Judge Grant served in The White House in a variety of domestic policy roles as well as on the staff of Congressman Nathan Deal. Judge Grant earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three children.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Carl and Shelia Spaeth Professor of Law; Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life, Stanford Law School
Bernadette Meyler, JD ’03, is a scholar of British and American constitutional law and of law and the humanities. She returned in 2013 to Stanford Law School, where she had previously served as Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights. Her research and teaching bring together the sometimes surprisingly divided fields of legal history and law and literature. They also examine the long history of constitutionalism, reaching back into the English common law ancestry of the U.S. Constitution. Professor Meyler’s current book projects stem from these respective areas of her scholarship. Theaters of Pardoning (Cornell UP, forthcoming 2019) demonstrates that the representation of pardoning tracks changing conceptions of sovereignty within the plays and politics of seventeenth-century England. In doing so, the book considers how the shared audiences of dramatic and historical tragicomedy—whether Kings, students at the Inns of Court, or potential jurors—brought concepts from the literary into the legal arena and back again. Common Law Originalism shifts to the American context, looking at the multiple eighteenth-century common law meanings—both colonial and English—of various constitutional terms and phrases. Based on this variety, as well as on the practices of common law interpretation with which members of the Founding generation were familiar, the book argues that we should, in large part, reject the pursuit of a singular and determinate original meaning; instead, it contends, we must embrace a more vigorous debate in the present over contested constitutional meanings. Professor Meyler is also the co-editor of several collections of essays in law and the humanities designed to introduce scholars and students to the field, including, with Elizabeth Anker, New Directions in Law and Literature (Oxford UP, 2017) and, with Simon Stern and Maksymilian Del Mar, The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Humanities (Oxford UP, forthcoming 2019).
After receiving her BA in Literature with a focus on Classics at Harvard University, Professor Meyler obtained her JD from Stanford Law School and completed a PhD in English at UC, Irvine as a Mellon Fellow in Humanistic Studies and a Chancellor’s Fellow. Following law school, Professor Meyler clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Professor Meyler previously taught at Cornell University, where she served, most recently, as Professor of Law and English and Faculty Director of Research at the Cornell Law School. She also visited Princeton University as the inaugural Mellon/LAPA Fellow in Law and the Humanities.
Attorney General of Virginia
In 2021, Jason Miyares was elected Attorney General and became the first Hispanic-American to hold statewide office in Virginia. From 2015 to 2021, Miyares served in the House of Delegates, and was a conservative voice in Richmond, standing up against the Defund the Police movement and proudly standing with the law enforcement community. Recognized as a “Champion of Free Enterprise” by the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, then-Delegate Miyares consistently opposed higher taxes and regulations that make it hard for small business owners to expand and thrive. Prior to his service in the House of Delegates, Miyares served as a prosecutor (Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney) for the City of Virginia Beach.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
President, Constitutional Accountability Center
Elizabeth is Constitutional Accountability Center’s President. From 2008-2016, she served as CAC's Chief Counsel, representing the Center as well as clients including preeminent constitutional scholars and historians, state and local government organizations, and groups such as the League of Women Voters and the AARP. She frequently participates in Supreme Court litigation and her legal brief writing has been recognized as “exemplary” by the Green Bag Almanac & Reader. Elizabeth has also argued several important cases in the federal courts of appeals on a range of issues, including immigration law, habeas corpus, and sovereign immunity. She joined CAC from private practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in San Francisco, where she was an attorney working with former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan in the firm’s Supreme Court/appellate practice. Previously, Elizabeth was a supervising attorney and teaching fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center appellate litigation clinic, a law clerk for Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and a lawyer at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a law firm in Washington. She has appeared as a legal expert for NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, Current TV, and NPR, among other outlets. Elizabeth has been quoted extensively in the print media and is a regular contributor to the ABA’s Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, Politico, CNN.com, Slate, and on numerous political and legal blogs, such as Huffington Post, SCOTUSblog, and ACSblog. She has also published in the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Syracuse Law Review, The Cato Institute’s Supreme Court Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law. Elizabeth is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Trial Attorney, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice (incoming)
Adam Griffin is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law. During law school, he served as a research assistant to Professor Stephen E. Sachs and UNC Law Dean Martin Brinkley. After law school, he spent two years litigating for liberty at the Institute for Justice as an inaugural Law and Liberty Fellow. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Richard E. Myers in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and is now a separation-of-powers attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation.
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.
Tocqueville Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies and directs Notre Dame's Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life.
Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and the American Founding. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities.
Muñoz's current project is a scholarly monograph on the natural right of religious liberty and the original meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Duncan received his B.A. from Louisiana State University in 1994, his J.D. from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1997, and his LL.M. from Columbia Law School in 2004.
After graduating from law school, he clerked for Louisiana-based Circuit Judge John Malcolm Duhé Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
From 2008–2012, Duncan served as Appellate Chief for Louisiana's Attorney General's office. From 2012–2014, he served as general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. From 2004-2008, he was an assistant professor of law at the University of Mississippi School of Law.
Before becoming a judge, Duncan practiced at the Washington, D.C. firm of Schaerr Duncan LLP, where he was a founding partner. He was appointed by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on May 1, 2018.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas
Reed Charles O'Connor is a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He joined the court in 2007 after being nominated by President George W. Bush.
A native of Houston, Texas, O'Connor graduated from the University of Houston with his bachelor's degree in 1986 and from South Texas College of Law with his J.D. in 1989.
Insurrection and the 14th Amendment
William Baude, Julia D. Mahoney, Michael W. McConnell
Updated 12/20/2023: The Colorado Supreme Court recently decided Former President Donald Trump in ineligible to appear...
Showcase Panel I: Roundtable: Originalism on the Ground
Paul D. Clement, Britt C. Grant, James C. Ho, Joan Larsen, Bernadette Meyler, Jason Miyares, Elizabeth B. Wydra, Kevin C. Newsom
Trying to sort out what originalism means in practice requires integrating insights from all levels...
Showcase Panel I: Roundtable: Originalism on the Ground
Paul D. Clement, Britt C. Grant, James C. Ho, Joan Larsen, Bernadette Meyler, Jason Miyares, Kevin C. Newsom, Elizabeth B. Wydra
Trying to sort out what originalism means in practice requires integrating insights from all levels...
Insurrection and the 14th Amendment
2023 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCShowcase Panel I: Roundtable: Originalism on the Ground
2023 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCTalks with Authors: Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience
TeleforumTalks with Authors: Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience
Adam F. Griffin, Michael W. McConnell, Vincent Phillip Munoz
Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience investigates...
Talks with Authors: Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience
Adam F. Griffin, Michael W. McConnell, Vincent Phillip Munoz
Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience investigates...
Stanford Law School Alumni Rooftop Reception
Washington, DCWhat Happened at Stanford Law School and Why We Should Care
San Antonio Lawyers Chapter
San Antonio, TX