Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Kurt D. Engelhardt was nominated for a seat on the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by President Donald J. Trump, confirmed by the Senate on May 9, 2018, and officially sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge on May 15, 2018. Judge Engelhardt is based in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the John Minor Wisdom U.S. Court of Appeals Building.
Judge Engelhardt was previously nominated for a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana by President George W. Bush, and upon confirmation, was officially sworn in as a United States District Judge on December 14, 2001. While a District Judge, Judge Engelhardt served by designation on nine different panels of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On October 1, 2015, he became Chief United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, a position he held until joining the United States Fifth Circuit on May 15, 2018.
Judge Engelhardt attended Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, where he graduated with honors in 1978. He attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1982. In the Fall of 1982, Judge Engelhardt commenced his legal education at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University, graduating in May of 1985.
Judge Engelhardt served a two-year clerkship with Judge Charles Grisbaum, Jr. of the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, located in Gretna, Louisiana. From there, he became associated with the Metairie law firm of Little, Metzger and Lamz (APLC), and worked in the downtown New Orleans office of that firm in 1988-89. He then joined the law firm of Hailey, McNamara, Hall, Larmann & Papale, became a partner in July 1998, and practiced there until his confirmation to the federal bench in December 2001.
In 1995, Judge Engelhardt was nominated for a spot on the nine-member Louisiana Judiciary Commission, and was appointed by the Governor to serve a four-year term on that body. In 1998, he was elected by his fellow commission members to serve as Chairman, in which capacity he presided over the Commission’s trials of formal charges lodged against sitting state judges. His work on the Judiciary Commission has been cited for its excellence by the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Judge Engelhardt is a member of the Advisory Board of the New Orleans Chapter of The Federalist Society; a past member of the United States Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction; a member of the Board of Directors (and past president) of the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association; a member of the American Judicature Society; and a member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association. He has served on the Fifth Circuit's Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee, charged with updating and/or drafting pattern jury instructions for district judges within the jurisdiction of the United States Fifth Circuit. Recently, he was appointed by Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Carl Stewart to chair the Circuit's Judicial Impairment Protocol Committee, established to create a framework for the judiciary to internally address disabilities of all types which may impact a judge's ability to handle his/her docket.
Judge Engelhardt is also a member of the American Bar Association, Jefferson Bar Association, Louisiana State Bar Association, New Orleans Bar Association, and the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Judge Engelhardt serves on the Board of Directors of the Cancer Association of Greater New Orleans.
Associate Director of Litigation, National Immigrant Justice Center
Mark Fleming is the Associate Director of Litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) located in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Fleming focuses on litigation and public policy at the intersection of state and local law enforcement and civil immigration enforcement. He has litigated multiple class actions related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of immigration detainers. Mr. Fleming provided technical expertise in the drafting and passage of Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance in 2012 and the Illinois TRUST Act in 2017. Mr. Fleming has been quoted in various national media outlets and appeared in a PBS FRONTLINE documentary on ICE enforcement and detention. Mr. Fleming graduated magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Director of Litigation, Immigration Reform Law Institute
Mr. Hajec joined the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) in 2017 as its Director of Litigation, and is responsible for overseeing IRLI’s public interest litigation. Previously, he has focused his career on constitutional and other civil rights law in the public interest, and has had an abiding concern about the many adverse effects of illegal and excessive legal immigration on American jobs and communities.
At IRLI, in addition to representing plaintiffs in immigration-related civil lawsuits, he has overseen the drafting and filing of nearly 100 briefs, mostly amicus curiae briefs in defense of the Trump administration’s immigration initiatives, which have been subjected to an unprecedented degree of legal assault by well-funded interest groups.
Prior to joining IRLI, Mr. Hajec was an attorney at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), where he litigated a string of high-profile cases, including the defense of videographer James O’Keefe in suits brought by former ACORN employees, a class action suit on behalf of Asian American students discriminated against by the New York City public schools, and a case that resulted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s striking down Texas’s psychologists licensing statute as an overbroad restriction on free speech.
Before CIR, Mr. Hajec was an officer in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served as a defense counsel before courts-martial and then as Appellate Government Counsel, arguing over 100 appeals before the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. He received the Navy Commendation Medal for his legal work, and also because of his poor handling of an emergency during a hurricane.
He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his undergraduate degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Miami, and studied philosophy and sociology at Oxford University.
Former United States Attorney General
Jeff Sessions served as the 84th Attorney General of the United States from February 9, 2017 until November 7, 2018.
Prior to becoming Attorney General, Mr. Sessions served as a United States Senator for Alabama since 1996. As a United States Senator, he focused his energies on maintaining a strong military, upholding the rule of law, limiting the role of government, and providing tax relief to stimulate economic growth and to empower Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.
Mr. Sessions was born in Selma, Alabama on December 24, 1946, and grew up in Hybart, the son of a country store owner. Growing up in the country, Sessions was instilled with certain core values – honesty, hard work, belief in God and parental respect – that define him today. In 1964, he became an Eagle Scout and thereafter received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. After attending school in nearby Camden, Sessions attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969. He received a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Alabama in 1973. Sessions served in the United States Army Reserve from 1973 to 1986, ultimately attaining the rank of Captain. He still considers that period to be one of the most rewarding chapters of his life.
Sessions’ interest in the law led to a distinguished legal career, first as a practicing attorney in Russellville, Alabama, and then in Mobile. Following a two-year stint as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama (1975-1977), Sessions was nominated by President Reagan in 1981 and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, a position he held for 12 years. Sessions was elected Alabama Attorney General in 1995, serving as the State’s chief legal officer until 1996, when he entered the United States Senate.
Sessions and his wife, Mary Blackshear Sessions, originally of Gadsden, Alabama, have three children, Mary Abigail Reinhardt, Ruth Sessions Walk, and Sam. They have seven granddaughters, Jane Ritchie, Alexa, Gracie, Sophia, Hannah, Joanna, and Phoebe, and three grandsons, Jim Beau, Lewis, and Nicholas.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Kurt D. Engelhardt was nominated for a seat on the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by President Donald J. Trump, confirmed by the Senate on May 9, 2018, and officially sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge on May 15, 2018. Judge Engelhardt is based in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the John Minor Wisdom U.S. Court of Appeals Building.
Judge Engelhardt was previously nominated for a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana by President George W. Bush, and upon confirmation, was officially sworn in as a United States District Judge on December 14, 2001. While a District Judge, Judge Engelhardt served by designation on nine different panels of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On October 1, 2015, he became Chief United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, a position he held until joining the United States Fifth Circuit on May 15, 2018.
Judge Engelhardt attended Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, where he graduated with honors in 1978. He attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1982. In the Fall of 1982, Judge Engelhardt commenced his legal education at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University, graduating in May of 1985.
Judge Engelhardt served a two-year clerkship with Judge Charles Grisbaum, Jr. of the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, located in Gretna, Louisiana. From there, he became associated with the Metairie law firm of Little, Metzger and Lamz (APLC), and worked in the downtown New Orleans office of that firm in 1988-89. He then joined the law firm of Hailey, McNamara, Hall, Larmann & Papale, became a partner in July 1998, and practiced there until his confirmation to the federal bench in December 2001.
In 1995, Judge Engelhardt was nominated for a spot on the nine-member Louisiana Judiciary Commission, and was appointed by the Governor to serve a four-year term on that body. In 1998, he was elected by his fellow commission members to serve as Chairman, in which capacity he presided over the Commission’s trials of formal charges lodged against sitting state judges. His work on the Judiciary Commission has been cited for its excellence by the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Judge Engelhardt is a member of the Advisory Board of the New Orleans Chapter of The Federalist Society; a past member of the United States Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction; a member of the Board of Directors (and past president) of the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association; a member of the American Judicature Society; and a member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association. He has served on the Fifth Circuit's Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee, charged with updating and/or drafting pattern jury instructions for district judges within the jurisdiction of the United States Fifth Circuit. Recently, he was appointed by Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Carl Stewart to chair the Circuit's Judicial Impairment Protocol Committee, established to create a framework for the judiciary to internally address disabilities of all types which may impact a judge's ability to handle his/her docket.
Judge Engelhardt is also a member of the American Bar Association, Jefferson Bar Association, Louisiana State Bar Association, New Orleans Bar Association, and the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Judge Engelhardt serves on the Board of Directors of the Cancer Association of Greater New Orleans.
Associate Director of Litigation, National Immigrant Justice Center
Mark Fleming is the Associate Director of Litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) located in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Fleming focuses on litigation and public policy at the intersection of state and local law enforcement and civil immigration enforcement. He has litigated multiple class actions related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of immigration detainers. Mr. Fleming provided technical expertise in the drafting and passage of Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance in 2012 and the Illinois TRUST Act in 2017. Mr. Fleming has been quoted in various national media outlets and appeared in a PBS FRONTLINE documentary on ICE enforcement and detention. Mr. Fleming graduated magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Director of Litigation, Immigration Reform Law Institute
Mr. Hajec joined the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) in 2017 as its Director of Litigation, and is responsible for overseeing IRLI’s public interest litigation. Previously, he has focused his career on constitutional and other civil rights law in the public interest, and has had an abiding concern about the many adverse effects of illegal and excessive legal immigration on American jobs and communities.
At IRLI, in addition to representing plaintiffs in immigration-related civil lawsuits, he has overseen the drafting and filing of nearly 100 briefs, mostly amicus curiae briefs in defense of the Trump administration’s immigration initiatives, which have been subjected to an unprecedented degree of legal assault by well-funded interest groups.
Prior to joining IRLI, Mr. Hajec was an attorney at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), where he litigated a string of high-profile cases, including the defense of videographer James O’Keefe in suits brought by former ACORN employees, a class action suit on behalf of Asian American students discriminated against by the New York City public schools, and a case that resulted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s striking down Texas’s psychologists licensing statute as an overbroad restriction on free speech.
Before CIR, Mr. Hajec was an officer in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served as a defense counsel before courts-martial and then as Appellate Government Counsel, arguing over 100 appeals before the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. He received the Navy Commendation Medal for his legal work, and also because of his poor handling of an emergency during a hurricane.
He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his undergraduate degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Miami, and studied philosophy and sociology at Oxford University.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Former United States Attorney General
Jeff Sessions served as the 84th Attorney General of the United States from February 9, 2017 until November 7, 2018.
Prior to becoming Attorney General, Mr. Sessions served as a United States Senator for Alabama since 1996. As a United States Senator, he focused his energies on maintaining a strong military, upholding the rule of law, limiting the role of government, and providing tax relief to stimulate economic growth and to empower Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.
Mr. Sessions was born in Selma, Alabama on December 24, 1946, and grew up in Hybart, the son of a country store owner. Growing up in the country, Sessions was instilled with certain core values – honesty, hard work, belief in God and parental respect – that define him today. In 1964, he became an Eagle Scout and thereafter received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. After attending school in nearby Camden, Sessions attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969. He received a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Alabama in 1973. Sessions served in the United States Army Reserve from 1973 to 1986, ultimately attaining the rank of Captain. He still considers that period to be one of the most rewarding chapters of his life.
Sessions’ interest in the law led to a distinguished legal career, first as a practicing attorney in Russellville, Alabama, and then in Mobile. Following a two-year stint as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama (1975-1977), Sessions was nominated by President Reagan in 1981 and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, a position he held for 12 years. Sessions was elected Alabama Attorney General in 1995, serving as the State’s chief legal officer until 1996, when he entered the United States Senate.
Sessions and his wife, Mary Blackshear Sessions, originally of Gadsden, Alabama, have three children, Mary Abigail Reinhardt, Ruth Sessions Walk, and Sam. They have seven granddaughters, Jane Ritchie, Alexa, Gracie, Sophia, Hannah, Joanna, and Phoebe, and three grandsons, Jim Beau, Lewis, and Nicholas.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Assistant Unit Head, Defensive Litigation Unit, Delaware Department of Justice
Executive Director, Open Markets Institute
Barry Lynn directs the Open Markets Institute. Previously, he spent 15 years at the New America Foundation researching and writing about monopoly power. He is author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (Wiley 2010) and End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation (Doubleday 2005).
Lynn's writings on the political and economic effects of the extreme consolidation of power in the United States have influenced the thinking of policymakers and antitrust professionals on both sides of the Atlantic. His work has been profiled on CBS and in the New York Times, and his articles have appeared in publications including Harper's, the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Policy. He has appeared on CBS, PBS, CNN, the BBC, NPR, MSNBC, C-Span, and the Christian Broadcasting Network, among others. Prior to joining New America, Lynn was executive editor of Global Business Magazine for seven years, and worked as a correspondent in Peru, Venezuela, and the Caribbean for the Associated Press and Agence France Presse.
Partner, Baker Botts L.L.P.
Taylor Owings is a partner in the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group of Baker Botts L.L.P. She represents clients in civil merger and non-merger matters both in front of government agencies and in private litigation. She also counsels clients on the application of antitrust law to their business activities, with special experience in issues related to the digital economy.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Owings served as Senior Counsel and Chief of Staff in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2018 to 2021. In that role, Ms. Owings was a key advisor to the Assistant Attorney General on the application of antitrust law to technology industries, including in the Department of Justice’s review of the business practices of market-leading online platforms and in the application of antitrust law to the exercise of intellectual property rights and standard setting organizations. As Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division, Ms. Owings was responsible for ensuring the high quality of all public advocacy issued by the Division, including court filings, policy statements, and speeches.
Ms. Owings has experience crafting both trial and appellate strategy in headline-making antitrust litigations. She has argued in the First and Fourth Circuits. Earlier in her career, she clerked for the Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for the Honorable Richard J. Leon on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Ms. Owings handles all aspects of merger review. She draws on her first-hand experience investigating and reviewing mergers at the Antitrust Division to advise clients and to represent them in front of the agencies. She has special experience in merger matters with complex legal questions, for instance vertical mergers, the acquisition of a nascent or potential competitor, and the implications of a merger on innovation and data accumulation.
Founding Partner, Lodestar Law and Economics PLLC
Josh is the founder of Lodestar Law and Economics, PLLC. On January 1, 2013, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Wright as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He is a leading scholar in antitrust law, economics, intellectual property, regulation, and consumer protection, and has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading antitrust casebook, and edited several book volumes focusing on these issues. Commentators have recognized Wright as “widely considered his generation’s greatest mind on antitrust law,” and his academic work ranks him as one of the most cited antitrust academics in the world. Wright was also awarded the Paul M. Bator Award by the Federalist Society in 2014 to “an academic who demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact.” Wright also served as the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute, the world’s premiere academic institute focused upon antitrust education for judges and regulators and has taught hundreds of judges and thousands of regulators from dozens of countries.
Wright’s practice focuses upon helping clients solve complex competition, consumer protection, and regulatory problems by providing legal and economic analysis, strategic advice and counseling, and economic expert testimony.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Assistant Unit Head, Defensive Litigation Unit, Delaware Department of Justice
Executive Director, Open Markets Institute
Barry Lynn directs the Open Markets Institute. Previously, he spent 15 years at the New America Foundation researching and writing about monopoly power. He is author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (Wiley 2010) and End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation (Doubleday 2005).
Lynn's writings on the political and economic effects of the extreme consolidation of power in the United States have influenced the thinking of policymakers and antitrust professionals on both sides of the Atlantic. His work has been profiled on CBS and in the New York Times, and his articles have appeared in publications including Harper's, the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Policy. He has appeared on CBS, PBS, CNN, the BBC, NPR, MSNBC, C-Span, and the Christian Broadcasting Network, among others. Prior to joining New America, Lynn was executive editor of Global Business Magazine for seven years, and worked as a correspondent in Peru, Venezuela, and the Caribbean for the Associated Press and Agence France Presse.
Partner, Baker Botts L.L.P.
Taylor Owings is a partner in the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group of Baker Botts L.L.P. She represents clients in civil merger and non-merger matters both in front of government agencies and in private litigation. She also counsels clients on the application of antitrust law to their business activities, with special experience in issues related to the digital economy.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Owings served as Senior Counsel and Chief of Staff in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2018 to 2021. In that role, Ms. Owings was a key advisor to the Assistant Attorney General on the application of antitrust law to technology industries, including in the Department of Justice’s review of the business practices of market-leading online platforms and in the application of antitrust law to the exercise of intellectual property rights and standard setting organizations. As Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division, Ms. Owings was responsible for ensuring the high quality of all public advocacy issued by the Division, including court filings, policy statements, and speeches.
Ms. Owings has experience crafting both trial and appellate strategy in headline-making antitrust litigations. She has argued in the First and Fourth Circuits. Earlier in her career, she clerked for the Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for the Honorable Richard J. Leon on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Ms. Owings handles all aspects of merger review. She draws on her first-hand experience investigating and reviewing mergers at the Antitrust Division to advise clients and to represent them in front of the agencies. She has special experience in merger matters with complex legal questions, for instance vertical mergers, the acquisition of a nascent or potential competitor, and the implications of a merger on innovation and data accumulation.
Founding Partner, Lodestar Law and Economics PLLC
Josh is the founder of Lodestar Law and Economics, PLLC. On January 1, 2013, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Wright as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He is a leading scholar in antitrust law, economics, intellectual property, regulation, and consumer protection, and has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading antitrust casebook, and edited several book volumes focusing on these issues. Commentators have recognized Wright as “widely considered his generation’s greatest mind on antitrust law,” and his academic work ranks him as one of the most cited antitrust academics in the world. Wright was also awarded the Paul M. Bator Award by the Federalist Society in 2014 to “an academic who demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact.” Wright also served as the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute, the world’s premiere academic institute focused upon antitrust education for judges and regulators and has taught hundreds of judges and thousands of regulators from dozens of countries.
Wright’s practice focuses upon helping clients solve complex competition, consumer protection, and regulatory problems by providing legal and economic analysis, strategic advice and counseling, and economic expert testimony.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Kurt D. Engelhardt was nominated for a seat on the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by President Donald J. Trump, confirmed by the Senate on May 9, 2018, and officially sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge on May 15, 2018. Judge Engelhardt is based in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the John Minor Wisdom U.S. Court of Appeals Building.
Judge Engelhardt was previously nominated for a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana by President George W. Bush, and upon confirmation, was officially sworn in as a United States District Judge on December 14, 2001. While a District Judge, Judge Engelhardt served by designation on nine different panels of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On October 1, 2015, he became Chief United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, a position he held until joining the United States Fifth Circuit on May 15, 2018.
Judge Engelhardt attended Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, where he graduated with honors in 1978. He attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1982. In the Fall of 1982, Judge Engelhardt commenced his legal education at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University, graduating in May of 1985.
Judge Engelhardt served a two-year clerkship with Judge Charles Grisbaum, Jr. of the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, located in Gretna, Louisiana. From there, he became associated with the Metairie law firm of Little, Metzger and Lamz (APLC), and worked in the downtown New Orleans office of that firm in 1988-89. He then joined the law firm of Hailey, McNamara, Hall, Larmann & Papale, became a partner in July 1998, and practiced there until his confirmation to the federal bench in December 2001.
In 1995, Judge Engelhardt was nominated for a spot on the nine-member Louisiana Judiciary Commission, and was appointed by the Governor to serve a four-year term on that body. In 1998, he was elected by his fellow commission members to serve as Chairman, in which capacity he presided over the Commission’s trials of formal charges lodged against sitting state judges. His work on the Judiciary Commission has been cited for its excellence by the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Judge Engelhardt is a member of the Advisory Board of the New Orleans Chapter of The Federalist Society; a past member of the United States Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction; a member of the Board of Directors (and past president) of the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association; a member of the American Judicature Society; and a member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association. He has served on the Fifth Circuit's Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee, charged with updating and/or drafting pattern jury instructions for district judges within the jurisdiction of the United States Fifth Circuit. Recently, he was appointed by Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Carl Stewart to chair the Circuit's Judicial Impairment Protocol Committee, established to create a framework for the judiciary to internally address disabilities of all types which may impact a judge's ability to handle his/her docket.
Judge Engelhardt is also a member of the American Bar Association, Jefferson Bar Association, Louisiana State Bar Association, New Orleans Bar Association, and the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Judge Engelhardt serves on the Board of Directors of the Cancer Association of Greater New Orleans.
Associate Director of Litigation, National Immigrant Justice Center
Mark Fleming is the Associate Director of Litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) located in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Fleming focuses on litigation and public policy at the intersection of state and local law enforcement and civil immigration enforcement. He has litigated multiple class actions related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of immigration detainers. Mr. Fleming provided technical expertise in the drafting and passage of Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance in 2012 and the Illinois TRUST Act in 2017. Mr. Fleming has been quoted in various national media outlets and appeared in a PBS FRONTLINE documentary on ICE enforcement and detention. Mr. Fleming graduated magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Director of Litigation, Immigration Reform Law Institute
Mr. Hajec joined the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) in 2017 as its Director of Litigation, and is responsible for overseeing IRLI’s public interest litigation. Previously, he has focused his career on constitutional and other civil rights law in the public interest, and has had an abiding concern about the many adverse effects of illegal and excessive legal immigration on American jobs and communities.
At IRLI, in addition to representing plaintiffs in immigration-related civil lawsuits, he has overseen the drafting and filing of nearly 100 briefs, mostly amicus curiae briefs in defense of the Trump administration’s immigration initiatives, which have been subjected to an unprecedented degree of legal assault by well-funded interest groups.
Prior to joining IRLI, Mr. Hajec was an attorney at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), where he litigated a string of high-profile cases, including the defense of videographer James O’Keefe in suits brought by former ACORN employees, a class action suit on behalf of Asian American students discriminated against by the New York City public schools, and a case that resulted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s striking down Texas’s psychologists licensing statute as an overbroad restriction on free speech.
Before CIR, Mr. Hajec was an officer in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served as a defense counsel before courts-martial and then as Appellate Government Counsel, arguing over 100 appeals before the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. He received the Navy Commendation Medal for his legal work, and also because of his poor handling of an emergency during a hurricane.
He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his undergraduate degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Miami, and studied philosophy and sociology at Oxford University.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Former United States Attorney General
Jeff Sessions served as the 84th Attorney General of the United States from February 9, 2017 until November 7, 2018.
Prior to becoming Attorney General, Mr. Sessions served as a United States Senator for Alabama since 1996. As a United States Senator, he focused his energies on maintaining a strong military, upholding the rule of law, limiting the role of government, and providing tax relief to stimulate economic growth and to empower Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.
Mr. Sessions was born in Selma, Alabama on December 24, 1946, and grew up in Hybart, the son of a country store owner. Growing up in the country, Sessions was instilled with certain core values – honesty, hard work, belief in God and parental respect – that define him today. In 1964, he became an Eagle Scout and thereafter received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. After attending school in nearby Camden, Sessions attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969. He received a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Alabama in 1973. Sessions served in the United States Army Reserve from 1973 to 1986, ultimately attaining the rank of Captain. He still considers that period to be one of the most rewarding chapters of his life.
Sessions’ interest in the law led to a distinguished legal career, first as a practicing attorney in Russellville, Alabama, and then in Mobile. Following a two-year stint as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama (1975-1977), Sessions was nominated by President Reagan in 1981 and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, a position he held for 12 years. Sessions was elected Alabama Attorney General in 1995, serving as the State’s chief legal officer until 1996, when he entered the United States Senate.
Sessions and his wife, Mary Blackshear Sessions, originally of Gadsden, Alabama, have three children, Mary Abigail Reinhardt, Ruth Sessions Walk, and Sam. They have seven granddaughters, Jane Ritchie, Alexa, Gracie, Sophia, Hannah, Joanna, and Phoebe, and three grandsons, Jim Beau, Lewis, and Nicholas.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.
Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, US News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and the Voice of America, among other media.
Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Somin has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.
Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uriel Reichman University in Israel, and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a University Affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Assistant Unit Head, Defensive Litigation Unit, Delaware Department of Justice
Executive Director, Open Markets Institute
Barry Lynn directs the Open Markets Institute. Previously, he spent 15 years at the New America Foundation researching and writing about monopoly power. He is author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (Wiley 2010) and End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation (Doubleday 2005).
Lynn's writings on the political and economic effects of the extreme consolidation of power in the United States have influenced the thinking of policymakers and antitrust professionals on both sides of the Atlantic. His work has been profiled on CBS and in the New York Times, and his articles have appeared in publications including Harper's, the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Policy. He has appeared on CBS, PBS, CNN, the BBC, NPR, MSNBC, C-Span, and the Christian Broadcasting Network, among others. Prior to joining New America, Lynn was executive editor of Global Business Magazine for seven years, and worked as a correspondent in Peru, Venezuela, and the Caribbean for the Associated Press and Agence France Presse.
Partner, Baker Botts L.L.P.
Taylor Owings is a partner in the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group of Baker Botts L.L.P. She represents clients in civil merger and non-merger matters both in front of government agencies and in private litigation. She also counsels clients on the application of antitrust law to their business activities, with special experience in issues related to the digital economy.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Owings served as Senior Counsel and Chief of Staff in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2018 to 2021. In that role, Ms. Owings was a key advisor to the Assistant Attorney General on the application of antitrust law to technology industries, including in the Department of Justice’s review of the business practices of market-leading online platforms and in the application of antitrust law to the exercise of intellectual property rights and standard setting organizations. As Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division, Ms. Owings was responsible for ensuring the high quality of all public advocacy issued by the Division, including court filings, policy statements, and speeches.
Ms. Owings has experience crafting both trial and appellate strategy in headline-making antitrust litigations. She has argued in the First and Fourth Circuits. Earlier in her career, she clerked for the Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for the Honorable Richard J. Leon on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Ms. Owings handles all aspects of merger review. She draws on her first-hand experience investigating and reviewing mergers at the Antitrust Division to advise clients and to represent them in front of the agencies. She has special experience in merger matters with complex legal questions, for instance vertical mergers, the acquisition of a nascent or potential competitor, and the implications of a merger on innovation and data accumulation.
Founding Partner, Lodestar Law and Economics PLLC
Josh is the founder of Lodestar Law and Economics, PLLC. On January 1, 2013, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Wright as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He is a leading scholar in antitrust law, economics, intellectual property, regulation, and consumer protection, and has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading antitrust casebook, and edited several book volumes focusing on these issues. Commentators have recognized Wright as “widely considered his generation’s greatest mind on antitrust law,” and his academic work ranks him as one of the most cited antitrust academics in the world. Wright was also awarded the Paul M. Bator Award by the Federalist Society in 2014 to “an academic who demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact.” Wright also served as the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute, the world’s premiere academic institute focused upon antitrust education for judges and regulators and has taught hundreds of judges and thousands of regulators from dozens of countries.
Wright’s practice focuses upon helping clients solve complex competition, consumer protection, and regulatory problems by providing legal and economic analysis, strategic advice and counseling, and economic expert testimony.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
On March 20, 2018, Judge Elizabeth L. Branch (Lisa) was sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge Branch attended and graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina (B.A., cum laude, 1990), and Emory University School of Law (J.D., with distinction, 1994).
After graduating from law school, Judge Branch served as a federal law clerk to The Honorable J. Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia from 1994 to 1996. Following her clerkship, Judge Branch joined the litigation department of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta as an associate and then a partner.
From 2004 to 2008, Judge Branch was a senior official in the Administration of President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. She served first as the Associate General Counsel for Rules and Legislation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then as the Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U. S. Office of Management and Budget.
She returned to Smith Gambrell in 2008 as a litigation partner. Judge Branch then was appointed to the Court of Appeals of Georgia by Governor Nathan Deal, taking office on September 4, 2012, where she served until March 19, 2018.
Judge Branch is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Shareholder, Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Shreck
With more than 20 years of experience both as a first-chair litigator and in public service, Greg Brower’s practice focuses on civil and criminal litigation, as well as regulatory and enforcement actions, corporate investigations, cybersecurity matters and federal and state government relations.
Most recently, Greg served as the assistant director for the Office of Congressional Affairs at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), serving as the FBI’s chief liaison to Congress on a wide range of critical oversight and investigative matters. He previously served as the FBI’s Deputy General Counsel, managing a diverse portfolio of legal matters, including litigation, privacy, procurement, compliance and ethics. During his time as a senior FBI executive, spanning two administrations, he worked closely with high-ranking officials in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. intelligence community and with key leaders on Capitol Hill. Greg is a regular commentator and contributor on national security, legal and cybersecurity issues, regularly appearing on CNN and MSNBC, and he is the featured contributor on white collar crime and corporate compliance for the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Pulse blog.
Greg has a long history of public service. At the federal level, he previously served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, and as both General Counsel and Inspector General at the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Greg also served at DOJ as Legislative Counsel in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. At the state level, he has served in a variety of public policy roles, including five terms in the Nevada Legislature, where he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has also served on the Nevada Gaming Policy Committee, the Nevada Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice, the Nevada Sentencing Commission and the Nevada Juvenile Justice Commission.
Throughout his career, Greg has served the Nevada legal community as an adjunct professor of law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he has taught courses in national security law and trial advocacy. Before attending law school, Greg served in the U.S. Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer.
Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland "Buck" Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
Carissa Byrne Hessick joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2016. She serves as the Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland “Buck” Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law and as the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project. Her teaching and research interests include criminal law, the structure of the criminal justice system, criminal sentencing, and child pornography crimes. Hessick is the author of multiple law review articles, essays, and op eds on plea bargaining, the powers and selection of prosecutors, Sixth Amendment sentencing rights, and criminal statutes. Her work has appeared in the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the L.A. Times, the UCLA Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. She founded the Prosecutors and Politics Project in 2018. And she currently serves as the Reporter for the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Sentencing Standards Task Force.
Hessick attended Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and winner of the Potter Stewart Prize for the Morris Tyler Moot Court of Appeals. After graduating from law school, she clerked for Judge Barbara S. Jones on the Southern District of New York and for Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the D.C. Circuit. She also worked as a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City. Before joining the faculty at Carolina Law, Hessick taught on the faculties at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. She also spent two years as a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.
The Wisdom and Legality of Sanctuary Cities
Stephanos Bibas, Kurt Damian Engelhardt, Mark Fleming, Christopher Hajec, Jefferson B. Sessions, Ilya Somin, John G. Malcolm
On November 14, 2019, the Federalist Society's Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group hosted a...
The Wisdom and Legality of Sanctuary Cities
Stephanos Bibas, Kurt Damian Engelhardt, Mark Fleming, Christopher Hajec, John G. Malcolm, Jefferson B. Sessions, Ilya Somin
On November 14, 2019, the Federalist Society's Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group hosted a...
The Wisdom and Legality of Sanctuary Cities
2019 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCTopics
2019 National Lawyers Convention Digital Survival Guide
This "Survival Guide" is your one-stop-shop for all things digital at the National Lawyers Convention....
Topics
Wisdom and Legality of Sanctuary Cities
The first three years of the Trump administration have been contentious and tumultuous, to say...
Panel Two: Regulation of Big Tech
Stephanos Bibas, Ryan Costa, Barry C. Lynn, Taylor Owings, Joshua D. Wright
On October 24, 2019, The Federalist Society held its annual Third Circuit Chapters Conference. This...
Panel Two: Regulation of Big Tech
Stephanos Bibas, Ryan Costa, Barry C. Lynn, Taylor Owings, Joshua D. Wright
On October 24, 2019, The Federalist Society held its annual Third Circuit Chapters Conference. This...
Panel Two: Regulation of Big Tech
Third Circuit Chapters Conference
Philadelphia, PAAppellate Advocacy Post-Scalia, in a World of Originalism and Textualism
Morristown, NJThe Pros and Cons of Plea Bargaining
2018 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC