Vice President of Litigation & Senior Counsel, First Liberty Institute
David Hacker is Vice President of Legal Services and Senior Counsel at First Liberty where he manages and directs First Liberty’s litigation, communications, external relations, client outreach, and legal support teams. A natural leader and tenacious litigator, David has been a champion for religious liberty throughout his 20-year career.
During his tenure, First Liberty has won four Supreme Court cases: Groff v. DeJoy (landmark Title VII religious accommodation victory), Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (free exercise and free speech victory for praying high school football coach that eliminated the Lemon test), Carson v. Makin (giving religious parents equal access to state educational funds), and Navy SEALs v. Biden (injunction and settlement protecting over 4,000 sailors with religious objections to vaccine mandate).
David previously served on the executive team of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. As Associate Deputy Attorney General for Civil Litigation, he managed over 600 lawyers and staff in twelve practice groups working on more than 35,000 cases. He also was Special Counsel to the Attorney General and to the First Assistant Attorney General, who he advised on a wide variety of legal and policy issues, coordinated multistate legal actions, and handled relationships with key stakeholders. As Special Counsel for Civil Litigation, he handled the State’s highest profile cases and multistate litigation on topics as diverse as federal administrative law, separation of powers, Indian law, immigration law, nuclear waste policy, property rights, collective bargaining, education law, corporate governance, and healthcare regulation.
Earlier in his career, David spent over a decade at Alliance Defending Freedom as Senior Counsel and Director of the Center for Academic Freedom. While at ADF, he won many groundbreaking cases protecting free speech on college campuses, including Badger Catholic, Inc. v. Walsh, 620 F.3d 775 (7th Cir. 2010), DeJohn v. Temple University, 537 F.3d 301 (3d Cir. 2008), and College Republicans at San Francisco State University v. Reed, 523 F. Supp. 2d 1005 (N.D. Cal. 2007). He began his career in the Chicago office of Arnstein & Lehr LLP.
The Texas Supreme Court has twice appointed David to serve as a member of the Professional Ethics Committee of the State Bar of Texas in 2021 and 2024. He also teaches continuing legal education courses and speaks on religious freedom and free speech issues. Numerous media outlets have featured his cases and clients, including Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the journal Science.
David graduated from Northwestern University, with a degree in English and Philosophy, and Washington University School of Law, where he was a published editorial board member of the law journal.
David is a Blackstone Fellow, an Assistant Scoutmaster for Boy Scouts Troop 25 in Austin, and serves on the board of another nonprofit organization.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Virginia School of Law; Alice McKean Young Regents Chair in Law Emeritus, University of Texas
Douglas Laycock is perhaps the nation’s leading authority on the law of religious liberty and also on the law of remedies. He has taught and written about these topics for more than four decades at the University of Chicago, the University of Texas, the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. He retired from teaching at UVA Law School in May 2023.
Laycock has testified frequently before Congress and has argued many cases in the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has served as lead counsel in six cases and has also filed influential amicus briefs. He is the author (co-author in the most recent edition) of the leading casebook Modern American Remedies, the award-winning monograph The Death of the Irreparable Injury Rule and many articles in leading law reviews. He co-edited a collection of essays, Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty.
His many writings on religious liberty have been republished in a five-volume collection:
Laycock resigned from the council and as first vice president of the American Law Institute to become co-reporter for the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Remedies. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago.
President, Defending Education
Nicole Neily is the president and founder of Defending Education, a national membership organization that gives parents, students, and others the resources and support they need to advocate for their children’s education. She is also the executive director of PDE Action, a 501(c)4 advocacy organization.
Defending Education champions equal protection and combats race and sex-based discrimination in both the court of law and the court of public opinion, and has successfully sued school districts and the US Department of Education in federal court; facilitated tens of thousands of comments submitted to the Federal Register; filed dozens of federal OCR and EEOC complaints, as well as over two thousand public records requests since its launch in 2021. The organization regularly releases deep-dive education investigations, recently covering political spending by teachers’ unions, biased accreditation agencies, and ethnic studies curriculum in both K-12 and universities.
Prior to launching Defending Education, Nicole created Speech First, a campus free speech organization that sued 6 public universities under her leadership; she has also worked as president of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity; as executive director and senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum; and at the Cato Institute. She is the mother of two school-aged children and serves on the board of a public university.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Andrew Oldham is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before ascending to the bench, Judge Oldham served as General Counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, where he advised the Governor on a range of issues under federal and state law and managed litigation in which the Governor was an interested party. Before that he served as Deputy Solicitor General for the State of Texas, where he represented Texas in federal courts across the country, including twice before the United States Supreme Court. Before moving to Texas, Judge Oldham was an attorney at Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick in Washington, D.C. His practice focused on appellate litigation in federal courts of appeals throughout the country. Before entering private practice, Judge Oldham served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., at the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also worked as an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2006 to 2008. Judge Oldham earned a B.A. from the University of Virginia with highest honors, a Truman Scholarship for graduate school, an M. Phil., first class (with distinction), from Cambridge University, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail and Robert Lee Jamail Regents C, University of Texas School of Law
Professor Rabban served as counsel to the American Association of University Professors for several years before joining the Texas faculty in 1983. He served as General Counsel of the AAUP from 1998 to 2006 and Chair of its Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 2006 to 2012. His teaching and research focus on labor law, higher education and the law, and American legal history. He is best known for his path-breaking work on free speech in American history. He is the author of Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years, 1870-1920 (Cambridge,1997), which received the Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas for "the best book in intellectual history published in 1997." His many articles have appeared in Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review and elsewhere. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. in 1994-95, and has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. His most recent book is Law's History: American Legal Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History.
Executive General Counsel, First Liberty Institute
Hiram Sasser is Executive General Counsel for First Liberty Institute, where he oversees First Liberty’s litigation and media efforts. Sasser’s practice focuses on First Amendment and other constitutional and civil rights issues relating to religious liberty. Sasser served as co-counsel in seven victories before the United States Supreme Court, including Groff v. DeJoy (landmark case overturning the “de minimis cost” test for Title VII in place almost 50 years), Kennedy v. Bremerton (landmark case overturning 50 years of Establishment Clause precedent), Carson v. Makin (overturning 40 years of Maine’s discrimination against parents choosing faith-based schools), American Legion v. American Humanist Association (landmark case ending Establishment Clause attacks on veterans’ memorials with religious imagery), Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (granted, vacated, and remanded (twice) in religious wedding service case), and Sause v. Bauer (summary reversal revoking qualified immunity for police who ordered a citizen not to pray in her own home).
In addition to his legal duties, Sasser develops, coordinates, and implements successful media strategies on behalf of his clients. This includes numerous appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, CNN, and the BBC as well as being heard on various radio stations throughout the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
In 2016, Sasser took a leave of absence to serve a temporary assignment as the Chief of Staff for the Attorney General of Texas. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at both The University of Texas at Austin School of Law (teaching Religious Liberty) and Oklahoma City University School of Law (teaching Civil Rights Procedure).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
Professor, The University of Texas at Austin
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Director of Policy & General Counsel, Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute
Russell Withers is Director of Policy & General Counsel at the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute. He holds an undergraduate degree in Government and English from the University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans. Russell helped litigate constitutional claims as a clerk at the Institute for Justice, served as a policy consultant for the Greg Abbott campaign for Governor in 2014, and regularly assists members of the Texas Legislature on questions of public policy. He has testified before several committees in the Texas Legislature and authored numerous opinion editorials on Texas politics and public policy. His works have appeared in the Austin American Statesman, the Houston Chronicle, the Texas Tribune’s Trib Talk, and others. He has served as a moderator for panels at TCCRI Policy Summits covering issues such as health care, energy, and economic freedom. Russell is an active member in the Austin Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society and has organized events as well as presented and participated in them.
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Andrew Kent teaches and writes about constitutional law, foreign relations law, federal courts and procedure, national security law, public international law, professional responsibility and legal ethics. He received the Dean’s Distinguished Research Award (2016-17) for his scholarship.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Professor Kent clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Hon. Carol B. Amon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Before joining Fordham’s faculty, he was a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School and an attorney at both Sullivan & Cromwell and WilmerHale.
From 2014-2015, Professor Kent served as Senior Counsel to the Solicitor General, State of New York, Office of the Attorney General.
Professor Kent is a member of the New York City Bar’s Professional Responsibility Committee. He provides appellate representation to the indigent as a member of the Pro Bono Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
William Cranch Research Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School
Bradford R. Clark teaches and writes in the areas of civil procedure, constitutional structure, federal courts, and foreign relations. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals including California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. His book, The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution (co-authored with Anthony J. Bellia Jr.), was published in 2017 by Oxford University Press. Professor Clark has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan Law School. Professor Clark also served as a special master appointed by the Supreme Court to make recommendations in an original action between states, Alabama, et al. v. North Carolina, Orig. No. 132.
Before joining the law school faculty, Professor Clark spent several years practicing law in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he specialized in trial and appellate litigation. Previously, he served as an attorney adviser in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, where he provided legal advice to the president, the attorney general, and the heads of executive departments. Professor Clark also served as a law clerk to The Honorable Robert H. Bork of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to The Honorable Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Senior Director, Liberty & National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein is senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.
Goitein is a nationally-recognized expert on presidential emergency powers, government surveillance, and government secrecy. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Magazine, and The New Republic, and she has appeared frequently on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. She has testified on several occasions before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
Before coming to the Brennan Center, Goitein served as counsel to Senator Russ Feingold, chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Goitein graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2021–22, she was a member of the inaugural class of Senior Practitioner Fellows at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.
Senior Lecturer; Director, The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, The University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Adam Klein is Director of the Strauss Center and Director of Strauss’ Program on Technology, Security, and Global Affairs. Adam also serves as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law. Before joining the Strauss Center, Adam served as Chairman of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the independent, bipartisan federal agency responsible for overseeing counterterrorism programs at the NSA, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies. As the Board’s Senate-confirmed Chairman, he oversaw its oversight and advice engagements with other federal agencies, while also serving as the Board’s chief executive officer.
Before entering government, Adam was the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan national-security research institution in Washington, DC. There, his research focused on government surveillance, intelligence powers, and national security law. Previously, Adam practiced law at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, LLP and served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also worked on national-security policy at the RAND Corporation, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (the non-profit successor to the 9/11 Commission), and in the U.S. Congress. He received his BA from Northwestern University and his JD from Columbia Law School.
Adam is a former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Berlin. He speaks German and French.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Josh Blackman is a national thought leader on constitutional law and the United States Supreme Court. Josh’s work was quoted during two presidential impeachment trials. He has testified before Congress and advises federal and state lawmakers. Josh regularly appears on TV, including NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the BBC. Josh is also a frequent guest on NPR and other syndicated radio programs. He has published commentaries in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and leading national publications.
Since 2012, Josh has served as a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. He holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law. Josh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Josh has written more than seven dozen law review articles that have been cited more than a thousand times. Josh was selected as the Jurist of the Year by the Texas Journal of Law & Public Policy, received the inaugural Meese III Originalism Award, and was awarded the Inaugural Joseph Story Award. Josh was selected by Forbes Magazine for the “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy. Josh is the President of the Harlan Institute, and founded FantasySCOTUS, the Internet’s Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracyand posts@JoshMBlackman.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Senior Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia School of Law, George Mason University; Retired Professor, Distinguished Fellow and Co-Founder, Center for National Security Law, University of Virginia School of Law (1987-2020)
Robert F. Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law. He co-founded the Center for National Security Law with Professor John Norton Moore in April 1981 and served as its associate director for 39 years, except for two periods of government service in the 1980s and during 1994-95, when he occupied the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He retired from UVA in January 2020 and currently serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the GMU National Security Institute. He also served briefly in 2020 as President of the Crime Prevention Research Center—one of the most respected pro-Second Amendment groups in the country—while its founder, Dr. John Lott, was on leave of absence.
A former Army captain and veteran of two tours in Vietnam, Turner served as a research associate and public affairs fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace before spending five years in the mid-1970s as national security adviser to U.S. Senator Robert P. Griffin, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (where Turner anticipated by seven years the Supreme Court’s landmark INS v. Chadha decision, striking down legislative vetoes). He also served in the executive branch during the Reagan administration as a member of the Senior Executive Service, first in the Pentagon as special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for policy, then in the White House as counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, and at the State Department as principal deputy and then acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs. In 1986, he became the first president of the congressionally established United States Institute of Peace.
A former three-term chairman of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security (and for many years editor of the ABA National Security Law Report), Turner also chaired the Executive-Congressional Relations Subcommittee of the ABA Section on International Law and Practice and chaired or co-chaired the National Security Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group for several years.
Turner taught undergraduate courses at Virginia on international law, U.S. foreign policy, the Vietnam War and foreign policy and the law in what is now the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. In addition, he co-taught National Security Law and advanced national security law seminars on the Indochina War and on war and peace with Moore at the Law School.
The author or editor of 17 books and monographs (including co-editor of the Center's 1,600-page National Security Law & Policy casebook, National Security Law Documents, and Legal Issues in the Struggle Against Terror) and numerous articles in law reviews and other professional journals, Turner has also contributed articles to most of the major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today. In an op-ed published in The International Herald Tribune in September 1990, he and Moore were the first to call for a war-crimes trial for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and for international controls over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and the following month he wrote the lead story in The Washington Post Sunday Outlook Section, “Killing Saddam: Would It Be a Crime?,” arguing that Hussein would be a lawful target during Operation Desert Storm. (His reasoning contributed to the modern legal justification for drone strikes targeting specific terrorist leaders.) Three years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turner published an op-ed in USA Today entitled: “In Self-defense, U.S. Has Right to Kill bin Laden.”
In July 2007, he co-authored an article in The Washington Post with former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General P.X. Kelley, “War Crimes and the White House,” criticizing the use of unlawful “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the Central Intelligence Agency. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon he authored an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Saigon’s Fall Still Echoes Today,” noting that after the war ended, Hanoi admitted it had made a decision in 1959 to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and start sending troops, weapons and supplies into South Vietnam to overthrow its government — just as the United States had charged. In 2010 Turner received the first “person of the year” award from SACEI, a major Vietnamese-American human rights organization.
A frequent lecturer and debater, Turner has spoken at more than 100 law schools around the nation and in other fora — taking on as many as four opponents at a time. His debate opponents have included former or future deans of Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Berkeley law schools. Following a 1987 debate against Dean Harlan Cleveland (Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) in which Turner defended the legality of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan Administration, the host student debating societies awarded Turner the victory by an 85-to-15 percent margin.
Turner has also written and lectured widely on University of Virginia founder and America’s third president Thomas Jefferson. In 2000-2001 he chaired the Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission. In his 2012 book Master of the Mountain, Jefferson critic Henry Wiencek described Turner as “Jefferson’s chief scholarly defender."
A former distinguished lecturer at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Turner is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Academy of Political Science, the Committee on the Present Danger, The Heterodox Academy, and other professional organizations. He maintained a 4.0 gpa as a graduate student at Stanford in History and Political Science and in the UVA Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and was the first person admitted directly to the UVA academic law doctorate (SJD) program without first being required to earn an LL.M. master’s degree. He was selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Law less than two years after graduating from law school and Who’s Who in the World before he reached the age of 40. Turner has testified before more than a dozen different congressional committees on issues of international or constitutional law and other topics.
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Andrew Kent teaches and writes about constitutional law, foreign relations law, federal courts and procedure, national security law, public international law, professional responsibility and legal ethics. He received the Dean’s Distinguished Research Award (2016-17) for his scholarship.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Professor Kent clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Hon. Carol B. Amon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Before joining Fordham’s faculty, he was a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School and an attorney at both Sullivan & Cromwell and WilmerHale.
From 2014-2015, Professor Kent served as Senior Counsel to the Solicitor General, State of New York, Office of the Attorney General.
Professor Kent is a member of the New York City Bar’s Professional Responsibility Committee. He provides appellate representation to the indigent as a member of the Pro Bono Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
William Cranch Research Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School
Bradford R. Clark teaches and writes in the areas of civil procedure, constitutional structure, federal courts, and foreign relations. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals including California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. His book, The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution (co-authored with Anthony J. Bellia Jr.), was published in 2017 by Oxford University Press. Professor Clark has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan Law School. Professor Clark also served as a special master appointed by the Supreme Court to make recommendations in an original action between states, Alabama, et al. v. North Carolina, Orig. No. 132.
Before joining the law school faculty, Professor Clark spent several years practicing law in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he specialized in trial and appellate litigation. Previously, he served as an attorney adviser in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, where he provided legal advice to the president, the attorney general, and the heads of executive departments. Professor Clark also served as a law clerk to The Honorable Robert H. Bork of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to The Honorable Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Senior Director, Liberty & National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein is senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.
Goitein is a nationally-recognized expert on presidential emergency powers, government surveillance, and government secrecy. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Magazine, and The New Republic, and she has appeared frequently on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. She has testified on several occasions before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
Before coming to the Brennan Center, Goitein served as counsel to Senator Russ Feingold, chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Goitein graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2021–22, she was a member of the inaugural class of Senior Practitioner Fellows at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Senior Lecturer; Director, The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, The University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Adam Klein is Director of the Strauss Center and Director of Strauss’ Program on Technology, Security, and Global Affairs. Adam also serves as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law. Before joining the Strauss Center, Adam served as Chairman of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the independent, bipartisan federal agency responsible for overseeing counterterrorism programs at the NSA, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies. As the Board’s Senate-confirmed Chairman, he oversaw its oversight and advice engagements with other federal agencies, while also serving as the Board’s chief executive officer.
Before entering government, Adam was the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan national-security research institution in Washington, DC. There, his research focused on government surveillance, intelligence powers, and national security law. Previously, Adam practiced law at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, LLP and served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also worked on national-security policy at the RAND Corporation, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (the non-profit successor to the 9/11 Commission), and in the U.S. Congress. He received his BA from Northwestern University and his JD from Columbia Law School.
Adam is a former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Berlin. He speaks German and French.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Campus Free Speech Symposium
Texas Student Chapter
Austin, TXThe AUMF: Is an Update Required?
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TeleforumSupreme Court Preview: Hernandez v. Mesa - Podcast
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TeleforumInternational & National Security Law: Justice Scalia’s Jurisprudence and National Security
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2016 National Lawyers Convention
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Article III Standing and the Texas Immigration Case - Podcast
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