Attorney, Texas Public Policy Foundation
Eric Heigis is an attorney with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s litigation arm, the Center for the American Future. He litigates cases involving administrative law, individual rights, and structural limits on government power. Prior to joining the Foundation, he served in various roles on Capitol Hill, including as an intern for Senator Ted Cruz, Legislative Assistant for Representative Dave Brat, Legislative Director for Representative Mark Meadows, and General Counsel for Senator Ted Budd. In his eight years working for Congress he covered nearly every policy area and drafted dozens of legislative proposals—several of which became law.
Eric received his B.A. from American University and J.D., magna cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He was selected as a Bradley Scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and served as Executive Editor of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. He is licensed to practice law in California and Virginia. He is admitted to practice before all federal district courts in Texas and the Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Ninth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits.
Eric is a pilot and certificated flight instructor, and in his free time he enjoys finding new fly-in destinations to visit with his wife. He also volunteers with the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Young Eagles program and is a Captain in the Civil Air Patrol.
Deputy Solicitor General, Office of the Attorney General of Iowa
Patrick C. Valencia serves as Iowa’s Deputy Solicitor General in the Iowa Attorney General’s Office. In this role, he helps marshal Iowa’s appellate docket, and briefs and argues cases, before state and federal appellate courts, including the Iowa and U.S. Supreme Courts.
Before moving to Iowa, Patrick worked on appeals across all levels of state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, as a senior associate in the Supreme Court and Appellate practice group at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C. Patrick has worked on cases involving a wide range of issues, including constitutional law, civil procedure, civil rights, employment law, and complex commercial litigation, across a variety of industries, including the automotive, energy, health care, and technology industries. Patrick has also served as appellate counsel in federal district courts, including on several antitrust cases.
Before Hogan Lovells, Patrick clerked for the Honorables Roger W. Titus and Paul W. Grimm of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, and then for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Patrick graduated Order of the Coif with high honors from the George Washington University Law School. Patrick completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame, where he studied political science and Irish history.
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County
George R. La Noue is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He has served as a trial expert in twenty cases involving public procurement preferences. For thirty years, he was Director of the Project on Civil Rights and Public Contracts at UMBC which recently contributed 289 public contracting disparity studies to the Library of Congress. He has been a consultant to nine governments and trial expert in thirty cases where the validity of disparity studies was at issue.
Prof. La Noue can be reached by email at glanoue@umbc.edu.
Partner, Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann LLC
Mr. Thomson concentrates his practice in white collar criminal defense, government investigations, and corporate compliance. He has tried over 50 criminal trials to verdict in federal and state courts, and has experience in appellate litigation. His practice also includes civil litigation and information security. Prior to joining Stone Pigman, Mr. Thomson had a 23 year career as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice. He served on special assignment with the National Security Agency, where he worked on matters involving information assurance and intelligence collection.
Prior to private practice, Mr. Thomson was recognized numerous times by government agencies, including a Special Commendation Award given by the U.S. Attorney General for completing the Justice Department's Leadership Excellence and Achievement Program; Special Commendation by FBI Director for outstanding performance for successful corruption prosecution after Hurricane Katrina; Special Award from the U.S. Postal Service for prosecution of corrupt employee; Special Award by New Orleans Police Department, ATF and U.S. Department of Justice for his contributions to Project Exile; and Special Awards for Outstanding Contributions to Drug Law Enforcement from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law, Moritz Colleg, The Ohio State University
Professor Shane came to Ohio State in 2003 from Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. He is an internationally recognized scholar in administrative law, with a specialty in separation of powers law, and has co-authored leading casebooks on each subject. He has served on the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law and was dean at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
In addition to his outstanding law teaching and scholarship, Professor Shane has received a National Science Foundation grant for interdisciplinary study related to cyberspace and democracy. At Ohio State, he provides strong leadership in interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching.
Professor from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center
Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School
Jack M. Balkin is Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. He is the founder and director of Yale’s Information Society Project, an interdisciplinary center that studies law and new information technologies. He also directs the Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression, and the Knight Law and Media Program at Yale. Professor Balkin is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and founded and edits the group blog Balkinization (http://balkin.blogspot.com/). He is the author of over 100 articles and the author or editor of eleven books. His scholarship ranges over many different subjects, including constitutional theory, technology and Internet law, freedom of speech, jurisprudence, cultural evolution, the theory of ideology, and musical and legal interpretation. His most recent books are Democracy and Dysfunction (University of Chicago Press, 2019)(with Sanford Levinson); Living Originalism (Harvard, Belknap Press, 2011), and Constitutional Redemption: Political Faith in an Unjust World (Harvard University Press 2011).
Founding Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and the chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, “one of the Nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above The Law 2017). The National Law Journal recently wrote that Mr. Cooper’s “brilliant legal career has so far spanned five decades and thrust Cooper into the spotlight in some of the most historic moments of the country’s modern history.” He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. He has been lead trial counsel in numerous complex, weeks-long trials in federal courts throughout the country. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the 10 best litigators in Washington D.C., Mr. Cooper’s work has been reported in numerous press accounts, and he has been called a “powerhouse attorney” (Fortune 2015), “a hard-nosed litigator” (Washington Post 2017), and “one of the country’s most in-demand civil litigators and a Washington legal institution unto himself” (The American Spectator 2014).
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978–79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of, among other things, appellate matters. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office responsible for providing legal opinions and advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues covering the full spectrum of federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.
In 1988 he returned to private practice as a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.
Mr. Cooper has represented a wide range of public and private clients in highly complex constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, healthcare, banking, intellectual property, elections, campaign finance, administrative, commercial, and government contract cases. He has led trial teams in cases that have won judgments and settlements valued in the billions of dollars and that have established ground-breaking constitutional precedents.
Much of Mr. Cooper’s practice has involved representing high-profile clients in nationally prominent matters, including: the State of Florida in a First Amendment suit brought by the Disney Company concerning its autonomous regulatory authority over its Disney World property; the Commonwealth of Virginia in a suit seeking to enjoin the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls; 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team falsely accused of rape by officials of Duke University and the City of Durham; Harper Lee in a copyright dispute with the heirs of Gregory Peck; high-ranking former government officials such as former Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr, and Ambassador John Bolton; several Governors and United States Senators; over 100 Members of Congress; and many state, territorial, and local government bodies and officials. He has also represented and advised government officials and public figures in connection with sensitive private issues that needed to be, and were, resolved discreetly without becoming matters of public record.
In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he served for three terms. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the American Law Institute (since 1993) and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (since 1996). He is also an active member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, which in 2010 named him Republican Lawyer of the Year and in 2016 honored him with its Edwin Meese III Award.
Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 26 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues, including the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to administrative agencies, the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of federal courts, statehood bills for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the impeachment of President Clinton.
Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
Michael C. Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, has been teaching law since 1992. He has authored or co-authored six books and over one hundred scholarly articles and essays for law journals and peer-reviewed science and social science journals. He also frequently writes for non-lawyers. In addition to occasional contributions to The New York Times, USA Today, CNN.com, The Los Angeles Times, and other wide-circulation publications, Professor Dorf has been writing a bi-weekly column since 2000 and publishes a popular blog, Dorf on Law. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard. After law school, Dorf served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court. He has worked with several law firms and maintains an active pro bono practice mostly consisting of writing Supreme Court briefs. Before joining the Cornell faculty, Professor Dorf taught at Rutgers-Camden Law School for three years and at Columbia Law School for thirteen years.
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On November 15, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in In re...
Iowa’s Constitution Provides a Legislative Privilege Despite Lacking a Speech or Debate Clause
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A civil rights organization, the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa (LULAC),...
Congressional Subpoena Power and the Bannon Trial
Stanford Student Chapter
Stanford, CAPublic Contracting Litigation After Croson: Data, Disparities, & Discrimination
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Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
Executive Privilege
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Last month, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees issued five congressional subpoenas directing the production...