Senior Counsel, First Liberty Institute
Stephanie N. Taub serves as Senior Counsel with First Liberty Institute, focusing on litigation, appellate advocacy, and legal education.
While at First Liberty, her article on the rights of faith-based organizations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been published in the Texas Review of Law and Politics. She has also authored pieces published in National Review, the Daily Signal, the Washington Times, the Des Moines Register, and the New York Daily News. In 2017, Taub was named one of 15 recipients of the James Wilson Fellowship in natural law.
Before joining First Liberty, Taub worked as a law clerk to the Honorable Reed O’Connor in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas.
Taub is a Harvard Law School graduate in the class of 2014 and a Blackstone Fellow in the class of 2012. During law school, she served as Co-President of the HLS Christian Fellowship and Managing Technical Editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Taub spent her law school summers defending religious liberty in public interest law firms and clerking in the Texas Office of Solicitor General.
For her undergraduate studies at the University of Southern California, Taub graduated summa cum laude, majoring in Business Administration with a minor in Philosophy.
Of Counsel, Spencer Fane LLP
Anthony J. “A.J.” Ferate has built a multi-faceted background in the areas of the law, policy, energy, campaigns and elections, and defense over the last 20 years.
Through recent representation as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (“OIPA”), A.J. held responsibilities over government efforts outside of the legislative branch on matters as broad as water, electric generation, commodity marketing, land matters, and seismicity. A.J. also maintained responsibility for legal matters at OIPA, including amicus briefing in appellate matters. A.J.’s extensive experience also includes management of public policy strategy for a Fortune 500 company.
For the past eleven years, A.J. has volunteered as General Counsel and spokesman for the Oklahoma Republican Party and has represented a number of elected officials, including U.S. Senator James Lankford, former statewide elected officials, a number of state legislators, and members of Congress.
Additionally, A.J. has assisted elected officials serve their constituents in all branches of government. Early in his career, A.J. held legislative aide duties in the Nebraska Legislature, then went on to work for former Nebraska Treasurer David Heineman. A.J. gained experience in the judiciary while serving Judge Gary L. Lumpkin at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal appellate court in Oklahoma. Following this service, A.J. began work with Denise A. Bode of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, assisting her in her duties regulating 70 percent of Oklahoma’s economy, including oil and gas and electric utilities.
A.J. honorably served ten years as an intelligence analyst for the United States Naval Reserve, including time at the Office of Naval Intelligence in the greater Washington DC area.
Opinion pieces authored or ghostwritten by A.J. have been published in the Seattle Times, Politico, Law360, The Oklahoman, Tulsa World and The Journal Record. A.J. has also been interviewed by national and international newspapers, and has also appeared on national radio programs including NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show and On Point with Tom Ashbrook.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig
Jennifer Weddle is the Co-Chair of Greenberg Traurig's American Indian Law Practice and has wide-ranging experience in complex regulatory and jurisdictional issues, with a focus in Indian law, handling a variety of matters for tribal and non-tribal clients. She has a dynamic, inter-disciplinary practice that centers on providing strategies for resolving complex jurisdictional problems. Much of her practice focuses in the areas of tribal economic development and natural resources development. Jennifer also has U.S. Supreme Court experience, including serving as one of the attorneys for the respondent in Nevada v. Hicks (2001) and representing the petitioners in Ute Mountain Ute Tribe v. Padilla (2012) and Grand Canyon Skywalk Development, LLC v. Grand Canyon Resort Corporation (2013) and cert stage amici in Saginaw-Chippewa Tribe v. NLRB (2016) and United States v. Cooley (2020) and amici on the merits in Lewis v. Clarke (2017), U.S. v. Washington (2018), Carpenter v. Murphy (2018), McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), and United States v. Cooley (2021).
Jennifer's work also includes negotiations for mineral leasing employment matters and representation before federal agencies. She has also been involved in civil litigation, working on numerous complex federal, state and tribal litigation matters, including class action tort litigation and large commercial disputes. Her transactional experience includes oil and gas renewables projects throughout the west, as well as Endangered Species Act work. Jennifer frequently assists tribes, banks and non-bank entities with financing and regulatory matters with Indian law components. Jennifer has wide-ranging project siting experience, including the application of NEPA, NHPA, and other environmental laws on tribal and public lands, including with respect to large linear multi-state energy and infrastructure projects. Jennifer has deep transactional, regulatory and litigation experience involving very complex matters with both legal and policy components.
Jennifer is past President of the National Native American Bar Association and past two-term Chair of the Federal Bar Association Indian Law Section. She currently serves as the Tenth Circuit Representative on the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, a role she has held since 2018, spanning the evaluations for more than two dozen federal judicial nominees at every level of the federal courts. She is a ’00 graduate of Harvard Law School and a ’97 graduate of the University of Michigan (Classical Languages and Literature).
Sho Sato Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, University of California, Berkeley
Dan Farber is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Co-Director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. Professor Farber serves on the editorial board of Foundation Press. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Life Member of the American Law Institute. He is the editor of Issues in Legal Scholarship.
Professor Farber is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees. He graduated, summa cum laude, from the College of Law, where he was the class valedictorian and served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. After graduation from law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Philip W. Tone of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then for Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Farber practiced law with Sidley & Austin, where he primarily worked on energy issues, before joining the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in 1978. He was a member of the University of Minnesota Law School faculty from1981 to 2002, where he was the McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law. He also has been a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School.
Among Professor Farber’s eighteen books are RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON PUBLIC CHOICE AND PUBLIC LAW (Elgar 2010) (with A. O’Connell); JUDGMENT CALLS: POLITICS AND PRINCIPLE IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (Oxford University Press 2008) (with S. Sherry); RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE: THE “SILENT” NINTH AMENDMENT AND THE RIGHTS AMERICANS DON’T KNOW THEY HAVE (Basic Books 2007); and LINCOLN’S CONSTITUTION (University of Chicago Press 2003).
Special Counsel, Hunton Andrews Kurth
After serving on the United State Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2005, Judge Griffith stepped down from the bench in 2020. Currently he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, and Special Counsel in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. Most recently, he was a member of President Biden's Commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of Civic Charity and the Constitution , and the co-author, along with former judges Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell, of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election. https://lostnotstolen.org/ . Before being appointed to the D. C. Circuit, Judge Griffith was the General Counsel at BYU; Senate Legal Counsel, the non-partisan chief legal officer of the U. S. Senate; and a partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Long active in rule-of-law programs in former communist nations, Judge Griffith is a member of the international advisory board of the CEELI Institute in Prague. He is a graduate of BYU and the University of Virginia School of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
President, JCN
Carrie Campbell Severino is the president of the JCN, and co-author with Mollie Hemingway of the bestselling book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court. As a go-to expert on the confirmation process, Mrs. Severino has been extensively quoted in the media. She regularly appears on television, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and ABC’s This Week.
Severino writes and speaks on a wide range of judicial issues, including the constitutional limits on government, the federal nomination process, and state judicial selection. She has testified before Congress on constitutional questions and briefed Senators on judicial nominations, and regularly files briefs in high-profile Supreme Court cases. She was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.), Duke University (B.A., Biology), and Michigan State University (M.A., Linguistics).
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford; Presidential Scholar and a Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at The King’s College; and Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law.
He is a constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel—which provides scholarly and historical analyses of the Second Amendment. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author.
Andrew Pardue is an associate at Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky Josefiak PLLC specializing in election and campaign finance law.
Prior to joining the firm, Andrew served as a law clerk for the D.C. Criminal Code Reform Commission and the Office of the Virginia Attorney General’s Civil Litigation Division, Consumer Protection Section. He also interned in the chambers of Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Andrew graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Government and a secondary concentration in Economics. He earned his J.D. from William & Mary Law School. While in law school, he served as Senior Notes Editor on the William & Mary Law Review and authored a published student note on congressional investigations of the executive branch. He also served as a graduate research fellow with the Center for the Study of Law and Markets. Andrew is a member of the Virginia Bar, the Federalist Society, and the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Senior Associate, Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC
Drew Watkins is a senior associate with Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC, providing counsel in the areas of campaign finance and election law, lobbying and ethics compliance, and tax-exempt organizations.
Prior to joining the firm, Drew served as a law clerk to the Honorable Joseph R. Goeke, Senior Judge of the United States Tax Court in Washington, D.C., and worked in the Office of General Counsel for the Governor of Kentucky, Matthew G. Bevin. While in law school, Drew served as a law clerk for the Kentucky Executive Branch Ethics Commission and interned for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in his office in Washington, D.C.
Drew graduated from the University of Louisville with a B.S. in Justice Administration. He earned his Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from the University of Kentucky College of Law and was a member of the Order of the Coif. During law school, he served as a senior staff editor on the Kentucky Law Journal and authored a published student note on the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. He is a member of the Kentucky, D.C. and Virginia bars and the Federalist Society.
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford; Presidential Scholar and a Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at The King’s College; and Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law.
He is a constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel—which provides scholarly and historical analyses of the Second Amendment. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author.
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford; Presidential Scholar and a Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at The King’s College; and Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law.
He is a constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel—which provides scholarly and historical analyses of the Second Amendment. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
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