UC Foundation Assistant Professor, U.T. Chattanooga
Justice, Supreme Court of Texas
Justice Kyle D. Hawkins was appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas by Governor Greg Abbott in October 2025.
Justice Hawkins previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as Counselor to the Solicitor General, where he represented the United States before the U.S. Supreme Court. Previously, he served as the Texas Solicitor General, the state’s chief appellate advocate charged with representing the state, its agencies, and its officers in state and federal appellate courts. Earlier in his career, he served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and for Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. As an appellate practitioner, Justice Hawkins argued five cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, nine in the Texas Supreme Court, and dozens more in other federal and state appellate courts.
In addition to his government service, Justice Hawkins served as a partner in the Dallas and Houston offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and he chaired the Texas appellate practice of Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP, a national litigation boutique. Justice Hawkins has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law.
Justice Hawkins lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and four children.
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.
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence; Director, James Madison Program, Princeton University
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has several times been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore, he holds the degrees of J.D. and M.T.S. from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., D.C.L., and D.Litt. from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-one honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Bradley Prize, the Irving Kristol Award of the American Enterprise Institute, and Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. His books include Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and In Defense of Natural Law (both published by Oxford University Press), as well as The Clash of Orthodoxies and Conscience and Its Enemies (both published by ISI Books).
Judge, United States District Court, Northern District of Texas
Matthew J. Kacsmaryk serves as United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas.
He previously served as (1) an Associate in the Dallas office of Baker Botts LLP, (2) an Assistant United States Attorney, and (3) Deputy General Counsel to FLI.
He is an Honors graduate of the University of Texas Law School.
In 2013, he earned the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Furthering the Interest of U.S. National Security.
In 2026, he was named Jurist of the Year by the Texas Review of Law & Politics, the conservative law review at the University of Texas.
John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
Andrew Koppelman is John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and Philosophy Department Affiliated Faculty at Northwestern University. He received the Walder Award for Research Excellence from Northwestern, the Hart-Dworkin award in legal philosophy from the Association of American Law Schools, and the Edward S. Corwin Prize from the American Political Science Association. His scholarship focuses on issues at the intersection of law and political philosophy. He has written more than 100 scholarly articles and eight books, most recently Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed, (St. Martin’s Press). His column appears regularly at The Hill. You can find his recent work at andrewkoppelman.com.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Lori Windham is vice president and senior counsel at Becket, where she has represented clients on cutting-edge religious freedom issues since 2005. She has represented parties before the Supreme Court, arguing Becket’s unanimous victory on behalf of foster families in Fulton v. Philadelphia, as well as working with the Becket team on its Supreme Court victories in Hosanna-Tabor, Hobby Lobby, and Little Sisters of the Poor. She won a victory for the world’s largest religious media network in EWTN v. Azar, staving off millions of dollars in government fines under unlawful the HHS mandate. She has won more than a dozen victories in federal appellate courts, including successful defense of cities and school districts sued for accommodating religion, victories for houses of worship facing discrimination in the land use process, and overturning a multimillion-dollar judgment against a major evangelical ministry. She recently won a first-in-the-nation injunction for an adoption agency threatened with shutdown for its religious beliefs.
Recognized in Washington as an expert on religious freedom issues, Lori has testified in Congressional oversight hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Outside Washington, Lori is sought-after speaker on First Amendment law, including appearances at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Central European University, and many others.
In addition to these venues, Lori also defends her clients in the media, including television appearances on CBS This Morning, Hardball, CNN Tonight, On the Record, America’s Newsroom, Opinion Journal, and many others. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and dozens of other papers. She is also a regular guest on radio, with appearances on shows ranging from Sean Hannity to NPR.
Lori has successfully represented a wide array of clients, including a Santeria priest prohibited from making animal sacrifices, synagogues prohibited from building on their own land, and religious student organizations penalized for their religious speech. One of her most challenging cases involved travel to a remote farming community to ensure that members of the local Amish community were not jailed for using their traditional building methods.
Lori is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Abilene Christian University. She has served on the Board of Visitors of Abilene Christian University and received the ACU Young Alumnus of the Year award for her work at Becket. She sits on the board of Dominion Christian School and the visiting committee of the Fund for American Studies’ Summer Law Fellowship.
Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Kannon is the head of our Supreme Court & Appellate practice. He has argued 39 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has argued more than 150 appeals in courts across the country, including every federal court of appeals and numerous state courts.
Kannon is ranked as a “Star Individual” in appellate law by Chambers USA, where a client notes, “It’s hard to think of enough superlatives to describe his talent, his judgment, his ability, his experience – he is as good as it gets.” Legal 500 U.S. recognizes Kannon in its Hall of Fame for appellate work. A client shares, “His work is the best in the business, and he is a wonderful human being in addition to being a world-class appellate litigator.”
In 2024 and 2022, Kannon was a finalist for the American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Year” award. He was named “Appellate Litigator of the Year” by Benchmark Litigation in 2021 and was a 2026 finalist for that recognition.
Before entering private practice, Kannon served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice.
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