Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher
Douglas R. Cox is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Vice-Chair of the firm's Crisis Management Practice Group. He practices in the areas of constitutional and general commercial litigation, appellate law, and governmental matters.
Mr. Cox has represented numerous clients in litigation before federal and state trial and appellate courts. He played a principal role in the firm's successful representation of the prevailing candidate before the Supreme Court of the United States in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board and Bush v. Gore, stemming from the 2000 presidential election, and in other cases before the Supreme Court involving equal protection, voting rights and election law, the scope of the jury trial right under the Seventh Amendment, and other constitutional and statutory issues.
Mr. Cox successfully represented the National Association of Securities Dealers ("NASD") in a series of trial and appellate matters, including DL Capital Group, LLC v. Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc., 409 F.3d 93 (2d Cir. 2005) and Sparta Surgical Corp. v. NASD, 159 F.3d 1209 (9th Cir. 1998).
Mr. Cox frequently represents accounting firms in a variety of matters, including matters involving the SEC and PCAOB. He also has substantial experience representing clients before congressional investigating committees.
Mr. Cox previously served for five years during the Reagan and Bush Administrations in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, becoming Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General during the Bush Administration. In that Office, he provided legal advice to Executive Branch departments; resolved legal disputes on behalf of the Attorney General between Executive Branch departments; prepared formal opinions of the Attorney General; drafted and issued opinions on legal issues of importance to the Executive Branch; and advised Congress as to the constitutionality of pending legislation.
From 1981 through 1987, Mr. Cox practiced in New York City with a national firm, representing major corporations in state and federal courts. His practice focused on intellectual property, securities, and international tax litigation.
Mr. Cox received his law degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1980, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy from 1979-1980. He received his undergraduate degree in history, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1977. He attended Oxford University on a Knox Scholarship in 1980-1981.
In 2005, Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cox to serve as a member of the Judicial Conference Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure. In 2008 he was reappointed by Chief Justice Roberts.
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Miguel A. Estrada is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Mr. Estrada has represented clients before federal and state courts throughout the country in a broad range of matters. He has argued 24 cases before the United States Supreme Court, and briefed many others. He has also argued dozens of appeals in the lower federal courts.
Best Lawyers® recognized Mr. Estrada as a 2020 Lawyer of the Year in Intellectual Property Litigation and as a Lawyer of the Year in Appellate Practice. He has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a 2020 U.S. Appellate Litigation “Star”. In 2014, The American Lawyer named Mr. Estrada a “Litigator of the Year,” praising his “brains and tenacity” and noting he is the lawyer to call for “a tough, potentially unwinnable case.” From 2014-2021, Chambers & Partners has named him as one of a handful of attorneys that it ranked in the top tier among the nation’s leading appellate lawyers. Chambers & Partners noted that “clients are impressed by his intellect and ability, with one saying, ‘His papers are just blindingly clear in what they say and devastating in how they marshal the arguments.’” The Atlantic described his oral argument in a 2014 high-profile separation-of-powers case as “one of the most dazzling arguments the marble chamber has heard in many years.”
Mr. Estrada was selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® in the area of Appellate Law, in addition to previous recognition by the publication in the specialties of Bet-the-Company Litigation, Commercial Litigation and Criminal Defense: White Collar, Intellectual Property Litigation, and Regulatory Enforcement Litigation in the areas of SEC, Telecom, and Energy. In 2017, he was elected as a member of the American Law Institute. In 2021, Mr. Estrada was named among the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. In 2004, Legal Times named him one of the top 12 appellate litigators in the D.C. area, noting that “people who follow appellate practice in Washington have known for several years that Estrada . . . is one of the best around.” Also in 2004, Washingtonian Magazine named him one of the top constitutional law lawyers “who could become one of the legends of the Supreme Court bar.”
Mr. Estrada joined Gibson Dunn in 1997, after serving for five years as Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States. He previously served as Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York. In those capacities, Mr. Estrada represented the government in numerous jury trials and in many appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Estrada practiced corporate law in New York with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Mr. Estrada is a Trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society. He was formerly a member of the Board of Visitors of Harvard Law School.
Mr. Estrada served as a law clerk to the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy in the U.S. Supreme Court from 1988 to 1989 and to the Honorable Amalya L. Kearse in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1986 to 1987. He received a J.D. degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. Mr. Estrada graduated with an A.B. degree magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1983 from Columbia College, New York. He is fluent in Spanish and proficient in French.
Representative Supreme Court matters include:
In 2011, the Supreme Court appointed Mr. Estrada to brief and argue two criminal cases –Dorsey v. United States and Hill v. United States – in which the Solicitor General declined to defend the judgments of the court of appeals. Mr. Estrada was appointed to argue the position that the Solicitor General had declined to defend.
Mr. Estrada was also part of the team that successfully presented then Governor Bush’s position to the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000). Other cases that Mr. Estrada handled in the Supreme Court include Granholm v. Heald (2005) (dormant Commerce Clause and Twenty-First Amendment), Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens (2000) (False Claims Act, Article III standing and Eleventh Amendment immunity), Old Chief v. United States (1997) (rules of evidence), United States v. Mezzanatto (1995) (evidence and plea bargaining), United States v. Robertson (1995) (constitutional limits on Congress’s Commerce Clause powers), Citizens Bank of Maryland v. Strumpf (1995) (bankruptcy law), and NOW, Inc. v. Scheidler (1994) (RICO).
Recent Court of Appeals matters include:
In addition, Mr. Estrada is lead appellate counsel to Vivendi S.A. in two securities-fraud appeals from jury verdicts that are currently pending in the Second Circuit, and to the National Association of Broadcasters in a challenge to certain procedures promulgated by the FCC in connection with the upcoming Spectrum Auction. Mr. Estrada also recently presented argument before the D.C. Circuit on behalf of the tobacco industry in a first amendment challenge to certain compelled disclosures that were imposed as part of the government’s long-running civil RICO case against the industry.
Other matters:
University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law, Colorado Law
Robert Nagel joined the faculty of CU Law School in 1975, leaving a position as a deputy attorney general in Pennsylvania. Since that time, he has focused on constitutional law and theory. For an audience of legal scholars, Professor Nagel has written prolifically, including four books and over 50 law review articles. However, he has also contributed to the popular debate on constitutional issues, including free speech, hate codes, and federalism, by addressing his ideas to the general citizenry in articles and opinion pieces in publications such as The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, First Things, and Washington Monthly. Much of his work has focused on the relationship between the judiciary (and its interpretation of the Constitution) and the wider context of American political culture. His two earlier books on this topic, Constitutional Cultures: The Mentality and Consequences of Judicial Review and Judicial Power and American Character: Censoring Ourselves in an Anxious Age, were widely read and reviewed. He has recently completed The Implosion of American Federalism, a book on the cultural and constitutional ramifications of political centralization. Professor Nagel has testified before several congressional committees. He was formerly the director of the Law School's Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Vice-chair, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Adjunct Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Abigail Thernstrom is the vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York from 1993 to 2009, and a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education for more than a decade until her third term ended in November 2006. She also serves on the board of advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She received her Ph.D. in 1975 from the Department of Government, Harvard University.
In 2007 she and her husband, Stephan Thernstrom, along with James Q. Wilson, Martin Feldstein, and John Bolton, were the recipients of a Bradley Foundation prizes for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement.
Thernstrom and her husband, Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, are the co-authors of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (Simon & Schuster, October 2003), which has been awarded the 2007 Fordham Foundation prize for “for distinguished scholarship,” and was named by both the Los Angeles Times and the American School Board Journal as one of the best books of 2003.
They also collaborated on America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (Simon & Schuster), which the New York Times Book Review, in its annual end-of-the-year issue, named as one of the notable books of 1997.
They are the editors of a Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity. Their lengthy review of William G. Bowen and Derek Bok's much-noticed work, The Shape of the River, appeared in the June 1999 issue of the UCLA Law Review.
Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Harvard University Press) won four awards, including the American Bar Association's Certificate of Merit, and the Anisfield-Wolf prize for the best book on race and ethnicity. It was named the best policy studies book of that year by the Policy Studies Organization (an affiliate of the American Political Science Association), and won the Benchmark Book Award from the Center for Judicial Studies. Along with her husband, she also won the 2004 Peter Shaw Memorial Award given by National Association of Scholars.
She is currently completing a book entitled Voting Rights and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections, and is working, as well, with her husband on another book with the tentative title of Don’t Call it Segregation: The Myth of Contemporary Apartheid. She (and two co-authors) submitted an amicus brief in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, challenging the constitutionality of Seattle's racial balancing plan.
Her frequent media appearances have included Fox News Sunday, Good Morning America, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos. For some years, she was a stringer for The Economist, and continues to write for a variety of journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the (London) Times Literary Supplement.
She serves on several boards, and from 1992 to 1997 was a member of the Aspen Institute's Domestic Strategy Group.
Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law
Charles A. Shanor was president of the student government at Rice University and a Rhodes Scholar. After earning both his BA and MA (in jurisprudence) from Oxford University, he received his JD from the University of Virginia.
Before joining the Emory faculty in 1975, he served as a law clerk to Judge Elbert P. Tuttle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and practiced with the Atlanta law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan. After three years as General Counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, D.C., he returned to Emory in 1990, where he teaches and writes about the areas of employment discrimination, constitutional law and counterterrorism law.
Professor Shanor is a Fellow of the American College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and was Secretary of the American Bar Association Labor and Employment Section in 2008.
Professor Shanor served in a part-time of counsel position in the Washington, D.C. and Atlanta offices of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Walker from 1990-1997. He continues to do occasional consulting, expert witness and appellate work on employment discrimination and constitutional law matters.
Associate, Williams and Connolly
James McDonald is an Associate at Williams and Connolly LLP.
Mr. McDonald also serves as a visiting professor at the University of Tulsa School of Law, where he has taught classes in constitutional law, foreign relations law, the federal court system, and the Supreme Court.
During the 2009 Supreme Court term, Mr. McDonald served as a law clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to that, Mr. McDonald served as Deputy Associate Counsel, Office of the White House Counsel, and in 2007-2008, he served as a law clerk for Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Mr. McDonald earned his A.B., Cum Laude, in economics, from Harvard University in 2004 and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2007. While at the University of Virginia School of Law, he was the Articles Development Editor for the Virginia Law Review.
Member, Dykema Gossett PLLC
Christopher D. Kratovil is a member of Dykema’s Litigation practice in the firm’s Dallas office. Prior to joining Dykema, Mr. Kratovil was a partner at K&L Gates. Mr. Kratovil is a former law clerk to the Honorable Edith H. Jones, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Mr. Kratovil focuses his practice on appellate matters, representing clients in complex commercial disputes before tribunals ranging from small town Texas trial courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, with a particular concentration on matters in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and in the Texas courts of appeals. He has considerable experience in federal and state mandamus practice, including serving as the lead draftsman of the winning briefs in the landmark Fifth Circuit case that authorized the use of mandamus to compel convenience-based venue transfers, In re Volkswagen II, 545 F.3d 304 (5th Cir. 2008)(en banc).
In addition to his extensive appellate work, Mr. Kratovil regularly handles case dispositive briefing and argument, jury charges, complex motions, research intensive legal issues and error preservation in the trial courts. He also regularly assists in the white collar defense of clients accused of financial, securities and tax crimes. Mr. Kratovil is the author of several high-profile amicus curiae briefs, including on behalf United States Senator John Cornyn and, separately, for the Texas state representative who sponsored the so-called “Pole Tax” user fee on patrons of adult entertainment.
A frequent author and lecturer, Mr. Kratovil earned a B.A. magna cum laude from University of Notre Dame and a J.D. with honors from University of Texas at Austin School of Law, where he was an editor of the Texas Law Review. He has been recognized repeatedly as a “Rising Star” by Texas Monthly and was recently named one of the “Best Lawyers in Dallas” by D Magazine.
Legal Director & General Counsel, Criminal Justice Legal Foundation
Kent S. Scheidegger has been the Legal Director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation since December 1986. He also served as Chairman of the Criminal Law Practice Group of the Federalist Society 2003 to 2005. His articles on criminal and constitutional law have been published in law reviews, national legal publications, and congressional reports. Legal arguments authored by Mr. Scheidegger have been cited and incorporated in several precedent-setting United States Supreme Court decisions.
After receiving a degree in physics with honors from New Mexico State University in 1976, Mr. Scheidegger served for six years in the United States Air Force as a Nuclear Research Officer. He took his law degree with distinction from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1982 and practiced civil law in Northern California. He was general counsel of California Cooler, Inc. from 1984 until 1986, when he joined the Foundation.
Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law
Professor O'Connor's research focuses on intellectual property and business law with regard to start-ups and commercializing technology and arts innovation. His teaching and law practice specialize in transactions and the strategic role of the general counsel. Professor O'Connor received his law degree from Stanford Law School, a master's degree in philosophy from Arizona State University, and a bachelor's degree in history from University of Massachusetts. He has published numerous articles and book chapters and lectures frequently around the world. Professor O'Connor's award-winning research has been funded by the National Academies of Science, International Intellectual Property Institute, Kauffman Foundation, and the Center for Protection of Intellectual Property (George Mason University), in many cases through competitive fellowships. He is currently working on Method+ology and the Means of Innovation to be published by Oxford University Press.
Since joining the UW Law faculty in 2003, he has served in a number of Law School and university-wide leadership positions, including designing and launching the ground-breaking Entrepreneurial Law Clinic. He has also been a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, George Washington University, Katholieke Universitat (Leuven BELGIUM), and Hanken School of Economics (Helsinki FINLAND).
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.
Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law, Brigham Young University, J. Reuben Clark Law School
2013 Annual Supreme Court Round Up
Washington, DC Lawyers Chapter
Washington, DCShelby County v. Holder - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Abigail Thernstrom
On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Shelby County v. Holder....
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Charles Shanor
On June 24, 2013, the Supreme Court announced its decision in University of Texas Southwestern...
Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann- Post-Decision SCOTUScast
James M. McDonald
On June 13, 2013, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Tarrant Regional Water District...
American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Chris Kratovil
On June 20, 2013the Supreme Court announced its decision in American Express Co. v. Italian...
Salinas v. Texas - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Kent Scheidegger
On June 17, 2013, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Salinas v. Texas. This case...
Bowman v. Monsanto - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Sean M. O'Connor
On May 13, 2013, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Bowman v. Monsanto. The...
Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Richard A. Epstein
On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Koontz v. St. John’s...
Supreme Court Review: October Term 2012
Denver, Colorado“Conscience Exemptions”
Lynn Wardle
Note from the Editor: This paper discusses the meaning, history, and present application of conscience...