Justice, Texas First District Court of Appeals
Susanna Dokupil was elected to the First Court of Appeals in November 2024. With over two decades of experience, Susanna’s career has spanned all three branches of government as well as private practice. She has been a Special Counsel and Assistant Solicitor General in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas as well as a Special Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and a law clerk to the Hon. Jerry Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
In her role as Special Counsel at the Texas Attorney General’s office, Susanna led teams of litigators focused on protecting Texas’s interests against agency regulations that exceeded the agency’s statutory and constitutional power. As an Assistant Solicitor General, she drafted briefs before the Fifth Circuit and United States Supreme Court, primarily focused on First Amendment issues. Susanna’s experience in private practice has combined traditional commercial litigation with advising technology companies and founders on strategic communications.
Susanna has been a prolific speaker and writer on law and public policy topics, including articles in The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, The Texas Review of Law & Politics, American Enterprise, the Washington Times, and the Houston Chronicle, among others.
Susanna is a graduate of Harvard Law School and also holds degrees from The George Washington University and Baylor University. She lives in Houston and has four children.
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Gerard V. Bradley is Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame, where he teaches Legal Ethics and Constitutional Law. At Notre Dame he directs (with John Finnis) the Natural Law Institute and co-edits The American Journal of Jurisprudence, an international forum for legal philosophy. Bradley has been a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, in Princeton, New Jersey. He served for many years as President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.
Bradley received his B.A and J.D. degrees from Cornell University, graduating Summa cum laude from the law school in 1980. After serving in the Trial Division of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office he joined the law faculty at the University of Illinois. He moved to Notre Dame in 1992. Bradley has published over one hundred scholarly articles and reviews. His most recent books are an edited collection of essays titled, Challenges to Religious Liberty in the Twenty-First Century (published by Cambridge University Press in 2012), Essays on Law, Religion, and Morality and Unquiet Americans: U.S. Catholics and the Common Good (both to be published in 2014.) He is currently working on a book about regulating obscenity in the Internet Age.
Partner, Wiley Rein, LLP
Megan L. Brown is a partner at Wiley Rein LLP. She has significant litigation, appellate and regulatory experience before state and federal courts and agencies.
Ms. Brown helps businesses respond to federal, state and local regulation and investigations raising administrative law, statutory interpretation, and constitutional issues, including the First Amendment.
Wendy Keefer is an attorney at Barnwell, Whaley, Patterson, and Helms in Charleston, SC.
Partner, Steptoe LLP
Shannen W. Coffin is a partner in Steptoe’s Washington office, where co-chairs the firm’s appellate practice and is a member of the regulatory litigation practice group. He frequently represents clients in trial and appellate courts in matters involving constitutional and administrative law challenges to state and federal government regulatory action.
Mr. Coffin previously served as a senior lawyer in the Executive Branch. He was Counsel to Vice President Cheney in the Office of the Vice President of the United States, where, among other things, he served on the White House’s judicial selection committee. Before that, Mr. Coffin served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the US Justice Department’s Civil Division, where he was responsible for overseeing and coordinating trial litigation on behalf of the federal government for constitutional challenges to federal statutes, statutory and constitutional challenges to agency programs, and defense of national security and anti-terrorism programs.
I, Plaintiff: A Chat with Joshua Davey
Susanna Dokupil
The State of Washington’s Promise Scholarship program thrust Joshua Davey into the legal spotlight as...
Reflections on Newdow
Paul J. Griffiths, Gerard V. Bradley
The Newdow case has gone away but the fuss about “under God” will not. Even...
Bar Watch Bulletin August 10, 2004
Today we are reporting live from the meeting of the ABA House of Delegates. The...
Bar Watch Bulletin August 9, 2004
International Human Rights Award At the International Human Rights Award session, Washington Post writer Bob...
Litigation over State Education Financing in Kansas
Megan L. Brown
“The history of education since the Industrial Revolution shows a continual struggle between two forces:...
“A Cloud Of Condemnation:” Expanding The Definition Of A Compensable Taking Under The Minnesota Constitution
Matthew R. Salzwedel
Friedrich Hayek, the renowned Austrian economist, opined in his epic Road to Serfdom that “[t]he...
New Limit on Punitive Damages? A Look At State Farm v. Campbell
Wendy Keefer
In April of 2003, the United States Supreme Court again undertook to define what limits...
Bar Watch Bulletin July 2004
ABA HONORS FATHER ROBERT DRINAN WITH ABA MEDAL, ASSOCIATION'S HIGHEST HONOR The American Bar Association...
An Examination of Cheney vs. U.S. District Court
Shannen W. Coffin
For a Supreme Court that takes a fairly expansive view of its own powers, the...
Bar Watch Bulletin June 2004
--ABA President Dennis Archer, in remarks to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Open Judicial...