Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Jim Harper is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on privacy issues, and select legal and constitutional law issues.
A lawyer by training, Mr. Harper has served as counsel for the Subcommittee on Commercial, and Administrative Law of the US House Committee on the Judiciary and as counsel for the Senate Committee on Government Affairs. More recently, he worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, where he wrote on the intersection of business, technology, and public policy, including privacy, surveillance, data security, telecommunications, and cryptocurrencies. He also served as global policy counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation. Mr. Harper was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Early in his post-Hill career, he represented companies such as PayPal and Verisign before Congress.
Mr. Harper is the co-editor of “Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It” (Cato Institute, 2010) and the author of “Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood” (Cato Institute, 2006). He has written several amicus briefs in Fourth Amendment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has published scholarly articles in a variety of law journals. In the popular press, Mr. Harper has been published in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.
Mr. Harper has a law degree from the U.C. Hastings College of the Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, and a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Orin S. Kerr is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, where he teaches and writes in the areas of criminal procedure and computer crime law. Kerr earned mechanical engineering degrees from Princeton University and Stanford University before graduating with a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the United States Supreme Court and Judge Leonard I. Garth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Legal Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Brent Skorup is a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
Before joining Cato, he was a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University. His research areas include free speech, technology law, Fourth Amendment protections, regulation, and property law. Skorup has published pieces in economics and law journals and in popular media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Reuters, and Wired. He’s appeared as a TV and radio interview guest for news outlets like C‑SPAN, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, and CNBC Asia.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a dissenting opinion at the Illinois Supreme Court, and the ALI's Restatement of the Law of Property have cited his legal research and he has testified as a technology and legal expert in legislative hearings in several states. Skorup has been appointed to several federal and state advisory bodies and he is currently a member of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility Advisory Committee.
Skorup has a BA in economics from Wheaton College and a law degree from the George Mason University School of Law, where he was articles editor for the Civil Rights Law Journal. He was a legal clerk at the FCC’s wireless bureau and Office of General Counsel and at the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His law practice covers cybersecurity, data protection, homeland security, and travel and foreign investment regulation; he has been awarded one patent.
Mr. Baker has been General Counsel of the National Security Agency and General Counsel of the commission that investigated WMD intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. He is the author of Skating on Stilts, a book on terrorism, cybersecurity, and other technology issues; he also hosts the weekly Cyberlaw Podcast.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Judge Paul Matey was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 2019 by President Trump.
Before his judicial service, Judge Matey was a partner at Lowenstein Sandler in New Jersey where he practiced complex commercial litigation and criminal defense. Earlier, Judge Matey was the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for University Hospital Newark, an academic medical center and teaching hospital.
He also served as the Deputy Chief Counsel to Governor Chris Christie, and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of New Jersey, where he was awarded the Justice Department’s Director’s Award for Superior Performance. He also practiced at the Washington D.C. firm of Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, and served as a law clerk to judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Scranton, a Jesuit University, in 1993, and his juris doctorate, summa cum laude, from Seton Hall University School of Law in 2001, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Seton Hall Law Review.
In 2019, Judge Matey was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and, since 2020, has lectured on administrative law and the American legal history at Seton Hall.
Partner, Schaerr Jaffe LLP
Gene Schaerr specializes in handling—and usually winning—civil appeals, writ proceedings and similar matters, both in appellate courts and in the law-focused proceedings at the trial-court or agency level that often determine success or failure on appeal. He has argued and won dozens of cases in a variety of forums—including the U.S. Supreme Court (where he has argued six cases), every federal circuit, and numerous federal district courts and state appellate courts. His win rate in the dozens of federal appeals he has argued in the past six years is over 75 percent.
He was a coordinator of Sidley Austin's appellate practice from 1993 until 2005, and from 2005 until 2014 was the chair of the nationwide appellate practice at Winston & Strawn—a practice he led to numerous recognitions in such publications as the Appellate Hot List. His personal practice successes have won him repeated recognition in such publications as Best Lawyers in Washington, D.C., Legal 500, D.C. Superlawyers, and Best Lawyers in America. In January 2014, Mr. Schaerr formed his own boutique litigation firm so that he could serve his clients without the conflicts and inefficiencies inherent in big-firm law practice.
Substantively, Mr. Schaerr's experience includes not only virtually every area of federal law, defamation, higher education law, immigration, insurance coverage, labor and employment, patent and trademark, privacy, product liability and warranty, statutory interpretation and tax.He has represented clients in virtually every sector, including automotive, communications, energy, financial services, health care, higher education, insurance, maritime, pharmaceuticals, technology and state and local government. He also teaches courses in Supreme Court litigation, religious freedom litigation and advanced litigation skills as an adjunct professor of law at the Brigham Young University law school.
Mr. Schaerr began law practice in 1987 following clerkships on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia) and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (for then- Judge Kenneth Starr). He graduated in 1985 from the Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal on Regulation and Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1991 to 1993, he served in the White House as Associate Counsel to the President, where he had responsibility for a wide range of constitutional and administrative-law issues, including those involving economic regulation, higher education, separation of powers, federalism and religious freedom. He serves as Chairman of the Constitutional Sources Project, a digital resource providing free public access to historical materials relevant to the U.S. Constitution.
Board Member, U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Beth A. Williams is a Board Member of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an agency whose mission is to ensure that the federal government's efforts to prevent terrorism are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.
Prior to her Board service, Ms. Williams was the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice from August 2017 to December 2020. In that role, she served as the primary policy advisor to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, and as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department. Ms. Williams also led the judicial nomination process for the Department, assisting in the selection and confirmation of more than 230 Article III judges to the bench.
Prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Williams was a litigation and appellate partner at a national law firm, where her practice focused on complex commercial, securities, appellate, and First Amendment litigation. From 2005-2006, Ms. Williams served as Special Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she assisted with the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Ms. Williams clerked for the Hon. Richard C. Wesley on the United State Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude, with a degree in History and Literature, and she earned her law degree from Harvard Law School, where she served as Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, The Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also the Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War; Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare; and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
He is a co-author of volumes 1 and 2 of R. Rossum, G. Tarr, V. Munoz & J. Yoo American Constitution Law (Routledge, 2026), and a co-editor of the eight-volume series on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, We Hold These Truths, with Yuval Levin and Adam White of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, Seoul National University, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Keio University, Trento University, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of Founding Forward, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Ulysses Grant Institute, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Originalism Lectureship.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Litigation Fellow, Institute for Justice
Trace Mitchell is a Litigation Fellow at the Institute for Justice.
Prior to joining IJ, Trace clerked for the Honorable Judge Biran of the Court of Appeals of Maryland. He previously served as Policy Counsel for NetChoice, a technology-focused trade association dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and free expression on the internet, where he focused on issues surrounding content moderation, antitrust policy, and entrepreneurialism and innovation more generally. Before that, Trace worked as a Research Associate with the Mercatus Center and as a Program Associate with the Liberty & Law Center at George Mason University. Trace was the 2019 winner of Think Freely Media’s “Great Communicators Tournament” and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Law360, InsideSources, The Hill, National Review, as well as various other publications nationwide.
Trace received his undergraduate degree from Florida Gulf Coast University and his law degree from the George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School.
Trace is a member of the D.C. bar.
Legal Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Brent Skorup is a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
Before joining Cato, he was a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University. His research areas include free speech, technology law, Fourth Amendment protections, regulation, and property law. Skorup has published pieces in economics and law journals and in popular media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Reuters, and Wired. He’s appeared as a TV and radio interview guest for news outlets like C‑SPAN, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, and CNBC Asia.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a dissenting opinion at the Illinois Supreme Court, and the ALI's Restatement of the Law of Property have cited his legal research and he has testified as a technology and legal expert in legislative hearings in several states. Skorup has been appointed to several federal and state advisory bodies and he is currently a member of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility Advisory Committee.
Skorup has a BA in economics from Wheaton College and a law degree from the George Mason University School of Law, where he was articles editor for the Civil Rights Law Journal. He was a legal clerk at the FCC’s wireless bureau and Office of General Counsel and at the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Senior Policy Analyst, Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, ACLU
Jay Stanley (@JayCStanley) is senior policy analyst with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where he researches, writes and speaks about technology-related privacy and civil liberties issues and their future. He is the editor of the ACLU’s Free Future blog and has authored and co-authored a variety of influential ACLU reports on privacy and technology topics. Before joining the ACLU, he was an analyst at the technology research firm Forrester, served as American politics editor of Facts on File’s World News Digest, and as national newswire editor at Medialink. He is a graduate of Williams College and holds an M.A. in American History from the University of Virginia.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Robert Frommer serves as a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. He joined the Institute in August 2008 and is currently litigating on behalf of SpeechNow.org, a group challenging the federal campaign finance laws regarding free speech.
Before joining IJ, Robert was an attorney with the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where he litigated both complex litigation and public-interest matters. He is a former law clerk to Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Robert received his law degree magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School in 2004, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as both a book review editor for the Michigan Law Review and president of the Federalist Society student chapter. Before going to law school, Robert earned a master's degree in economics from George Mason University.
Adam Griffin is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law. During law school, he served as a research assistant to Professor Stephen E. Sachs and UNC Law Dean Martin Brinkley. After law school, Adam spent two years litigating for liberty at the Institute for Justice as an inaugural Law and Liberty Fellow. He then served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Richard E. Myers in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and previously worked at Pacific Legal Foundation and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
Partner, Holtzman Vogel
Kellen is an experienced trial and appellate lawyer who litigates criminal, civil, and regulatory cases in a variety of areas, including cybersecurity & privacy, constitutional law, complex fraud, and national security. In criminal matters, he has obtained declinations, dismissals, misdemeanor pleas, and presidential pardons for prominent individuals and companies facing federal investigations. In civil matters, he has successfully defended Fortune 500 companies in multidistrict litigation and brought affirmative litigation to challenge government overreach. Kellen has a perfect record in both jury trials and appellate arguments: he has twice obtained reversals of jury verdicts on appeal and he won every trial and appeal during his six years as a federal prosecutor.
As an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Kellen obtained a hacking indictment against Julian Assange and represented the United States at Assange’s extradition hearings. He also received the Attorney General’s Award for leading the trial and arguing the appeal in a case charging a malware-testing company with aiding and abetting the 2013 cyberattack on Target Stores. The case is now the lead precedent governing when tech companies can be held liable for crimes committed by their users. Kellen won convictions in dozens of cases involving hacking, wiretapping, complex fraud, conspiracy/RICO, public corruption, national security, and intellectual property.
Kellen was later promoted to Deputy Assistant Attorney General of DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD), where he ran NSD’s Appellate Unit, which represents the DOJ in civil and criminal appeals affecting national security and advises on sensitive prosecutions involving export controls/sanctions, trade secrets, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). In that role, Kellen oversaw the defense of President Trump’s TikTok and WeChat bans and successfully sought certiorari in civil cases interpreting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the State Secrets doctrine.
Partner and Co-Chair, Global Risk & Crisis Management Practice, Morrison & Foerster LLP
Co-chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Global Risk and Crisis Management group, Alex routinely advises Fortune 500 and high-growth clients on all aspects of breach preparedness and response, including counseling executives on cybersecurity governance and risk management, and responding to cyber incidents ranging from ransomware attacks to nation-state sponsored economic espionage. His incident response experience includes managing and advising on: Internal and forensic investigations; Remediation; Regulatory and contractual notification obligations; Coordination with law enforcement; Inquiries from data protection authorities, state attorneys general, and other regulators; Internal and external communications; and Interactions with insurers and auditors.
He also advises clients on responding to law enforcement requests, the lawfulness of defensive network activities and threat intelligence research, and legal issues arising under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the Wiretap Act, and Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA).
Drawing on his experience at the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Alex also advises global entities on legal obligations related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA); foreign investment transactions before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS); and laws related to material support to terrorism, sanctions, and export controls.
Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster, Alex held multiple senior positions at the DOJ, including Counselor to the Attorney General, Deputy Chief of Staff and Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and Special Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. Throughout his time at DOJ, he advised the Department leadership on national security, intelligence and cyber matters, including policy and legal issues arising in the National Security Council process, CFIUS matters, complex issues involving FARA, and engagements with non-U.S. officials. He also represented the Department on the Export Control Reform Initiative that sought to strengthen national security and the competitiveness of key U.S. manufacturing and technology sectors, and before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on issues involving novel questions at the intersection of law and technology.
Most recently, as a prosecutor in the National Security and Cybercrime Units of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alex brought the Department’s charges against Russian efforts to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections. During his time at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he also investigated, and/or prosecuted, federal crimes ranging from espionage, trade secret theft, and national security cyber matters, to fraud, firearm, and drug offenses.
Alex received the Assistant Attorney General Award for Excellence in 2014 and 2018, and the Assistant Attorney General Award for Distinguished Service in 2014.
Prior to his DOJ service, Alex clerked for Judge Diana Gribbon Motz on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and in the Office of the White House Counsel.
During his tenure at Yale Law School, Alex served as Editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of International Law and participated in the Civil Liberties & National Security Clinic.
He is the recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and a Fellow in the Truman National Security Project.
Senior Director, Global Investigations, Cognizant
Brian Lichter directs and oversees sensitive internal investigations related corruption, bribery, fraud, and other serious misconduct; manages outside counsel where appropriate; and responds to government requests and inquiries. He serves as Cognizant's primary cybersecurity attorney, including managing incident response to cyber incidents and providing legal advice regarding cybersecurity issues and crisis management.
Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP
John Bellinger heads the firm's Global Law and Public Policy practice. He joined the firm in 2009, after holding several senior Presidential appointments in the US government, including as the Senate-confirmed Legal Adviser to the Department of State and Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House in the George W. Bush Administration.
Mr. Bellinger represents individuals, corporations, and sovereign governments in litigation in US courts and before international institutions. He has extensive experience in US foreign relations litigation involving the Alien Tort Statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, the Anti-Terrorism Act, and the diplomatic and official immunities of foreign governments and government officials. He advises clients on other public international law matters, including treaties and international agreements as well as international humanitarian law and human rights law. He also counsels US and foreign clients on national security legal and policy issues, including US and multilateral financial sanctions and asset controls, the extraterritorial application of US criminal and civil laws, and transactions reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
Chambers Global ranks Mr. Bellinger among the best international lawyers in the world, reporting that he has "second-to-none experience in public international law, international litigation and foreign sovereign immunity" and that his "experience at the highest levels of the Executive branch...gives him a distinct and important vantage point on legal issues." Chambers adds: "For any cross border work he's just extraordinary, he knows the area inside-out."
Mr. Bellinger was the State Department Legal Adviser–the most senior international lawyer in the US Government–from 2005 to 2009, serving under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He directed more than 170 lawyers on domestic and international law matters affecting US foreign relations. Before joining the State Department, Mr. Bellinger managed Secretary Rice's Senate confirmation process and co-directed her State Department transition team. In 2009, Mr. Bellinger received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award.
Mr. Bellinger has argued cases before the International Court of Justice (Mexico v. United States–(Medellin)) and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague. He has appeared on numerous briefs in US federal courts, including the Supreme Court, in litigation involving international law issues.
As Legal Adviser to the NSC from 2001 to 2005, Mr. Bellinger advised President Bush, Cabinet officials, National Security Advisor Rice, and NSC staff on a wide range of national security and international law issues, including counterterrorism issues after the 9-11 attacks. He was one of the principal drafters of the legislation that created the Director of National Intelligence.
Prior to his service in the Bush Administration, Mr. Bellinger served as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division at the US Department of Justice (1997-2001); Of Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1996); General Counsel of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the US Intelligence Community (1995-1996); and Special Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster (1988-1991). Mr. Bellinger is an Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has testified before Congress on numerous occasions, is quoted regularly in the media on international and national security law matters, and has lectured at numerous US and foreign universities and law schools. He is the author of many law review articles and op-eds on international law, including op-eds in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Bellinger is a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog.
Mr. Bellinger is a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Law. He served from 2005-2019 as one of four US Members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and a member of the US "National Group", which nominates judges to the International Court of Justice. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Society of International Law. He is a member of the Council of the American Law Institute; the boards of directors of the American Ditchley Foundation, the Salzburg Global Seminar, and the Stimson Center; and the advisory committee of Foreign Affairs magazine.
Mr. Bellinger is a graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and he holds an MA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and a JD from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard International Law Journal.
US Department of State, Ambassador At-Large for Global Criminal Justice
Dr. Beth Van Schaack was sworn in as the Department’s sixth Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice (GCJ) on March 17, 2022. In this role, she advises the Secretary of State and other Department leadership on issues related to the prevention of and response to atrocity crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Ambassador Van Schaack served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large in GCJ from 2012 to 2013. Prior to returning to public service in 2022, Ambassador Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a policy lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. Ambassador Van Schaack began her academic career at Santa Clara University School of Law, where, in addition to teaching and writing on international human rights issues, she served as the Academic Adviser to the United States interagency delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. Earlier in her career, she was a practicing lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, LLP; the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
Ambassador Van Schaack has published numerous articles and papers on international human rights and justice issues, including her 2020 thesis, Imagining Justice for Syria (Oxford University Press). From 2014 to 2022, she served as Executive Editor for Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of national security, foreign policy, and rights. She is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale (JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities.
Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Former Director of Policy Planning Staff, U.S. Department of State
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019-2021, he served as the Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, and senior adviser to the Secretary of State. Peter studies and writes about, among other things, constitutional government, conservatism and progressivism, liberal education, national security and law, and Middle East politics. He is the author of Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation; Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War; Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism; and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist. He has edited seven volumes on American politics and political institutions. He is a contributor at RealClearPolitics, and has written hundreds of essays, articles, and reviews on many subjects for a variety of publications, including the American Political Science Review, the Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Claremont Review of Books, Commentary, First Things, Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, National Review, the New Republic, the New York Post, the New York Sun, PJ Media, Policy Review, the Public Interest, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, the Wilson Quarterly, and the Yale Law Journal. Peter holds a JD and a PhD in political science from Yale University; an MA in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and a BA in English literature from Swarthmore College.
Commissioner, United States Securities and Exchange Commission
Hester M. Peirce was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was sworn in on January 11, 2018.
Prior to joining the SEC, Commissioner Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was a Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where she advised Ranking Member Richard Shelby and other members of the Committee on securities issues. Commissioner Peirce served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul S. Atkins. She also worked as a Staff Attorney in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management. Commissioner Peirce was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims.
Commissioner Peirce earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Case Western Reserve University and her JD from Yale Law School.
Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, Gates Corporation
Matthew R. A. Heiman joined the Company in May 2026 and has served as the Company’s Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary since June 2026. As Chief Legal Officer, Mr. Heiman is responsible for all legal functions for Gates, including securities and corporate governance, M&A, litigation, commercial, regulatory, compliance, patents and trademarks, real estate, employment and labor, sustainability and environmental matters. Prior to joining Gates, Mr. Heiman held senior legal leadership roles at Waystar, where he served as Chief Legal & Administrative Officer from 2023 to 2025 and as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary from 2020 to 2023. Prior to that, he was with Johnson Controls, where he served as Vice President, Corporate Secretary, and Associate General Counsel. Mr. Heiman has been a Senior Fellow for the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law since 2018.
Senior Fellow, Technology Policy, Cato Institute
Jennifer’s research focuses on the intersection of emerging technology and law with a particular interest in the interactions between technology and the administrative state. Her work covers topics including judicial deference, liability protection for Internet platforms, autonomous vehicles and other disruptive transportation technologies, the regulation of data privacy, and the benefits of technology and innovation. Her work has appeared in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Sacramento Bee, the Washington Times, Real Clear Policy, and U.S. News and World Report. Jennifer has a JD from the University of Alabama School of Law and a BA in political science at Wellesley College.
Multistate Policy Director, Common Sense Media
Joseph Jerome serves as Director for Multistate Policy at Common Sense Media, where he focuses on common-sense legislative and policy solutions that support kids’ digital well-being. Joseph has worked at the intersection of law and technology, and has written about AR/VR, the privacy implications of big data, trust deficits in the online sharing economy, and emerging technologies in video games. Previously, he was part of the Privacy & Data Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, an associate in the cybersecurity and privacy practice at WilmerHale, and counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum. He was a fellow with the Internet Law & Policy Foundry and has taught courses on cybersecurity and privacy compliance. Joseph has a J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where he was an International Law and Human Rights Student Fellow.
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As Americans use smartphones, search engines, AI tools, and financial services, they generate vast amounts...
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Stewart A. Baker, Paul B. Matey, Gene C. Schaerr, Beth A. Williams, John C. Yoo
Featuring: Hon. Stewart Baker, Of Counsel, Steptoe & Johnson LLP Hon. Beth A. Williams, Board...
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Trace Mitchell, Brent Skorup, Jay Stanley
Are we ready to live under the watchful eye of drones? In this Tech Roundup...
Litigation Update: United States v. Moore-Bush
Robert Frommer, Adam F. Griffin
In 2017, ATF agents placed a surveillance camera on a pole across the street from...
Nation-State Cybercrime: Perspectives on the Problem and Response with Two Former DOJ National Security Officials
Kellen Dwyer, Alex Iftimie, Brian Lichter
Recent cyber attacks by the Russian and Chinese governments involving SolarWinds and Microsoft exposed cyber-related...
China's Treatment of Turkic Muslims
John B. Bellinger, Beth Van Schaack
The Federalist Society hosts Prof. Beth Van Schaack and Mr. John Bellinger for a discussion...
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Hester M. Peirce
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Matthew R. A. Heiman, Jennifer Huddleston, Joseph Jerome
In the absence of federal data privacy legislation, some states have acted to pass their...