Managing Attorney of the Washington Office, Institute for Justice
William R. Maurer is the Managing Attorney of the Washington state office of the Institute for Justice, which engages in litigation in the areas of economic liberty, private property rights, educational choice, & freedom of speech.
Maurer is an advocate against the criminalization of poverty and the governmental use of the criminal and civil enforcement systems to raise revenue. He was lead counsel in a class action challenging the use of tickets to raise revenue in the city of Pagedale, Missouri. The suit resulted in a federal consent decree that reformed the city’s ticketing and municipal court system. He regularly speaks, teaches, and writes about the abuse of fines and fees in the criminal justice system. He was a participant in summits on taxation by citation put on by the White House and Department of Justice during the Obama Administration. His work on the issue includes serving as an advisory board member of the Fines and Fees Justice Center.
In addition to his work on criminal and civil justice reform, Maurer is a First Amendment litigator. In 2011, he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Arizona’s punitive campaign financing regime was unconstitutional. Before the Washington Supreme Court, he successfully argued against efforts to classify radio commentary as a contribution under the state’s campaign finance law.
His cases and advocacy have been covered in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and other major media outlets.
Maurer was named a “Washington Superlawyer” by Washington Law & Politics Magazine for several years. He is a chapter author in numerous legal reference works and has written several articles for law reviews and legal publications across the country.
Prior to joining IJ-WA, Maurer clerked for Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders and then practiced law at Perkins Coie LLP. Maurer received his law degree in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he was an editor of the Wisconsin Law Review. He received his BA from Bard College in 1989.
Professor of Law, LMU Loyola Law School (Los Angeles)
After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, Aaron Caplan clerked for the Honorable Betty Binns Fletcher, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1992 to 1998, he worked in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie, where his practice included intellectual property matters and other types of commercial litigation. He also maintained an active pro bono practice that included capital habeas corpus, asylum, death with dignity, and freedom of speech.
In 1998, Caplan became the first full-time staff attorney in more than 20 years for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, where his practice included freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gay rights, prisoner's rights, access to government documents and much more. At the ACLU, his litigation included some of the nation’s first decisions on the free speech rights of public school students on the Internet, the first challenge to the federal No Fly List, and the first decision to order the reinstatement of a gay officer discharged under the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell statute. Professor Caplan joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 2008.
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
Partner, Graves Garrett LLC
Todd Graves is a lawyer in private practice with the law firm of Graves Garrett. Todd represents individuals and businesses nationwide before federal and state courts and administrative agencies. His areas of expertise include white collar criminal defense, political speech and election law, internal investigations, regulatory compliance, and complex commercial litigation. Todd is admitted to the United States Supreme Court, the Missouri Bar, the Kansas Bar, the Texas Bar, the Iowa Bar, the Federal Courts of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the Eighth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit, and the Federal District Courts for the Western District of Missouri, Eastern District of Missouri, the District of Kansas, and the Western District of Michigan.
Todd currently serves as Executive Vice-President of the Pony Express Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Royal Association and a founding board member of the Kansas City Missouri Police Foundation.
Before forming Graves Garrett, Todd served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. As United States Attorney, Todd was responsible for prosecuting federal crimes including mail and wire fraud, money laundering, public corruption, health care fraud, child pornography, firearms violations, narcotics trafficking, pharmaceutical diversion, corporate fraud, and terrorism financing. During Graves’ tenure, felony filings doubled.
In addition, Todd was responsible for defending civil lawsuits brought against the United States, handling federal forfeiture actions, and collecting debts and restitution. Todd managed a staff of 120 with headquarters in Kansas City and two branch offices.
Todd also served as a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, advising the Attorney General on Department of Justice national priorities and policies. Todd participated in drafting Department of Justice policies in corporate investigations including charging, pre-trial diversion, and sentencing. Todd was also a member of the national Executive Working Group, which includes six Department of Justice officials, six state attorneys general, and six district attorneys.
Todd was appointed United States Attorney from his position as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, an office to which he was elected in 1994 and 1998. At the time of his election in 1994, he was the youngest full-time prosecuting attorney in Missouri. In that position, he oversaw a yearly caseload of approximately 400 felonies, 2500 misdemeanors and 14,000 traffic offenses.
As Prosecuting Attorney and as United States Attorney, Todd actively managed cases and trials under his authority and personally tried numerous jury trials to verdict, including cases of child molestation, drug distribution, murder and capital murder.
Prior to his service as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, Todd was in private practice with the Bryan Cave law firm. Before joining Bryan Cave, he was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Missouri.
In 1991, Todd received his law degree and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Missouri in 1988.
Raised on a family farm near Tarkio, Missouri, Todd has been married 24 years to his wife, Tracy. The couple has four children, and they reside on a 270 acre farm north of Kansas City that has been in the family since 1867.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Partner, Consovoy McCarthy Park PLLC
Mr. Consovoy assists clients on a broad range of litigation and appellate issues primarily before the Supreme Court of the United States and federal appellate and district courts, as well as before federal agencies. Mr. Consovoy represents clients in cases involving constitutional issues, interpretation and enforcement of federal statutes, administrative law, civil rights disputes, and a variety of other civil litigation issues. Mr. Consovoy recently argued two cases—Spokeo v. Robbins and Evenwel v. Abbott—before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Mr. Consovoy is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the 17th Judicial Circuit of Virginia. Mr. Consovoy is a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court and was named by Law360 as a “rising star” in appellate law for 2013. Since 2011, Mr. Consovoy has been the co-director of the Supreme Court Clinic at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he also is the co-director of the Administrative Law Clinic.
Mr. Consovoy earned his B.A. from Monmouth University, and his J.D. magna cum laude from George Mason University School of Law. Mr. Consovoy is a member of the Virginia and District of Columbia bars.
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.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. Liptak’s column on legal affairs, “Sidebar,” appears every other Tuesday.
A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Liptak practiced law at a large New York City law firm and in the legal department of The New York Times Company before joining the paper’s news staff in 2002.
Liptak was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2009 for “American Exception,” a series of articles examining ways in which the American legal system differs from those of other developed nations. He received the 2010 Scripps Howard Award for Washington reporting for a five-part series on the Roberts Court.
He is the author of “To Have and Uphold: The Supreme Court and the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Business Week and Rolling Stone, and he has published articles in The Arizona Law Review, The Michigan Law Review and The New York University Annual Survey of American Law.
Liptak has taught courses at Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Southern California and U.C.L.A. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
Virginia Seitz is a partner in Sidley Austin’s Supreme Court and Appellate practice. On behalf of a wide range of clients, she has handled cases in the United States Supreme Court, in virtually all federal courts of appeals, and in state appellate courts. Virginia was counsel of record on the amicus brief on behalf of retired military officers in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), which the Supreme Court cited at oral argument and in its opinion and which the New York Times piece noted “may have been the most influential amicus brief in the history of the Supreme Court.” She has handled an array of district court litigation involving important constitutional and federal law issues, including the Appropriations and Supremacy Clauses of the Constitution, the First Amendment, Title IX, Title VII, the Anti-Deficiency Act, ERISA, and federal labor laws.
Virginia returned to Sidley in 2014 after serving in the Senate-confirmed position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. She was the first woman to be confirmed to that position. As the leader of that Office, Virginia was responsible for providing legal advice to the President and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues of particular difficulty and importance. Virginia previously served as an appointee of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. In January 2017, she was elected to the American Law Institute. Earlier in her career, Virginia was confirmed by the Senate to the first Board of Directors of the Congressional Office of Compliance and served from May 1995 to 2000. Virginia has been recognized for her Appellate Law practice by Chambers USA, in The Legal 500 US in Litigation: Supreme Court and Appellate, and in The Best Lawyers in America.
Virginia clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., and before that for Judge Harry T. Edwards of the D.C. Circuit. She is a graduate of University at Buffalo Law School, received her M.A. from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and received her B.A. from Duke University, summa cum laude with distinction.
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).
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
Partner, Consovoy McCarthy Park PLLC
Mr. Consovoy assists clients on a broad range of litigation and appellate issues primarily before the Supreme Court of the United States and federal appellate and district courts, as well as before federal agencies. Mr. Consovoy represents clients in cases involving constitutional issues, interpretation and enforcement of federal statutes, administrative law, civil rights disputes, and a variety of other civil litigation issues. Mr. Consovoy recently argued two cases—Spokeo v. Robbins and Evenwel v. Abbott—before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Mr. Consovoy is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the 17th Judicial Circuit of Virginia. Mr. Consovoy is a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court and was named by Law360 as a “rising star” in appellate law for 2013. Since 2011, Mr. Consovoy has been the co-director of the Supreme Court Clinic at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he also is the co-director of the Administrative Law Clinic.
Mr. Consovoy earned his B.A. from Monmouth University, and his J.D. magna cum laude from George Mason University School of Law. Mr. Consovoy is a member of the Virginia and District of Columbia bars.
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.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. Liptak’s column on legal affairs, “Sidebar,” appears every other Tuesday.
A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Liptak practiced law at a large New York City law firm and in the legal department of The New York Times Company before joining the paper’s news staff in 2002.
Liptak was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2009 for “American Exception,” a series of articles examining ways in which the American legal system differs from those of other developed nations. He received the 2010 Scripps Howard Award for Washington reporting for a five-part series on the Roberts Court.
He is the author of “To Have and Uphold: The Supreme Court and the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Business Week and Rolling Stone, and he has published articles in The Arizona Law Review, The Michigan Law Review and The New York University Annual Survey of American Law.
Liptak has taught courses at Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Southern California and U.C.L.A. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
Virginia Seitz is a partner in Sidley Austin’s Supreme Court and Appellate practice. On behalf of a wide range of clients, she has handled cases in the United States Supreme Court, in virtually all federal courts of appeals, and in state appellate courts. Virginia was counsel of record on the amicus brief on behalf of retired military officers in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), which the Supreme Court cited at oral argument and in its opinion and which the New York Times piece noted “may have been the most influential amicus brief in the history of the Supreme Court.” She has handled an array of district court litigation involving important constitutional and federal law issues, including the Appropriations and Supremacy Clauses of the Constitution, the First Amendment, Title IX, Title VII, the Anti-Deficiency Act, ERISA, and federal labor laws.
Virginia returned to Sidley in 2014 after serving in the Senate-confirmed position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. She was the first woman to be confirmed to that position. As the leader of that Office, Virginia was responsible for providing legal advice to the President and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues of particular difficulty and importance. Virginia previously served as an appointee of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. In January 2017, she was elected to the American Law Institute. Earlier in her career, Virginia was confirmed by the Senate to the first Board of Directors of the Congressional Office of Compliance and served from May 1995 to 2000. Virginia has been recognized for her Appellate Law practice by Chambers USA, in The Legal 500 US in Litigation: Supreme Court and Appellate, and in The Best Lawyers in America.
Virginia clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., and before that for Judge Harry T. Edwards of the D.C. Circuit. She is a graduate of University at Buffalo Law School, received her M.A. from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and received her B.A. from Duke University, summa cum laude with distinction.
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).
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University
In memoriam
Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the
following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.
In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.
Professor of Law, LMU Loyola Law School (Los Angeles)
After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, Aaron Caplan clerked for the Honorable Betty Binns Fletcher, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1992 to 1998, he worked in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie, where his practice included intellectual property matters and other types of commercial litigation. He also maintained an active pro bono practice that included capital habeas corpus, asylum, death with dignity, and freedom of speech.
In 1998, Caplan became the first full-time staff attorney in more than 20 years for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, where his practice included freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gay rights, prisoner's rights, access to government documents and much more. At the ACLU, his litigation included some of the nation’s first decisions on the free speech rights of public school students on the Internet, the first challenge to the federal No Fly List, and the first decision to order the reinstatement of a gay officer discharged under the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell statute. Professor Caplan joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 2008.
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
Partner, Graves Garrett LLC
Todd Graves is a lawyer in private practice with the law firm of Graves Garrett. Todd represents individuals and businesses nationwide before federal and state courts and administrative agencies. His areas of expertise include white collar criminal defense, political speech and election law, internal investigations, regulatory compliance, and complex commercial litigation. Todd is admitted to the United States Supreme Court, the Missouri Bar, the Kansas Bar, the Texas Bar, the Iowa Bar, the Federal Courts of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the Eighth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit, and the Federal District Courts for the Western District of Missouri, Eastern District of Missouri, the District of Kansas, and the Western District of Michigan.
Todd currently serves as Executive Vice-President of the Pony Express Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Royal Association and a founding board member of the Kansas City Missouri Police Foundation.
Before forming Graves Garrett, Todd served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. As United States Attorney, Todd was responsible for prosecuting federal crimes including mail and wire fraud, money laundering, public corruption, health care fraud, child pornography, firearms violations, narcotics trafficking, pharmaceutical diversion, corporate fraud, and terrorism financing. During Graves’ tenure, felony filings doubled.
In addition, Todd was responsible for defending civil lawsuits brought against the United States, handling federal forfeiture actions, and collecting debts and restitution. Todd managed a staff of 120 with headquarters in Kansas City and two branch offices.
Todd also served as a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, advising the Attorney General on Department of Justice national priorities and policies. Todd participated in drafting Department of Justice policies in corporate investigations including charging, pre-trial diversion, and sentencing. Todd was also a member of the national Executive Working Group, which includes six Department of Justice officials, six state attorneys general, and six district attorneys.
Todd was appointed United States Attorney from his position as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, an office to which he was elected in 1994 and 1998. At the time of his election in 1994, he was the youngest full-time prosecuting attorney in Missouri. In that position, he oversaw a yearly caseload of approximately 400 felonies, 2500 misdemeanors and 14,000 traffic offenses.
As Prosecuting Attorney and as United States Attorney, Todd actively managed cases and trials under his authority and personally tried numerous jury trials to verdict, including cases of child molestation, drug distribution, murder and capital murder.
Prior to his service as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, Todd was in private practice with the Bryan Cave law firm. Before joining Bryan Cave, he was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Missouri.
In 1991, Todd received his law degree and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Missouri in 1988.
Raised on a family farm near Tarkio, Missouri, Todd has been married 24 years to his wife, Tracy. The couple has four children, and they reside on a 270 acre farm north of Kansas City that has been in the family since 1867.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Senior Advisor, Covington & Burling
Senator Jon Kyl advises companies on domestic and international policies that influence U.S. and multi-national businesses and assists corporate clients on tax, health care, national security, and intellectual property matters, among others.
Jon served in the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 2013, retiring as the second-highest ranking Republican senator. He returned to the Senate in September 2018 after being appointed to succeed the late John McCain, and retired again at the end of 2018.
During Jon’s 26 years in Congress, he built a reputation for mastering the complexities of legislative policy and coalition building, first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate. In 2010, Time magazine called him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, noting his "encyclopedic knowledge of domestic and foreign policy, and his hard work and leadership" and his "power to persuade."
Jon sat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee and was the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. A member of the Republican Leadership for well over a decade, Jon chaired the Senate Republican Policy Committee and the Senate Republican Conference, before becoming Senate Republican Whip. In filling Senator McCain’s seat, he served on the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees.
Partner, Consovoy McCarthy Park PLLC
Mr. Consovoy assists clients on a broad range of litigation and appellate issues primarily before the Supreme Court of the United States and federal appellate and district courts, as well as before federal agencies. Mr. Consovoy represents clients in cases involving constitutional issues, interpretation and enforcement of federal statutes, administrative law, civil rights disputes, and a variety of other civil litigation issues. Mr. Consovoy recently argued two cases—Spokeo v. Robbins and Evenwel v. Abbott—before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Mr. Consovoy is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the 17th Judicial Circuit of Virginia. Mr. Consovoy is a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court and was named by Law360 as a “rising star” in appellate law for 2013. Since 2011, Mr. Consovoy has been the co-director of the Supreme Court Clinic at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he also is the co-director of the Administrative Law Clinic.
Mr. Consovoy earned his B.A. from Monmouth University, and his J.D. magna cum laude from George Mason University School of Law. Mr. Consovoy is a member of the Virginia and District of Columbia bars.
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.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. Liptak’s column on legal affairs, “Sidebar,” appears every other Tuesday.
A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Liptak practiced law at a large New York City law firm and in the legal department of The New York Times Company before joining the paper’s news staff in 2002.
Liptak was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2009 for “American Exception,” a series of articles examining ways in which the American legal system differs from those of other developed nations. He received the 2010 Scripps Howard Award for Washington reporting for a five-part series on the Roberts Court.
He is the author of “To Have and Uphold: The Supreme Court and the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Business Week and Rolling Stone, and he has published articles in The Arizona Law Review, The Michigan Law Review and The New York University Annual Survey of American Law.
Liptak has taught courses at Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Southern California and U.C.L.A. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
Virginia Seitz is a partner in Sidley Austin’s Supreme Court and Appellate practice. On behalf of a wide range of clients, she has handled cases in the United States Supreme Court, in virtually all federal courts of appeals, and in state appellate courts. Virginia was counsel of record on the amicus brief on behalf of retired military officers in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), which the Supreme Court cited at oral argument and in its opinion and which the New York Times piece noted “may have been the most influential amicus brief in the history of the Supreme Court.” She has handled an array of district court litigation involving important constitutional and federal law issues, including the Appropriations and Supremacy Clauses of the Constitution, the First Amendment, Title IX, Title VII, the Anti-Deficiency Act, ERISA, and federal labor laws.
Virginia returned to Sidley in 2014 after serving in the Senate-confirmed position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. She was the first woman to be confirmed to that position. As the leader of that Office, Virginia was responsible for providing legal advice to the President and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues of particular difficulty and importance. Virginia previously served as an appointee of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. In January 2017, she was elected to the American Law Institute. Earlier in her career, Virginia was confirmed by the Senate to the first Board of Directors of the Congressional Office of Compliance and served from May 1995 to 2000. Virginia has been recognized for her Appellate Law practice by Chambers USA, in The Legal 500 US in Litigation: Supreme Court and Appellate, and in The Best Lawyers in America.
Virginia clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., and before that for Judge Harry T. Edwards of the D.C. Circuit. She is a graduate of University at Buffalo Law School, received her M.A. from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and received her B.A. from Duke University, summa cum laude with distinction.
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).
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University
In memoriam
Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the
following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.
In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.
Former United States Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld was sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense on January 20, 2001, and served until December 18, 2006. A former Navy pilot, Secretary Rumsfeld has also served as the 13th Secretary of Defense, White House Chief of Staff, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, U.S. Congressman and chief executive officer of two Fortune 500 companies.
Secretary Rumsfeld was responsible for directing the actions of the Defense Department in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, to include Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He did so while overseeing the reform and transformation of America's military to better address the threats of the 21st Century. Secretary Rumsfeld proposed and the President approved a significant reorganization of the worldwide command structure, known as the Unified Command Plan, that resulted in the establishment of the U.S. Northern Command and the U.S. Strategic Command. Under Secretary Rumsfeld's leadership, the Department initiated the most significant change of the military's global posture in a generation -- away from a static, defensive Cold War posture to more flexible arrangements that enable U.S. forces to respond to any contingency.
The Department also refocused its space capabilities and fashioned a new concept of strategic deterrence that increases security while reducing strategic nuclear weapons. To help strengthen the deterrent, the missile defense research and testing program was reorganized and revitalized, free of the restraints of the ABM treaty.
Mr. Rumsfeld attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC scholarships (A.B., 1954) and served in the U.S. Navy (1954-57) as an aviator and flight instructor. In 1957, he transferred to the Ready Reserve and continued his Naval service in flying and administrative assignments as a drilling reservist until 1975. He transferred to the Standby Reserve when he became Secretary of Defense in 1975 and to the Retired Reserve with the rank of Captain in 1989.
In 1957, he came to Washington, DC to serve as Administrative Assistant to a Congressman. After a stint with an investment banking firm, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois in 1962, at the age of 30, and was re-elected in 1964, 1966, and 1968.
Mr. Rumsfeld resigned from Congress in 1969 during his fourth term to join the President's Cabinet. From 1969 to 1970, he served as Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity and Assistant to the President. From 1971 to 1972, he was Counsellor to the President and Director of the Economic Stabilization Program. In 1973, he left Washington, DC, to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium (1973-1974).
In August 1974, he was called back to Washington, DC, to serve as Chairman of the transition to the Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. He then became Chief of Staff of the White House and a member of the President's Cabinet (1974-1975). He served as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense, the youngest in the country's history (1975-1977).
From 1977 to 1985 he served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and then Chairman of G.D. Searle & Co., a worldwide pharmaceutical company. The successful turnaround there earned him awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). From 1985 to 1990 he was in private business.
Mr. Rumsfeld served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Instrument Corporation from 1990 to 1993. General Instrument Corporation was a leader in broadband transmission, distribution, and access control technologies. Until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld served as Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, Inc., a pharmaceutical company.
Before returning for his second tour as Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld chaired the bipartisan U.S. Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, in 1998, and the U.S. Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization, in 2000.
During his business career, Mr. Rumsfeld continued his public service in a variety of Federal posts, including:
While in the private sector, Mr. Rumsfeld's civic activities included service as a member of the National Academy of Public Administration and a member of the boards of trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the National Park Foundation, and as Chairman of the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, Inc.
In 1977, Mr. Rumsfeld was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Rumsfeld resigned as Secretary of Defense in 2006.
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Co-Sponsored by the Faculty Division and the Practice Groups
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