Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence, Independence Institute
Professor Robert G. Natelson is a constitutional scholar and author.
Rob’s constitutional scholarship has been cited repeatedly by justices and parties at the U.S. Supreme Court—as well as by federal appeals courts, and at least 18 state supreme courts.
Rob’s research into the Constitution’s original meaning has carried him to libraries throughout the United States and in Britain, including four months at Oxford University. His books and articles span many different parts of the Constitution, including groundbreaking studies of the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Indian Commerce Clause, federalism, Founding-Era interpretation, regulation of elections, and the amendment process of Article V. He created the first-ever online bibliography for 18th century materials used in constitutional research. He is a contributing author to the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (on Magna Carta). He contributed eight essays to the third edition of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution: five on the amendment procedure and one each on the Guarantee Clause, the Postal Clause, and the Recess Appointments Clause.
U.S. Supreme Court justices have relied explicitly on Rob’s research in 41 citations in 13 separate cases.
Attorney, Public Citizen Litigation Group
Paul Alan Levy is an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, a public interest law firm that is a division of the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. Among the issues on which the group litigates are federal health and safety regulation, consumer litigation, open government, union democracy, separation of powers, and the First Amendment. PCLG litigates cases at all levels of the federal and state judiciaries and has a substantial practice before federal regulatory agencies.
After working as a law clerk to Honorable Wade H. McCree, Jr. (United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit) and Special Assistant to Solicitor General McCree, Paul joined the Litigation Group in December 1977 to represent workers in rank-and-file labor law cases, largely representing dissident union members in cases involving union governance. He has been there ever since, with the exception of a one-year sabbatical when he taught at Cardozo Law School. Over the years, he also developed subspecialties in some arcane issues of federal procedure such as removal jurisdiction, and the representation of "lawyers in trouble" from sanctions, contempt findings and the like (these days, though, as a defense lawyer, he files sanctions motions). He also pioneered Public Citizen's work on federal preemption of state law claims and objecting to collusive class action settlements.
He has argued scores of cases in United States Court of Appeals (three en banc). Moreover, he has argued four cases in Supreme Court of the United States, as well as writing briefs for parties in seven other cases. One odd aspect of his Supreme Court practice is that each of these eleven cases was decided 9-0 – win or lose.
Paul has specialized more recently in free speech issues arising on the Internet. He has litigated cases in state and federal courts throughout the country about the identification of anonymous Internet speakers. His amicus curiae brief in Dendrite v. Doe, whose approach was adopted by New Jersey's Superior Court Appellate Division, has become the model for other cases. His Internet practice also includes the defense of trademark and copyright claims brought as a means of suppressing critical web sites. His cases in this area, such as Bosley Medical v. Kremer and Lamparello v. Falwell, have established the right to create internet “gripe" sites that include the trademark names of companies in their domain names and meta tags. In Smith v. Wal-Mart Stores and McCall v. National Security Agency, he defended the rights of parodists to make fun of Wal-Mart's trademarks and the seals of the NSA and Department of Homeland Security. In arguing against the issuance of prior restraints in Bank Julius Baer v. Wikileaks, he had the key insight that the case had been filed without subject matter jurisdiction. For several years, Paul chaired subcommittees (on domain name litigation or on keyword advertising) of the American Bar Association's Intellectual Property Section. He currently serves on the Legal Review Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia.
A description of his work in this area was published in the Washingtonian Magazine as “Paul Levy, the Web Bully's Worst Enemy." It is accessible at http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/paul-levy-the-web-bullys-worst-enemy/. His work was also recently described in Hill, Stars and Gripes: Legal challenges over online reviews seek to separate fact from fiction, ABA Journal (July 2016), available at http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/legal_challenges_over_online_reviews_seek_to_separate_fact_from_fiction.
Partner, Clare Locke LLP
Libby is one of the country’s most sought-after libel lawyers. She is a trusted counselor and fierce advocate for Fortune 100 companies and high-profile individuals facing existential reputational attacks from the national media and other influential publishers, achieving remarkable results for her clients both in and outside the courtroom. Court watchers have called her “as good as they get,” “aggressive and not afraid to litigate,” and someone who has the media savvy to handle high profile matters in the public eye.
After co-founding Clare Locke LLP in 2014, Libby rapidly rose to national prominence for a highly-publicized multi-million dollar trial victory against Rolling Stone magazine about a fabricated gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. In 2019, she was lead trial counsel and won a $26 million federal jury verdict on behalf of a successful North Carolina businessman who was defamed by a public company during a proxy fight. A commentator opined that “she was excellent in trial and she eviscerated the other side,” and the federal judge concluded that her vigorous cross-examination “exposed [Defendant’s] CEO as a non-credible witness.” A skilled appellate advocate and former federal circuit clerk, in 2019 Libby achieved a rare win against The New York Times on behalf of former Gov. Sarah Palin in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit arising out of a false and defamatory editorial. She is actively litigating matters against a variety of mainstream news outlets, including CNN and The New York Times.
Libby’s success in the courtroom gets her results in the newsroom. She regularly advises clients and their PR counsel in dealing with the national media in crisis situations, and some of her biggest wins are the false stories the public will never hear about. She has killed flawed articles, storylines, and broadcast segments in outlets including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The National Enquirer, and on Bloomberg, CBS and The Dr. Oz Show. Libby has also vindicated her clients’ reputations by obtaining myriad retractions of false publications. Examples include securing a $3.375 million settlement and video apology from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a complete retraction of a Bloomberg podcast, a multi-article correction from The Chicago Tribune, and the removal of a paperback edition book from publication by Simon & Schuster.
Recognized as an expert in libel law and the First Amendment, Libby has been ranked as a Band 1 global defamation/reputation management provider in Chambers & Partners HNW directory every year since its inception in 2016, and a Band 1 First Amendment Litigator in Chambers & Partners USA in 2020. She has numerous national awards and accolades from the National Law Journal, including being named as one of D.C.’s 40 Under 40 in 2019. She is regularly asked to speak on issues involving the First Amendment, media, and reputation, including publishing multiple op-eds in The Wall Street Journal and appearing as a guest on Fox News, CNN, and ABC’s 20/20. Libby has also served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and George Washington University Law School.
Libby graduated from NYU’s College of Arts and Science with a degree in Politics and Economics, and she received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. After law school, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and then began her career in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis. Perhaps the accomplishment of which she is most proud, Libby is a mom of five. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband and law partner, Tom Clare, their children, and the world’s most spoiled Labrador Retriever, Gipper.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
Dean and Professor of Law, Widener University Delaware School of Law
Rod Smolla is Dean and Professor of Law at the Delaware Law School of Widener University, in Wilmington, Delaware. He was previously the 11th President of Furman University, in Greenville, South Carolina, the Dean of the Law School at Washington and Lee University Law School, the Dean of the University of Richmond Law School, the Director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the College of William and Mary, and Senior Fellow and Project Director of the Washington Annenberg Program of Northwestern University. He has also been a faculty member at the DePaul, University of Illinois, and University of Arkansas law schools, and a visiting professor at the Duke, University of Georgia, University of Indiana, Denver University, and University of Melbourne law schools. As an educator, he has been an advocate for experiential learning, including greater emphasis on helping law students develop skills relating to counseling, problem-solving, negotiation, drafting, advocacy, civic engagement, pro bono service, legal ethics, and professionalism. He has emphasized diversity and community outreach and important institutional missions in higher education and legal education.
Smolla is a nationally-known scholar on matters relating to constitutional law, civil rights, freedom of speech, and mass media, particularly matters relating to libel and privacy. He is the author of five multi-volume legal treatises, all published by Thomson Reuters, which are updated twice annually: Law of Defamation; Smolla and Nimmer on Freedom of Speech; Rights and Liabilities in Media Content, Internet, Broadcast, and Print; Federal Civil Rights Acts; and, Law of Lawyer Advertising. He is also author of The First Amendment: Freedom of Expression, Regulation of Mass Media, Freedom of Religion (Carolina Academic Press 1999) (a law school casebook); and co-author of Constitutional Law: Structure and Rights in Our Federal System (6th Edition, 2010, with Dean William Banks). He is the editor each year of the First Amendment Law Handbook, published annually by Thomson Reuters. He was also editor of The Copyright Law Anthology published by Thomson Reuters. He is also the author of may trade and university press books, including Suing the Press: Libel, the Media, and Power (Oxford University Press 1986) (won ABA Silver Gavel Award Certificate of Merit); Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt: The First Amendment on Trial (St. Martin's Press 1988); Free Speech in an Open Society (Alfred A. Knopf 1992) (winner of the William O. Douglas Award); Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book (Crown Publishers 1999) (made into a television movie by FX, with Timothy Hutton playing the role of Rod Smolla); The Constitution Goes to College (New York University Press 2010). He was editor of A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court (Duke University Press 1995) (won ABA Civil Gavel Award). Smolla has published over 100 articles in law reviews and other publications.
Smolla has served as Chairman of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Defamation and Privacy Law, as Chairman of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Mass Communications Law, as a member of the American Bar Association Advisory Committee to the Forum on Mass Communications Law, and as a member of the First Amendment Advisory Board to the Media Institute, as the Director of the Annenberg Washington Program Libel Reform Project, and author of the Annenberg Libel Reform Report that emerged from the blue ribbon task force on that project. He served as a Director of the Media General Corporation, and as a Director of the American Arbitration Association. In 2011, he was appointed by Governor Nikki Haley to serve as a Commissioner on the South Carolina Commission of Higher Education, which included within its mission the oversight of all of South Carolina's public universities and colleges, and licensure and programmatic approval for all public and private educational programs within the state.
Smolla has been and remains an active litigator. He has participated as counsel or co-counsel in litigation matters in state and federal courts throughout the nation, and is a frequent advocate, having presented oral argument in numerous state and federal courts, including 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).
Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Vince Vitkowsky chaired the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law and Policy Practice Group for over a decade. He is also a Fellow at the National Security Institute of George Mason University Law School. Vince spent 45 years in private practice, primarily in AmLaw 100/200 firms and their spin-offs. His practice included domestic and international commercial arbitration and litigation, as well as cyber risks and liabilities. Vince's current focus is on national security policy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism. He has often written and spoken on national security and other public policy issues. Among other affiliations, Vince has been an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Law and Counterterrorism of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a member of the Executive Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association, and Co-Chair of the Committee on Interventions and Trial Observations of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University and his J.D. from Cornell Law School.
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Richard H. Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. His acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (now in its fourth edition), helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. The Law of Democracy systematically explores legal and policy issues concerning the structure of democratic elections and institutions, such as the role of money in politics, the design of election districts, the regulation of political parties, the design of voting systems, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and similar issues. He has written extensively on the rise of political polarization in the United States, the Voting Rights Act, the dysfunction of America’s political processes, the role of the Supreme Court in overseeing American democracy, the powers of the American President and Congress, and he has criticized excessively “romantic” understandings of democracy. In addition to his scholarship on these issues, he has written on national-security law, the design of the regulatory state, and American constitutional history and theory.
Respect for his expertise in these areas is reflected in frequent citations of his work in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the translation of his work into many languages, and his frequent public lectures and appearances around the world, including his nomination with the NBC News Team for an Emmy Award for coverage of the 2000 Presidential election litigation.
His work has been translated and published in Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In addition to his scholarship, Professor Pildes plays an active role litigating in these areas. He has won two cases before the United States Supreme Court, including a 2015 victory in Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, a case involving race and redistricting. He served as counsel to a group of former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission in litigation defending the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; as counsel in election litigation to the Puerto Rico Electoral Commission; as counsel to the government of Puerto Rico; as a federal court-appointed independent expert on voting rights litigation; and as counsel in successful Supreme Court litigation that challenged the way the United States Tax Court operated. He was also a senior legal advisor to the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of President Obama.
Pildes received his A.B. in physical chemistry summa cum laude from Princeton, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he served as Supreme Court Note Editor on the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing law in Boston, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan Law School, before joining the NYU School of Law in 2001.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
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Richard J. Sullivan was sworn in as a United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit in October 2018. Before that, Judge Sullivan served for eleven years as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Prior to becoming a judge, he served as the General Counsel and Managing Director of Marsh Inc., the world's leading risk management and insurance brokerage firm. From 1994 to 2005, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he was Chief of the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit and Director of the New York/New Jersey Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. In 2003, he was awarded the Henry L. Stimson Medal from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In 1998, he was named the Federal Law Enforcement Association's Prosecutor of the Year. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, he was a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York and a law clerk to the Honorable David M. Ebel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, the College of William & Mary, and Chaminade High School on Long Island. From 1986 to 1987, he served as a New York City Urban Fellow under New York City Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward. Judge Sullivan is on the executive board of the New York American Inn of Court and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on sentencing and jurisprudence, and he previously served as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where he taught courses on white collar crime and trial advocacy and was named Adjunct Professor of the Year.
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Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice; Associate Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is an associate professor, teaching courses in Election Law, Corporate Governance, Business Entities, and Constitutional Law. Prior to joining Stetson's faculty, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was counsel in the Democracy Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law where she provided guidance on the issues of money in politics and the judiciary to state and federal lawmakers. She was an associate at Arnold & Porter LLP and a staffer for Senator Richard Durbin.
Professor Torres-Spelliscy has testified before Congress, and state and local legislative bodies as an expert on campaign finance reform. She has also helped draft legislation and Supreme Court briefs. She is the editor of the 2010 edition of the Brennan Center's campaign finance treatise, "Writing Reform: A Guide to Drafting State and Local Campaign Finance Laws."
She researches and speaks publicly on campaign finance law as well as judicial selection. She has spoken at symposia at 26 universities around the nation. She presented at the 2013 and the 2015 Annual Conventions of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and at the 2014 Annual Convention of the American Constitution Society, and the 2011, the 2014, and the 2016 Annual Conventions of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL). In 2016 she spoke at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) at a forum on dark money and foreign money in U.S. elections.
She is the author of the book Corporate Citizen? An Argument for the Separation of Corporation and State (Carolina Academic Press, 2016).
As well as publishing in law reviews, such as the NYU Law Review, the University ofPennsylvania Law Review, the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy, and the Montana Law Review, Professor Torres-Spelliscy has been published in the New York Times, New York Law Journal, Slate, L.A. Times, U.S. News and World Report, Boston Review, Roll Call, Business Week, Forbes, The Atlantic, USA Today, Business Ethics Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, The Hill, Huffington Post, The Root.com, Judicature, The Nation, Salon.com, Tampa Bay Times, The Progressive, CNN.com, Medium, and the ABA Judges Journal. She has also been quoted by the media in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New York Times, Time,Bloomberg, Mother Jones, Newsweek on Air, SCOTUS Blog, Politico, Slate, The National Journal, USA Today, L.A. Times, Boston Globe, NBC.com, WMNF, Sirius Radio, National Public Radio, Fox, Voice America, CSPAN, DNA TV, and NY1.
In 2014, Stetson University College of Law awarded Professor Torres-Spelliscy the Dickerson-Brown award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship. In 2013, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was named as a member of the Lawyers of Color's "50 Under 50" list of minority law professors making an impact in legal education. In 2012, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was named as a Top Wonk by the website TopWonks.org. She was awarded tenure in 2016. In 2017, she was elected to be Chair of the AALS Section on Election Law for a term that starts in 2018.
Professor Torres-Spelliscy is a Brennan Center Fellow, a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, a member of the Board of Directors of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, a former member of the Board of Directors of the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which was awarded the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Richard H. Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. His acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (now in its fourth edition), helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. The Law of Democracy systematically explores legal and policy issues concerning the structure of democratic elections and institutions, such as the role of money in politics, the design of election districts, the regulation of political parties, the design of voting systems, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and similar issues. He has written extensively on the rise of political polarization in the United States, the Voting Rights Act, the dysfunction of America’s political processes, the role of the Supreme Court in overseeing American democracy, the powers of the American President and Congress, and he has criticized excessively “romantic” understandings of democracy. In addition to his scholarship on these issues, he has written on national-security law, the design of the regulatory state, and American constitutional history and theory.
Respect for his expertise in these areas is reflected in frequent citations of his work in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the translation of his work into many languages, and his frequent public lectures and appearances around the world, including his nomination with the NBC News Team for an Emmy Award for coverage of the 2000 Presidential election litigation.
His work has been translated and published in Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In addition to his scholarship, Professor Pildes plays an active role litigating in these areas. He has won two cases before the United States Supreme Court, including a 2015 victory in Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, a case involving race and redistricting. He served as counsel to a group of former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission in litigation defending the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; as counsel in election litigation to the Puerto Rico Electoral Commission; as counsel to the government of Puerto Rico; as a federal court-appointed independent expert on voting rights litigation; and as counsel in successful Supreme Court litigation that challenged the way the United States Tax Court operated. He was also a senior legal advisor to the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of President Obama.
Pildes received his A.B. in physical chemistry summa cum laude from Princeton, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he served as Supreme Court Note Editor on the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing law in Boston, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan Law School, before joining the NYU School of Law in 2001.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
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Richard J. Sullivan was sworn in as a United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit in October 2018. Before that, Judge Sullivan served for eleven years as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Prior to becoming a judge, he served as the General Counsel and Managing Director of Marsh Inc., the world's leading risk management and insurance brokerage firm. From 1994 to 2005, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he was Chief of the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit and Director of the New York/New Jersey Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. In 2003, he was awarded the Henry L. Stimson Medal from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In 1998, he was named the Federal Law Enforcement Association's Prosecutor of the Year. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, he was a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York and a law clerk to the Honorable David M. Ebel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, the College of William & Mary, and Chaminade High School on Long Island. From 1986 to 1987, he served as a New York City Urban Fellow under New York City Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward. Judge Sullivan is on the executive board of the New York American Inn of Court and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on sentencing and jurisprudence, and he previously served as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where he taught courses on white collar crime and trial advocacy and was named Adjunct Professor of the Year.
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Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice; Associate Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is an associate professor, teaching courses in Election Law, Corporate Governance, Business Entities, and Constitutional Law. Prior to joining Stetson's faculty, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was counsel in the Democracy Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law where she provided guidance on the issues of money in politics and the judiciary to state and federal lawmakers. She was an associate at Arnold & Porter LLP and a staffer for Senator Richard Durbin.
Professor Torres-Spelliscy has testified before Congress, and state and local legislative bodies as an expert on campaign finance reform. She has also helped draft legislation and Supreme Court briefs. She is the editor of the 2010 edition of the Brennan Center's campaign finance treatise, "Writing Reform: A Guide to Drafting State and Local Campaign Finance Laws."
She researches and speaks publicly on campaign finance law as well as judicial selection. She has spoken at symposia at 26 universities around the nation. She presented at the 2013 and the 2015 Annual Conventions of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and at the 2014 Annual Convention of the American Constitution Society, and the 2011, the 2014, and the 2016 Annual Conventions of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL). In 2016 she spoke at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) at a forum on dark money and foreign money in U.S. elections.
She is the author of the book Corporate Citizen? An Argument for the Separation of Corporation and State (Carolina Academic Press, 2016).
As well as publishing in law reviews, such as the NYU Law Review, the University ofPennsylvania Law Review, the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy, and the Montana Law Review, Professor Torres-Spelliscy has been published in the New York Times, New York Law Journal, Slate, L.A. Times, U.S. News and World Report, Boston Review, Roll Call, Business Week, Forbes, The Atlantic, USA Today, Business Ethics Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, The Hill, Huffington Post, The Root.com, Judicature, The Nation, Salon.com, Tampa Bay Times, The Progressive, CNN.com, Medium, and the ABA Judges Journal. She has also been quoted by the media in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New York Times, Time,Bloomberg, Mother Jones, Newsweek on Air, SCOTUS Blog, Politico, Slate, The National Journal, USA Today, L.A. Times, Boston Globe, NBC.com, WMNF, Sirius Radio, National Public Radio, Fox, Voice America, CSPAN, DNA TV, and NY1.
In 2014, Stetson University College of Law awarded Professor Torres-Spelliscy the Dickerson-Brown award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship. In 2013, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was named as a member of the Lawyers of Color's "50 Under 50" list of minority law professors making an impact in legal education. In 2012, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was named as a Top Wonk by the website TopWonks.org. She was awarded tenure in 2016. In 2017, she was elected to be Chair of the AALS Section on Election Law for a term that starts in 2018.
Professor Torres-Spelliscy is a Brennan Center Fellow, a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, a member of the Board of Directors of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, a former member of the Board of Directors of the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which was awarded the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and 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.
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 Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, 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 the Pacific Legal Foundation, 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 been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Attorney, Public Citizen Litigation Group
Paul Alan Levy is an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, a public interest law firm that is a division of the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. Among the issues on which the group litigates are federal health and safety regulation, consumer litigation, open government, union democracy, separation of powers, and the First Amendment. PCLG litigates cases at all levels of the federal and state judiciaries and has a substantial practice before federal regulatory agencies.
After working as a law clerk to Honorable Wade H. McCree, Jr. (United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit) and Special Assistant to Solicitor General McCree, Paul joined the Litigation Group in December 1977 to represent workers in rank-and-file labor law cases, largely representing dissident union members in cases involving union governance. He has been there ever since, with the exception of a one-year sabbatical when he taught at Cardozo Law School. Over the years, he also developed subspecialties in some arcane issues of federal procedure such as removal jurisdiction, and the representation of "lawyers in trouble" from sanctions, contempt findings and the like (these days, though, as a defense lawyer, he files sanctions motions). He also pioneered Public Citizen's work on federal preemption of state law claims and objecting to collusive class action settlements.
He has argued scores of cases in United States Court of Appeals (three en banc). Moreover, he has argued four cases in Supreme Court of the United States, as well as writing briefs for parties in seven other cases. One odd aspect of his Supreme Court practice is that each of these eleven cases was decided 9-0 – win or lose.
Paul has specialized more recently in free speech issues arising on the Internet. He has litigated cases in state and federal courts throughout the country about the identification of anonymous Internet speakers. His amicus curiae brief in Dendrite v. Doe, whose approach was adopted by New Jersey's Superior Court Appellate Division, has become the model for other cases. His Internet practice also includes the defense of trademark and copyright claims brought as a means of suppressing critical web sites. His cases in this area, such as Bosley Medical v. Kremer and Lamparello v. Falwell, have established the right to create internet “gripe" sites that include the trademark names of companies in their domain names and meta tags. In Smith v. Wal-Mart Stores and McCall v. National Security Agency, he defended the rights of parodists to make fun of Wal-Mart's trademarks and the seals of the NSA and Department of Homeland Security. In arguing against the issuance of prior restraints in Bank Julius Baer v. Wikileaks, he had the key insight that the case had been filed without subject matter jurisdiction. For several years, Paul chaired subcommittees (on domain name litigation or on keyword advertising) of the American Bar Association's Intellectual Property Section. He currently serves on the Legal Review Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia.
A description of his work in this area was published in the Washingtonian Magazine as “Paul Levy, the Web Bully's Worst Enemy." It is accessible at http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/paul-levy-the-web-bullys-worst-enemy/. His work was also recently described in Hill, Stars and Gripes: Legal challenges over online reviews seek to separate fact from fiction, ABA Journal (July 2016), available at http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/legal_challenges_over_online_reviews_seek_to_separate_fact_from_fiction.
Partner, Clare Locke LLP
Libby is one of the country’s most sought-after libel lawyers. She is a trusted counselor and fierce advocate for Fortune 100 companies and high-profile individuals facing existential reputational attacks from the national media and other influential publishers, achieving remarkable results for her clients both in and outside the courtroom. Court watchers have called her “as good as they get,” “aggressive and not afraid to litigate,” and someone who has the media savvy to handle high profile matters in the public eye.
After co-founding Clare Locke LLP in 2014, Libby rapidly rose to national prominence for a highly-publicized multi-million dollar trial victory against Rolling Stone magazine about a fabricated gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. In 2019, she was lead trial counsel and won a $26 million federal jury verdict on behalf of a successful North Carolina businessman who was defamed by a public company during a proxy fight. A commentator opined that “she was excellent in trial and she eviscerated the other side,” and the federal judge concluded that her vigorous cross-examination “exposed [Defendant’s] CEO as a non-credible witness.” A skilled appellate advocate and former federal circuit clerk, in 2019 Libby achieved a rare win against The New York Times on behalf of former Gov. Sarah Palin in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit arising out of a false and defamatory editorial. She is actively litigating matters against a variety of mainstream news outlets, including CNN and The New York Times.
Libby’s success in the courtroom gets her results in the newsroom. She regularly advises clients and their PR counsel in dealing with the national media in crisis situations, and some of her biggest wins are the false stories the public will never hear about. She has killed flawed articles, storylines, and broadcast segments in outlets including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The National Enquirer, and on Bloomberg, CBS and The Dr. Oz Show. Libby has also vindicated her clients’ reputations by obtaining myriad retractions of false publications. Examples include securing a $3.375 million settlement and video apology from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a complete retraction of a Bloomberg podcast, a multi-article correction from The Chicago Tribune, and the removal of a paperback edition book from publication by Simon & Schuster.
Recognized as an expert in libel law and the First Amendment, Libby has been ranked as a Band 1 global defamation/reputation management provider in Chambers & Partners HNW directory every year since its inception in 2016, and a Band 1 First Amendment Litigator in Chambers & Partners USA in 2020. She has numerous national awards and accolades from the National Law Journal, including being named as one of D.C.’s 40 Under 40 in 2019. She is regularly asked to speak on issues involving the First Amendment, media, and reputation, including publishing multiple op-eds in The Wall Street Journal and appearing as a guest on Fox News, CNN, and ABC’s 20/20. Libby has also served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and George Washington University Law School.
Libby graduated from NYU’s College of Arts and Science with a degree in Politics and Economics, and she received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. After law school, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and then began her career in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis. Perhaps the accomplishment of which she is most proud, Libby is a mom of five. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband and law partner, Tom Clare, their children, and the world’s most spoiled Labrador Retriever, Gipper.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
Dean and Professor of Law, Widener University Delaware School of Law
Rod Smolla is Dean and Professor of Law at the Delaware Law School of Widener University, in Wilmington, Delaware. He was previously the 11th President of Furman University, in Greenville, South Carolina, the Dean of the Law School at Washington and Lee University Law School, the Dean of the University of Richmond Law School, the Director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the College of William and Mary, and Senior Fellow and Project Director of the Washington Annenberg Program of Northwestern University. He has also been a faculty member at the DePaul, University of Illinois, and University of Arkansas law schools, and a visiting professor at the Duke, University of Georgia, University of Indiana, Denver University, and University of Melbourne law schools. As an educator, he has been an advocate for experiential learning, including greater emphasis on helping law students develop skills relating to counseling, problem-solving, negotiation, drafting, advocacy, civic engagement, pro bono service, legal ethics, and professionalism. He has emphasized diversity and community outreach and important institutional missions in higher education and legal education.
Smolla is a nationally-known scholar on matters relating to constitutional law, civil rights, freedom of speech, and mass media, particularly matters relating to libel and privacy. He is the author of five multi-volume legal treatises, all published by Thomson Reuters, which are updated twice annually: Law of Defamation; Smolla and Nimmer on Freedom of Speech; Rights and Liabilities in Media Content, Internet, Broadcast, and Print; Federal Civil Rights Acts; and, Law of Lawyer Advertising. He is also author of The First Amendment: Freedom of Expression, Regulation of Mass Media, Freedom of Religion (Carolina Academic Press 1999) (a law school casebook); and co-author of Constitutional Law: Structure and Rights in Our Federal System (6th Edition, 2010, with Dean William Banks). He is the editor each year of the First Amendment Law Handbook, published annually by Thomson Reuters. He was also editor of The Copyright Law Anthology published by Thomson Reuters. He is also the author of may trade and university press books, including Suing the Press: Libel, the Media, and Power (Oxford University Press 1986) (won ABA Silver Gavel Award Certificate of Merit); Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt: The First Amendment on Trial (St. Martin's Press 1988); Free Speech in an Open Society (Alfred A. Knopf 1992) (winner of the William O. Douglas Award); Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book (Crown Publishers 1999) (made into a television movie by FX, with Timothy Hutton playing the role of Rod Smolla); The Constitution Goes to College (New York University Press 2010). He was editor of A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court (Duke University Press 1995) (won ABA Civil Gavel Award). Smolla has published over 100 articles in law reviews and other publications.
Smolla has served as Chairman of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Defamation and Privacy Law, as Chairman of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Mass Communications Law, as a member of the American Bar Association Advisory Committee to the Forum on Mass Communications Law, and as a member of the First Amendment Advisory Board to the Media Institute, as the Director of the Annenberg Washington Program Libel Reform Project, and author of the Annenberg Libel Reform Report that emerged from the blue ribbon task force on that project. He served as a Director of the Media General Corporation, and as a Director of the American Arbitration Association. In 2011, he was appointed by Governor Nikki Haley to serve as a Commissioner on the South Carolina Commission of Higher Education, which included within its mission the oversight of all of South Carolina's public universities and colleges, and licensure and programmatic approval for all public and private educational programs within the state.
Smolla has been and remains an active litigator. He has participated as counsel or co-counsel in litigation matters in state and federal courts throughout the nation, and is a frequent advocate, having presented oral argument in numerous state and federal courts, including 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).
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Richard H. Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. His acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (now in its fourth edition), helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. The Law of Democracy systematically explores legal and policy issues concerning the structure of democratic elections and institutions, such as the role of money in politics, the design of election districts, the regulation of political parties, the design of voting systems, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and similar issues. He has written extensively on the rise of political polarization in the United States, the Voting Rights Act, the dysfunction of America’s political processes, the role of the Supreme Court in overseeing American democracy, the powers of the American President and Congress, and he has criticized excessively “romantic” understandings of democracy. In addition to his scholarship on these issues, he has written on national-security law, the design of the regulatory state, and American constitutional history and theory.
Respect for his expertise in these areas is reflected in frequent citations of his work in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the translation of his work into many languages, and his frequent public lectures and appearances around the world, including his nomination with the NBC News Team for an Emmy Award for coverage of the 2000 Presidential election litigation.
His work has been translated and published in Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In addition to his scholarship, Professor Pildes plays an active role litigating in these areas. He has won two cases before the United States Supreme Court, including a 2015 victory in Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, a case involving race and redistricting. He served as counsel to a group of former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission in litigation defending the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; as counsel in election litigation to the Puerto Rico Electoral Commission; as counsel to the government of Puerto Rico; as a federal court-appointed independent expert on voting rights litigation; and as counsel in successful Supreme Court litigation that challenged the way the United States Tax Court operated. He was also a senior legal advisor to the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of President Obama.
Pildes received his A.B. in physical chemistry summa cum laude from Princeton, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he served as Supreme Court Note Editor on the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing law in Boston, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan Law School, before joining the NYU School of Law in 2001.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Smith has authored over 40 articles on campaign finance reform, appearing in academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal and Georgetown Law Journal, and popular publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Journal, the Lehrer News Hour, Fox News Special Report, ABC News, Washington Journal, and numerous other national and local television and radio programs.
As an FEC Commissioner, Smith won plaudits for his integrity and refusal to put partisan interests ahead of his duties, as well as his steadfast support for free speech. For his honesty and integrity, the Wall Street Journal dubbed him, “the only honorable man in this bordello.” Smith now serves as the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital University Law School. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, and is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Smith also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies, is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute and is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and holds an honorary doctorate from Augustana College.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
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Richard J. Sullivan was sworn in as a United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit in October 2018. Before that, Judge Sullivan served for eleven years as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Prior to becoming a judge, he served as the General Counsel and Managing Director of Marsh Inc., the world's leading risk management and insurance brokerage firm. From 1994 to 2005, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he was Chief of the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit and Director of the New York/New Jersey Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. In 2003, he was awarded the Henry L. Stimson Medal from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In 1998, he was named the Federal Law Enforcement Association's Prosecutor of the Year. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, he was a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York and a law clerk to the Honorable David M. Ebel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, the College of William & Mary, and Chaminade High School on Long Island. From 1986 to 1987, he served as a New York City Urban Fellow under New York City Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward. Judge Sullivan is on the executive board of the New York American Inn of Court and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on sentencing and jurisprudence, and he previously served as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where he taught courses on white collar crime and trial advocacy and was named Adjunct Professor of the Year.
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Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice; Associate Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is an associate professor, teaching courses in Election Law, Corporate Governance, Business Entities, and Constitutional Law. Prior to joining Stetson's faculty, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was counsel in the Democracy Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law where she provided guidance on the issues of money in politics and the judiciary to state and federal lawmakers. She was an associate at Arnold & Porter LLP and a staffer for Senator Richard Durbin.
Professor Torres-Spelliscy has testified before Congress, and state and local legislative bodies as an expert on campaign finance reform. She has also helped draft legislation and Supreme Court briefs. She is the editor of the 2010 edition of the Brennan Center's campaign finance treatise, "Writing Reform: A Guide to Drafting State and Local Campaign Finance Laws."
She researches and speaks publicly on campaign finance law as well as judicial selection. She has spoken at symposia at 26 universities around the nation. She presented at the 2013 and the 2015 Annual Conventions of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and at the 2014 Annual Convention of the American Constitution Society, and the 2011, the 2014, and the 2016 Annual Conventions of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL). In 2016 she spoke at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) at a forum on dark money and foreign money in U.S. elections.
She is the author of the book Corporate Citizen? An Argument for the Separation of Corporation and State (Carolina Academic Press, 2016).
As well as publishing in law reviews, such as the NYU Law Review, the University ofPennsylvania Law Review, the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy, and the Montana Law Review, Professor Torres-Spelliscy has been published in the New York Times, New York Law Journal, Slate, L.A. Times, U.S. News and World Report, Boston Review, Roll Call, Business Week, Forbes, The Atlantic, USA Today, Business Ethics Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, The Hill, Huffington Post, The Root.com, Judicature, The Nation, Salon.com, Tampa Bay Times, The Progressive, CNN.com, Medium, and the ABA Judges Journal. She has also been quoted by the media in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New York Times, Time,Bloomberg, Mother Jones, Newsweek on Air, SCOTUS Blog, Politico, Slate, The National Journal, USA Today, L.A. Times, Boston Globe, NBC.com, WMNF, Sirius Radio, National Public Radio, Fox, Voice America, CSPAN, DNA TV, and NY1.
In 2014, Stetson University College of Law awarded Professor Torres-Spelliscy the Dickerson-Brown award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship. In 2013, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was named as a member of the Lawyers of Color's "50 Under 50" list of minority law professors making an impact in legal education. In 2012, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was named as a Top Wonk by the website TopWonks.org. She was awarded tenure in 2016. In 2017, she was elected to be Chair of the AALS Section on Election Law for a term that starts in 2018.
Professor Torres-Spelliscy is a Brennan Center Fellow, a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, a member of the Board of Directors of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, a former member of the Board of Directors of the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which was awarded the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.
Why Nineteenth Century Bans on “Sectarian” Aid Are Facially Unconstitutional: New Evidence on Plain Meaning
Robert G. Natelson
Note from the Editor: This article presents original research on the nineteenth century meaning of...
Lunch with John Yoo
Reno Lawyers Chapter
Reno, NVThe Future of Libel Law
Paul Alan Levy, Libby Locke, Jerry E. Smith, Rodney Smolla, Eugene Volokh
Libel law leads two lives. Most famously, there is the life of presidential candidates and...
The Future of Libel Law
2017 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCCyber, Robotic, and Space Weapons in International Conflict
Vincent Vitkowsky
A review of: Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for...
The President's "One In, Two Out" Executive Order Challenged in Court
The President issued his Executive Order for Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs on January...
Panel 2: Campaign Finance and Free Speech
John O. McGinnis, Richard H. Pildes, Bradley A. Smith, Richard Sullivan, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy
Congress' passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 did not end the debate...
Panel 2: Campaign Finance and Free Speech
John O. McGinnis, Richard H. Pildes, Bradley A. Smith, Richard Sullivan, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy
Congress' passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 did not end the debate...
Topics
Federalist Society Presents 2017 Bator Award
On Saturday, March 4, the Federalist Society presented the 2017 Paul M. Bator Award to...
Panel 2: Campaign Finance and Free Speech
2017 National Student Symposium
New York, NY