Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Dennis Jacobs is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He became Chief Judge on October 1, 2006. At the time of his appointment in 1992, he was a partner in the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Judge Jacobs received his B.A. degree from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1964; his M.A. degree from New York University in 1965; and his J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law in 1973.
Judge Jacobs was a lecturer in the English Department of Queens College of the City University of New York from 1967 until 1969. He was in private practice from 1973 with the New York law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, serving as a partner there from 1980 until his judicial appointment.
In 1997-2004, Judge Jacobs was a member of the Committee on Judicial Resources of the Judicial Conference of the United States; starting in 1999 he was chair of that committee.
Judge Jacobs is a native of New York City.
Former United States National Security Advisor
John R. Bolton served as Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor from April 2018 to September 2019.
Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Bolton served as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI); of counsel at Kirkland & Ellis; a contributor to FOX News Channel and FOX Business Network; and his op-ed articles were regularly featured in major media publications.
Ambassador Bolton was appointed as United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations on August 1, 2005 and served until his resignation in December 2006. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Bolton served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from May 2001 to May 2005.
Other positions he has previously held include Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs at the Department of State, 1989-1993; Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, 1985-1989; Assistant Administrator for Program and Policy Coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1982-1983 and General Counsel, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1981-1982.
Ambassador Bolton is the author of Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the U.N. and Abroad, published by Simon and Shuster (November 2007) and How Barack Obama is Endangering our National Sovereignty, published by Encounter Books (April 2010).
Ambassador Bolton was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale College in 1970, and received his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1974. He currently resides in Maryland with his wife, Gretchen. They have one daughter, Jennifer Sarah, who also graduated from Yale College, and received her MBA and SM degrees from MIT in 2014 and is currently a senior manager at Nissan’s facility in Nashville.
Former President & CEO, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Eugene B. Meyer, former President and CEO of the Federalist Society, has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for more than 40 years. He is responsible for shepherding the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law. The Society now includes a Student Chapter at nearly every ABA-accredited law school in the country and Lawyers Chapters in 220 major cities across the nation. Gene earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Gene currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society. He holds the title of International Chess Master.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
Former President & CEO, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Eugene B. Meyer, former President and CEO of the Federalist Society, has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for more than 40 years. He is responsible for shepherding the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law. The Society now includes a Student Chapter at nearly every ABA-accredited law school in the country and Lawyers Chapters in 220 major cities across the nation. Gene earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Gene currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society. He holds the title of International Chess Master.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
Former President & CEO, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Eugene B. Meyer, former President and CEO of the Federalist Society, has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for more than 40 years. He is responsible for shepherding the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law. The Society now includes a Student Chapter at nearly every ABA-accredited law school in the country and Lawyers Chapters in 220 major cities across the nation. Gene earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Gene currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society. He holds the title of International Chess Master.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
Professor of Social and Political Theory, University of Buckingham
Norman Patrick Barry was an English political philosopher best known as an exponent of classical liberalism. For much of his career he was a professor of social and political theory at the University of Buckingham. He passed away in October 2008.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
After graduating from law school, where he served on the Harvard Law Review and won the Sears Prize, Professor Peller clerked for the Honorable Morris Lasker of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He was a member of the University of Virginia Law faculty from 1982-1988 prior to joining the Georgetown faculty. He has taught Constitutional Law, Contracts, Torts, Civil Rights, Bargain, Exchange & Liability, Criminal Procedure, Radical Legal Thought, and Jurisprudence at Georgetown. His writings are primarily in the field of legal theory and legal history. His most recent book is Critical Race Consciousness: Reconsidering American Ideologies of Racial Justice (Paradigm 2012).
Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Mr. Stone joined the faculty in 1973, after serving as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. He later served as Dean of the Law School (1987-1994) and Provost of the University of Chicago (1994-2002).
Stone is the author of many books on constitutional law, including Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century (2017); Speaking Out: Reflections of Law, Liberty and Justice (2010 & 2016); Top Secret: When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark (2007), War and Liberty: An American Dilemma (2007), Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime (2004), and Eternally Vigilant: Free Speech in the Modern Era(Chicago 2002). He is also an editor of two leading casebooks, Constitutional Law (7th ed. 2013) and The First Amendment (5th ed. 2016). Stone is an editor of The Supreme Court Reviewand chief editor of a twenty-volume series, Inalienable Rights, which is being published by the Oxford University Press.
Stone was appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which evaluated the government’s foreign intelligence surveillance programs in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the America Law Institute, the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Council for Democracy and Technology. He has served as Chair of the Board of the American Constitution Society and Chair of the Board of the Chicago Children’s Choir.
Stone has also written amicus briefs for constitutional scholars in a number of Supreme Court cases, including Obergefell v. Hodges, Whole Woman’s Heath v. Hellerstadt, Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, United States v. Stevens, and Rasul v. Bush. He was also one of the lawyers who represented President Bill Clinton in the Supreme Court in Clinton v. Jones.
Vice Chairman, Caris Life Sciences
Brian J. Brille joined Caris Life Sciences in January of 2018 as Vice Chairman of the Company. Mr. Brille currently provides executive leadership for strategic, corporate and business development activities. He is also a member of the Board of Directors.
Prior to joining Caris Life Sciences, Mr. Brille worked in various capacities for Bank of America Merrill Lynch since 2009. Most recently, Mr. Brille was based in Hong Kong and served as Chairman/President Asia Pacific for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, with responsibility for the combined Asia Pacific platform across 12 countries and 4 business lines. Prior to this, he served as Global Head of Corporate & Investment Banking at Bank of America. He was also responsible for building and leading Bank of America’s Healthcare Corporate & Investment Banking business, as well as previously establishing and leading Morgan Stanley’s Healthcare Services Group. In 2003, he was named Investment Dealer’s Digest Banker of the Year.
Mr. Brille holds a JD from Stanford Law School, a Masters of Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a BS in Accounting from the University of Illinois. Mr. Brille currently serves on the Asia Pacific Council of The Nature Conservancy, and is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Former Dean, Stanford Law School
John Hart Ely was one of the most important constitutional scholars of his generation. He was born in 1938 and died in 2003. As a summer associate following his second year at YLS, Ely assisted Abe Fortas in litigating Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established a criminal defendant's right to counsel. After graduating from Yale, Ely served as a staff attorney on the Warren Commission, and then clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren before going on to serve as a public defender in San Diego. Later in his career, he served as General Counsel of the Department of Transportation during the Ford Administration.
Ely taught at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Miami School of Law and served as dean at Stanford. In 1980, Ely published the highly influential Democracy and Distrust, which developed a theory of judicial review that emphasized the role of the courts in safeguarding the democratic process. In 1993, Ely published War and Responsibility, a comprehensive constitutional analysis of war powers. His last book, On Constitutional Ground, was published in 1996 and covers a variety of constitutional law issues, including federalism and criminal procedure.
Nobel Laureate
Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science, was a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, from 1977 to 2006. He was also Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1946 to 1976, and was a member of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1937 to 1981.
Professor Friedman was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988 and received the National Medal of Science the same year. He is widely regarded as the leader of the Chicago School of monetary economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of government policy and as a determinant of business cycles and inflation.
In addition to his scientific work, Professor Friedman had also written extensively on public policy, always with primary emphasis on the preservation and extension of individual freedom. His most important books in this field are (with Rose D. Friedman) Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962); Bright Promises, Dismal Performance (Thomas Horton and Daughters, 1983), which consists mostly of reprints of tri-weekly columns that he wrote for Newsweek from 1966 to 1983; and (with Rose Friedman) Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), which complements a ten-part TV series of the same name, shown over PBS in early 1980, and (with Rose D. Friedman) Tyranny of the Status Quo (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), which complements a three-part TV series of the same name, shown over PBS in early 1984.
He was a member of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (1969-70) and of the President’s Commission on White House Fellows (1971-73). He was a member of President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board, a group of experts outside the government, named in early 1981 by President Reagan.
He had also been active in public affairs, serving as an informal economic adviser to Senator Goldwater in his unsuccessful campaign for the presidency in 1964, to Richard Nixon in his successful campaign in 1968, to President Nixon subsequently, and to Ronald Reagan in his 1980 campaign.
He had published many books and articles, most notably A Theory of the Consumption Function (University of Chicago Press, 1957), The Optimum Quantity of Money and Other Essays (Aldine, 1969), and (with A. J. Schwartz) A Monetary History of the United States (Princeton University Press, 1963), Monetary Statistics of the United States (Columbia University Press, 1970), and Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom (University of Chicago Press, 1982).
Professor Friedman was a past president of the American Economic Association, the Western Economic Association, and the Mont Pelerin Society, and is a member of the American Philosophical Society and of the National Academy of Sciences.
He also had been awarded honorary degrees by universities in the United States, Japan, Israel, and Guatemala, as well as the Grand Cordon of the First Class Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese government in 1986.
Friedman received a B.A. in 1932 from Rutgers University, an M.A. in 1933 from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in 1946 from Columbia University.
He and his wife established the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, for the purpose of promoting parental choice of the schools their children attend. The Foundation is based in Indianapolis and its president and chief executive officer is Robert C. Enlow.
He and his wife published their memoirs: Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
On November 16, 2006, Dr. Friedman passed away at the age of 94 in San Francisco.
Panel Proceedings: The Pinochet Case & Head of State Immunity
Kenneth Roth, Jeffrey Greenbaum, Jeremy A. Rabkin, Dennis Jacobs, John R. Bolton
Editor's Note: This issue is dedicated to a panel discussion on International Law and Head...
Banquet, Presentation of the Paul M. Bator Award [Archive Collection]
Miranda Perry Fleischer, Eugene B. Meyer, Michael Stokes Paulsen
On February 23-24, 1996, the Federalist Society held its fifteenth annual National Student Symposium at...
Banquet, Presentation of the Paul M. Bator Award [Archive Collection]
Miranda Perry Fleischer, Eugene B. Meyer, Michael Stokes Paulsen
On February 23-24, 1996, the Federalist Society held its fifteenth annual National Student Symposium at...
Banquet, Presentation of the Paul M. Bator Award [Archive Collection]
1996 National Student Symposium
Stanford, CA1987 National Student Symposium
The Crisis in Legal Theory and the Revival of Classical Jurisprudence
Chicago, ILPanel I: The Classical Theory of Law [Archive Collection]
1987 National Student Symposium
Chicago, ILKeynote Address by Milton Friedman [Archive Collection]
1986 National Student Symposium
Stanford, CA