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.
Former General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, Former United States Ambassador to East Timor
Grover Joseph Rees is a Louisiana native whose family has lived in the Breaux Bridge/Lafayette area since the 1700s.
His first job after college was as an assistant to Congressman Dave Treen (R-LA3), who had just been elected as the first Republican Congressman from Louisiana since Reconstruction.
Rees graduated with honors from LSU Law School, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Louisiana Law Review. While in law school he worked on Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign and was a Reagan delegate from Louisiana to the Republican National Convention. He also served as a member of the Lafayette Parish Republican Executive Committee and as a board member of Acadiana Right to Life.
In 1979, when Congressman Treen ran successfully for Governor, he asked Rees to write his authorized biography. The book, Dave Treen of Louisiana, was read and discussed widely during the campaign and after Treen’s election.
In 1985-86 Rees served as Special Counsel for Judicial Selection in President Reagan’s Justice Department, working closely with Attorney General Ed Meese to reorganize the judicial selection process to make it more philosophically oriented. These efforts resulted in the appointment of over 100 federal judges and were widely credited with transforming the federal judiciary.
From 1986 through 1991 Rees served as Chief Justice of the High Court of American Samoa, an Article I federal judicial position.
From 1991 through 1993 he was General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
In 1995 Rees went to work for the new Republican Congress as staff director and chief counsel of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. He worked with subcommittee chairman Chris Smith (R.-N.J.) to cut U.S. funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation and other organizations that perform and promote abortions overseas. Rees also worked on the drafting and enactment of the International Religious Freedom Act, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and other legislation that has helped to bring U.S. foreign policy into closer alignment not only with our national interests but also with our values.
In 2001-2002 Rees worked for Congressman Henry Hyde (R.-Ill.), who was then serving as Chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
From 2002 until 2006 Rees served as the first United States Ambassador to newly independent East Timor.
From 2006 until 2009 Ambassador Rees was the United States Special Representative for Social Issues, responsible for representing the United States on issues relating to vulnerable persons and the family within the United Nations system.
Ambassador Rees retired from government service in January 2009 and returned to Lafayette. He is married to Lan Dai Nguyen Rees and is a member of St. Genevieve’s Catholic parish in Lafayette. He was recently elected to serve as a member of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee.
Senior Vice President, UN Foundation and President, the Better World Campaign
One of nation’s most esteemed experts on U.S.-UN affairs, Peter Yeo leads the Better World Campaign’s strategic engagement with Congress, the Administration, and organizations supporting stronger American leadership on the world stage. Yeo’s leadership has helped advance critical legislation in the U.S. Congress to ensure the country meets its obligations to the United Nations, UN Peacekeeping Operations, and UN agencies and organizations.
Yeo joined the Better World Campaign in 2009 with over twenty years of legislative, analytical, and management experience, including senior roles on Capitol Hill and in the State Department. Prior to arriving at UN Foundation, Yeo spent a decade as Deputy Staff Director on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has worked on a broad range of foreign policy and foreign aid issues, including leading negotiations for the landmark HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 — PEPFAR — as well as the $50 billion reauthorization of the law in 2008. He also shepherded into law several measures dealing with China, Tibet, Burma, and East Timor.
Prior to his work with the Committee, Yeo served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. State Department, where he successfully advocated for repayment of the U.S. arrears to the UN, and was part of the U.S. delegation to the climate negotiations in Kyoto.
Yeo holds an master’s in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Board Member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.
Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law; Director, Center for Labor, New York University School of Law
Samuel Estreicher is a nationally preeminent scholar in US and international-comparative labor and employment law and arbitration law. He has authored more than a dozen books, including Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America (with Joy Radice, Cambridge Univ. 2016); leading casebooks on legislation and regulatory state, labor law and employment discrimination and employment law; and published more than 200 articles in professional and academic journals. He served as Chief Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Employment Law (2015). After clerking for Judge Harold Leventhal of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, practicing in a labor law firm, and clerking for Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. of the US Supreme Court, Prof. Estreicher joined the NYU School of Law faculty in 1978. In addition to serving as counsel to major law firms, he is the former secretary of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the American Bar Association, a former chair of the Committee on Labor and Employment Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.15). He maintains an active appellate and ADR practice. The Labor and Employment Research Association awarded him its 2010 Susan C. Eaton Award for Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner. In recent years, Estreicher also has published work in public international law and authored several briefs in the Supreme Court and US courts of appeals on employment and US foreign relations law issues. Prof. Estreicher received his BA from Columbia College, his MS in industrial relations from Cornell University, and his JD from Columbia Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He is a member of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and was appointed in 2016 by the UN Secretary General as a member of the UN’s Internal Justice Commission.
Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, University of California, Davis School of the Law
Professor Chimène Keitner is a leading authority on international law and civil litigation, and served as the 27th Counselor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State. She has authored two books and dozens of articles, essays, and book chapters on questions surrounding the relationship among law, communities, and borders, including issues of jurisdiction, extraterritoriality, foreign sovereign and foreign official immunity, and the historical understandings underpinning current practice in these areas.
Professor Keitner holds a bachelor’s degree in history and literature with high honors from Harvard, a JD from Yale, where she was a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow, and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
Among other professional service, Professor Keitner has served on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law and as Co-Chair of the ASIL International Law in Domestic Courts Interest Group. She is a member of the American Law Institute and an Adviser on the ALI’s Fourth Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. She is also a founding co-chair of the International Law Association’s Study Group on Individual Responsibility in International Law.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.
After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and seventy scholarly articles.
Judge, Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and Arbitrator Member, Twenty Essex Chambers
Charles’s 55-year career in the law has combined extensive practice at the bar with distinguished public service, both national and international. For nearly 40 years he has focused on public international law and international dispute resolution.
As counsel or arbitrator he has handled cases on all six continents, principally under the rules of the ICC, UNCITRAL, LCIA, AAA, United Nations Compensation Commission, ICSID, Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Insurance and Reinsurance Arbitration Society and LMAA. These cases have involved a wide variety of commercial disputes as well as issues of public international law, particularly involving the oil and gas sector, major infrastructural projects, expropriations, and other investment disputes, including ones arising under both bilateral and multilateral investment treaties.
Charles started his career with White & Case LLP in New York, before serving for four years in the United States Department of State in Washington, DC, concluding as its Acting Legal Adviser. He then rejoined White & Case LLP, co-founding its Washington, DC office, where his practice came to be comprised almost exclusively of substantial international arbitrations.
He has served continuously since 1983 as a judge of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, The Netherlands. That service was interrupted for some months in 1987 by White House service as Deputy Special Counsellor to President Reagan. Charles resumed partnership in White & Case LLP from 1988 until joining 20 Essex Street in 2001. Since 2014 he has also served as a Judge ad hoc at the International Court of Justice.
In 2015 Charles was only the fourth ever recipient of the Global Arbitration Review Lifetime Achievement Award.
Professor of Law and Global Affairs Faculty Director, LL.M. in International Human Rights Law; Global Director, Notre Dame Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, Notre Dame Law School
Diane A. Desierto joined the Law School in January 2021 as Professor of Law and LL.M. Faculty Director, with a joint appointment at the Keough School of Global Affairs. Desierto teaches, publishes, and practices in the areas of international law and human rights, international economic law and development, international arbitration, maritime security, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Law, and comparative public law. At Notre Dame, Desierto is a Faculty Fellow at the Klau Institute for Civil Human Rights, Kellogg Institute of International Studies, Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, Pulte Institute for Global Development, and Nanovic Institute of European Studies. She is also Co-Principal Investigator of the Notre Dame Reparations Design and Compliance Lab.
Desierto is a Member and former Chair-Rapporteur of the Expert Group of the United Nations Working Group on the Right to Development, Resource Expert for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), former Director of Studies and Faculty of the Hague Academy of International Law, President of the Friends of the Hague Academy Foundation, and the Philippines Focal Point for the International Criminal Court Bar Association. She is active as international counsel at matters successfully litigated at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the UN Human Rights Committee, the Philippine Supreme Court and Southeast Asian agencies, and was appointed by the Philippine Supreme Court as Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the Philippines Judicial Academy. Desierto is a Member of the Editorial Boards of the European Journal of International Law (and Editor of its leading international law blog EJIL:Talk!), Journal of World Investment and Trade, and the Global Community Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence, and the Kluwer Law monograph series on Human Society and International Law, and also serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of international journals such as International Law Studies, the Revista Chilena de Derecho, and the Indonesian Journal of International and Comparative Law. Desierto previously taught as tenure-track/tenured law faculty at the University of the Philippines, Peking University School of Transnational Law in China, and the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law. She is a recipient of faculty fellowships awarded by Stanford University's Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and the Stanford Center for Human Rights and International Justice, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, the Humboldt-Potsdam-Berlin Senior Fellowship, the East-West Center in Honolulu, the Grotius Fellowship at University of Michigan Law School, and the National University of Singapore's Asian Law Institute Fellowship. Desierto has served Visiting Professor appointments at the University of Paris-Nanterre X Faculty of Law, University of the Philippines College of Law Graduate Program at Bonifacio Global City, the University of Navarre Faculty of Law in Spain, and Universidad Panamericana Faculty of Law in Mexico City.
Desierto holds JSD and LLM degrees from Yale Law School, as well as JD cum laude class salutatorian and BSc Economics summa cum laude class valedictorian degrees from the University of the Philippines, and was a former Yale Law clerk at the International Court of Justice for H.E. Judges Bruno Simma and Bernardo Sepulveda-Amor. She authored and/or edited several books, such as Necessity and National Emergency Clauses: Sovereignty in Modern Treaty Interpretation (Martinus Nijhoff, 2012, recipient of the Ambrose Gherini Prize in International Law at Yale Law), Public Policy in International Economic Law: The ICESCR in Trade, Investment and Finance (Oxford University Press, 2015), ASEAN Law and Regional Integration: Governance and the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia's Single Market (with D. Cohen, Routledge, 2020), The International Legal System: Cases and Materials (8th Edition, with M.E. O'Connell, N. Roht-Arriaza, and D. Bradlow, 2022), as well as, to date, around 180 law review articles, book chapters, essays, and book reviews with leading international law journals and publishers in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is a member of the Institute of Transnational Arbitration Academic Council, the UNCITRAL Academic Forum on Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform, the 2019 Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration Drafting Team, Co-Chair of the Oxford Investment Claims Summer Academy, and has been recognized repeatedly by Who's Who Legal as one of the Future Leaders in Arbitration. The 2020 ND Women Lead featured Desierto here.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Senior Fellow, The Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Prior to his joining the faculty, he was a visiting law professor at NYU from 2007 through 2009. He served as the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2000 to 2024. Since 2024 to the present he is a senior lecturer at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas—Austin. Epstein is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His initial law school appointment was at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972. Epstein received an LL.D., h.c. from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and was a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences, also from 1983. to 2022 He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991-2001. From 2001 to 2010 he was a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago.
His newest book, The Myth of Birthright Citizenship: What the Fourteenth Amendment Really Says was published in 2026 (Encounter Books). Prior to that he has published many books including, The Dubious Morality of the Modern Administrative State (Roman & Littlefield 2020).Earlier he published th Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (Harvard 2014) iHis previous books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (Harvard 2011); The Case Against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection of Property Rights (Oxford 2008); Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less is More (AEI 2007); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press. 2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Cato 2006); Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 8th ed. 2004); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago, 2003); Torts (Aspen Law & Business 1999); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books, 1998): Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care (Addison-Wesley, 1997); Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995); Bargaining With the State (Princeton, 1993); Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard , 1992); Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985); and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980). He has also edited(with Catherine M. Sharkey) Cases and Materials on the Law of Torts (10th edition 2012).
Professor Epstein has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects. He has taught courses in administrative law, antitrust law, civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers' compensation.
Professor Epstein also writes a regular column for Civitas Institute, which also sponsors his podcast, The Libertarian with Charles C.W. Cooke, and Law Talk, with Cooke and John Yoo. He also does a podcast with John Batchelor. And appears regularly on the Freedom File with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
Director, International Legal Studies Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Michael Newton is an expert on terrorism, accountability, transnational justice, and conduct of hostilities issues. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 90 books, articles, op-eds and book chapters. He has been an expert witness in terrorism related trials and is admitted to the counsel list of the International Criminal Court, where, in 2018, he helped prepare the appeal of Jean-Pierre Bemba and participated in oral arguments in the Appeals Chamber. At Vanderbilt, he developed and teaches the innovative International Law Practice Lab, which provides expert assistance to judges, lawyers, legislatures, governments, and policy makers around the world. Professor Newton is most recently the editor of The United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual: Commentary and Critique, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
An authority on the law of armed conflict, Professor Newton served as the senior adviser to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the U.S. State Department from January 1999 to August 2002, during which he implemented a wide range of policy positions, including U.S. support to accountability mechanisms worldwide. He negotiated the “Elements of Crimes” for the International Criminal Court, and was the senior member of the team teaching international law to the first group of Iraqis who began to think about accountability mechanisms and a constitutional structure in November 2000. He shuttled to Baghdad repeatedly to aid international and Iraqi lawyers and jurists in drafting the Statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal while serving as the International Law Adviser to the Judicial Chambers from 2006 to 2008. He began assisting Iraqi officials, victims and civil society groups on legal issues associated with documentation and investigation of crimes committed by Da’esh on Iraqi soil days after Yazidi victims fled towards Mount Sinjar. He was the U.S. representative on the U.N. Planning Mission for the Sierra Leone Special Court and a founding member of its academic consortium. He is an elected member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law and on the expert roster of Justice Rapid Response. In addition to teaching the Practice Lab, he develops and coordinates externships and educational opportunities for students interested in international legal issues, having supervised more than 150 such opportunities.
Professor Newton has served on the executive council of the American Society of International Law and as an invited expert for the Genocide Prevention Task Force established by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is currently on the Advisory Board of the ABA International Criminal Court Project.
Professor Newton served in the U.S. Army more than 21 years, beginning with his commission from the U.S. Military Academy in May 1984 as an armor officer in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor at Fort Carson, Colorado. After his selection for the Funded Legal Education Program, Newton served as chief of operational law with the Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) during Operation Desert Storm, and as the group judge advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne). His deployments include Northern Iraq on Operation Provide Comfort to assist Kurdish civilians, and Haiti with 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), where he organized and led human rights and rules of engagement education for multinational forces, including police. He has taught international and operational law at the Judge Advocate General's School and Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taught international law at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, Gates Corporation
Matthew R. A. Heiman joined the Company in May 2026 and has served as the Company’s Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary since June 2026. As Chief Legal Officer, Mr. Heiman is responsible for all legal functions for Gates, including securities and corporate governance, M&A, litigation, commercial, regulatory, compliance, patents and trademarks, real estate, employment and labor, sustainability and environmental matters. Prior to joining Gates, Mr. Heiman held senior legal leadership roles at Waystar, where he served as Chief Legal & Administrative Officer from 2023 to 2025 and as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary from 2020 to 2023. Prior to that, he was with Johnson Controls, where he served as Vice President, Corporate Secretary, and Associate General Counsel. Mr. Heiman has been a Senior Fellow for the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law since 2018.
Co-Chair, Center for American Security
General Keith Kellogg was born in Dayton, Ohio, grew up in California, and 23 global and stateside military moves later, settled in Virginia, where he serves as co-Chair of the Center for American Security at AFPI. Kellogg is a highly decorated, retired three-star Army General and has extensive experience in the military and international business. Most recently, he was the National Security Advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence. He also served as the Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary of the National Security Council. Kellogg has wide-ranging experience in Europe, the Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa. He has served as an author and contributor on Fox News and CNN. Kellogg graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in Political Science and went on to receive his master’s degree in International Studies from Kansas University. Kellogg and his wife, Paige, have three children, and love nothing more than having their four grandchildren stay with them and spoil them with anything they want. It drives their parents nuts.
Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Kori Schake leads foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony, and with Jim Mattis the editor of Warriors and Citizens: American Views on Our Military. Dr. Schake has taught at Stanford, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and West Point. She has also had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council.
Judicial Law Clerk, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida
Nitin is a recent graduate of Cornell Law School. Before his time in Ithaca, he majored in International Studies and Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and focused on power competition in South Asia during his graduate studies at the University of Oxford.
Associate Dean for Research Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law Director, Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Ingrid Wuerth is a leading scholar of foreign affairs, public international law and transnational litigation. She joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2007, was appointed director of the International Legal Studies Program in 2009, and was appointed director of the Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program in 2018. She was named to the newly endowed Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law in 2015. Professor Wuerth has served on the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law and on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute and was named as a Reporter for the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. She has received numerous honors and fellowships, including the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Fulbright Senior Scholar award, the German Chancellor's Fellowship, election to the German Society of International Law, election to the Order of the Coif and many teaching awards. She clerked for Judge Jan E. DuBois in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and for Judge Jane Roth on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The class of 2018 elected Professor Wuerth to give the commencement address. She is a contributing editor at Lawfare.
White Burkett Miller Professor of History and J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance, University of Virginia
Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the University of Virginia, where he has also served as dean of the Graduate School and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs. His scholarly work has focused on critical episodes in American and world history.
He was a trial and appellate lawyer and then a career diplomat before taking academic positions at Harvard, then Virginia. Before and during his academic career, he has served at all levels of American government. His federal service during five administrations has included positions in the White House, State Department, and the Pentagon. His last full-time government position was as the Counselor of the Department of State, a deputy to Secretary Condoleezza Rice.
He directed a small and short-lived federal agency, the 9/11 Commission. He also directed an earlier bipartisan commission on election reform, chaired by former Presidents Carter and Ford, that led to successful passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002. More recently he was managing director of “Rework America,” a landmark project on American economic opportunity in the digital age, organized by the Markle Foundation.
He is one of the few individuals ever to serve on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Boards for presidents of both parties, in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He has also been a member of the Defense Policy Board for Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and a member of the board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Judge, United States District Court, Southern District of Florida
On April 4, 2019, Judge Altman was confirmed to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. At 36, he became the youngest federal district court judge in the country—and the youngest federal judge ever appointed in the Southern District of Florida.
Judge Altman received a BA from Columbia University, where he played quarterback on the football team and pitched for the baseball team—earning All-Ivy honors. Judge Altman received his JD from the Yale Law School, where he was projects editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, the Judge clerked on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for the Honorable Stanley Marcus.
Judge Altman then became a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, where he twice received the Director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys’ Award for Superior Performance by a federal prosecutor. In 2013, Judge Altman was named “Federal Prosecutor of the Year” by the Miami-Dade Chiefs of Police and the Law Enforcement Officers’ Charitable Foundation.
In 2014, Judge Altman became a partner at the Miami law firm of Podhurst Orseck, where he represented the victims of airplane crashes and bank fraud conspiracies.
Distinguished Professor of History, Professor of Political Science and European Studies, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Vanderbilt University
Thomas Alan Schwartz is a historian of the foreign relations of the United States, with related interests in American politics, the history of international relations, Modern European history, and biography. His most recent book is Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (Hill and Wang, 2020). The book has received considerable notice and acclaim. Harvard’s University’s Charles Maier has written: "Thomas Schwartz's superbly researched political biography reveals the brilliance, self-serving ego, and vulnerability of America's most remarkable diplomat in the twentieth century, even as it provides a history of U.S. engagement in global politics as it moved beyond bipolarity." Earlier in his career, Schwartz was the author of America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Harvard, 1991), which was translated into German, Die Atlantik Brücke (Ullstein, 1992). This book received the Stuart Bernath Book Prize of the Society of American Foreign Relations, and the Harry S. Truman Book Award, given by the Truman Presidential Library. He is also the author of Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Harvard, 2003), which examined the Johnson Administration’s policy toward Europe and assessed the impact of the war in Vietnam on its other foreign policy objectives. He is the co-editor with Matthias Schulz of The Strained Alliance: U.S.-European Relations from Nixon to Carter, (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Professor Schwartz has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the German Historical Society, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Center for the Study of European Integration. He has served as President of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations. He served on the United States Department of State’s Historical Advisory Committee as the representative of the Organization of American Historians from 2005-2008. Professor Schwartz received The Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching on April 3, 2013 at the Spring Faculty Assembly, Vanderbilt University. In 2008 Professor Schwartz received the Annual Alumni Education Award from the Vanderbilt Alumni Association. Schwartz is the recipient of the 2008 Book Award by Chi Chapter of the Kappa Alpha Order. This award is given to a faculty member who has been particularly influential in the lives and education of members of KAO. Professor Schwartz presented, "The Arab Spring: Revolution in the Middle East," on April 19, 2011, as part of the Samuel L. Shannon Distinguished Lecture Series at Tennessee State University. Professor Schwartz has also presented lectures for the OAH Distinguished Lecturers Program.
Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs; Professor of Public Affairs and History, University of Texas
Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the University's Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Dr. Suri is the author and editor of eleven books on contemporary politics and foreign policy, most recently Civil War By Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy. His other books include The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office; Henry Kissinger and the American Century; Liberty's Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama; and Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy (with Robert Hutchings).
Dr. Suri writes for major newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Fortune, The American Prospect and Wired — as well as for various online sites and blogs. He is a popular public lecturer, and appears frequently on radio and television.
Dr. Suri teaches courses on strategy and decision-making, leadership, globalization, international relations and modern history. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses, and he teaches and serves as academic director for the Executive Master in Public Leadership program (EMPL) at LBJ. His research and teaching have received numerous prizes. In 2007 Smithsonian magazine named him one of America's "Top Young Innovators" in the arts and sciences. In 2018 he received the Pro Bene Meritis Award for Contributions to the Liberal Arts. In the same year also received the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Texas at Austin.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, The Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also the Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War; Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare; and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
He is a co-author of volumes 1 and 2 of R. Rossum, G. Tarr, V. Munoz & J. Yoo American Constitution Law (Routledge, 2026), and a co-editor of the eight-volume series on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, We Hold These Truths, with Yuval Levin and Adam White of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, Seoul National University, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Keio University, Trento University, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of Founding Forward, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Ulysses Grant Institute, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Originalism Lectureship.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Director, Asia & Latin American Program, Inter-American Dialogue
Margaret Myers is director of the Asia & Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, adjunct researcher with the Núcleo Milenio sobre los Impactos de China en América Latina (ICLAC), and a senior advisor to the United States Institute of Peace. She established the Dialogue’s China and Latin America Working Group in 2011 to examine China’s growing presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. Myers also developed the China-Latin America Finance Database, the first publicly available source of empirical data on Chinese state lending in Latin America, in cooperation with Global China Initiative at Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center.
In addition to maintaining the Dialogue’s China and Latin America and 美洲对话 blogs, Myers has published numerous articles on Chinese leadership dynamics, international capital flows, Chinese agricultural policy, and Asia-Latin America relations, among other topics. The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations and The Changing Currents of Trans-Pacific Integration: China, the TPP, and Beyond, her co-edited volumes with Dr. Carol Wise and Dr. Adrian Hearn, respectively, were published in 2016. Myers has testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Senate Finance and Foreign Relations Committees, and the US-China Security and Economic Commission on the China-Latin America relationship. She is also regularly featured in major domestic and international media, including the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, El Comercio, El País, Folha de São Paulo, CNN en Español, and BBC. In 2018, she was identified by Global Americans as part of the “new generation of public intellectuals.”
Before arriving at the Dialogue, Myers worked as a Latin America analyst and China analyst for the US Department of Defense, during which time she was deployed with the US Navy in support of Partnership of the Americas. Myers has also worked as a senior China analyst for Science Applications International Corporation; a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank; a faculty member at Georgetown University, the George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS; a mentor for the Indian Foreign Policy Research Institute’s School of Foreign Policy; and for Fauquier County Schools, where she developed the county’s first Mandarin language program. Myers received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and conducted her graduate work at The George Washington University, Zhejiang University of Technology, and the Johns Hopkins University/Nanjing University Center for Chinese-American Studies. Myers was a Council on Foreign Relations term member. She was also the recipient of a Freeman fellowship for China studies, a Fulbright Specialist grant to research China-Colombia relations in Bogotá, and a Woodrow Wilson Center fellowship to write a forthcoming book on China-Latin America relations.
Judicial Law Clerk, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida
Nitin is a recent graduate of Cornell Law School. Before his time in Ithaca, he majored in International Studies and Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and focused on power competition in South Asia during his graduate studies at the University of Oxford.
Senior Fellow, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Mihaela Papa is a Senior Fellow at the Fletcher School, where she has co-founded and led the Rising Power Alliances project and served as faculty in sustainable development and global governance.
Papa is an expert in negotiation strategy and coalition building, with a focus on BRICS and the transition to sustainability. She started her BRICS research as postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Law School and a visiting scholar at Fudan University's Center for BRICS Studies. Her recent publications analyze BRICS convergence and BRICS-US relations (EJIR, 2023), whether BRICS can de-dollarize global finance (CUP 2022 and ISA-West award), and BRICS resilience (Global Policy 2021). Her publications on environmental foreign policy, climate diplomacy, and global governance appeared in Global Environmental Politics, Global Environmental Change, Climate Policy, and other journals. Her commentary was featured in Foreign Affairs and The Conversation, as well as on CNN, Bloomberg, BBC, AP, News24, the South China Morning Post, and other media outlets.
Papa is also an active practitioner with a proven track record advising institutions on global strategies and leading international collaborations and programs, including at MIT and the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She served as a consultant for the U.S. government, the European Commission, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Originally a trade economist with a BA from Croatia, she completed her MA in Law and Diplomacy and PhD in International Relations at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.
Associate Professor of Law, Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School
Eric Talbot Jensen teaches and writes in the areas of Public International Law, Criminal Law, The Law of Armed Conflict, International Criminal Law, and National Security Law. His recent scholarship has appeared in the Texas, Temple, Houston, and Israel Law Reviews, as well as the Stanford Law and Policy Review, Virginia Journal of International Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and Stanford Journal of International Law. Professor Jensen is a co-author on an Oxford University text analyzing application of the laws of war to the war on terror and is also co-authoring a law school casebook on the Law of Armed Conflict for Aspen Publishing.
Prior to joining the BYU law faculty in 2011, Professor Jensen spent 2 years teaching at Fordham Law School in New York City and 20 years in the United States Army as both a Cavalry Officer and as a Judge Advocate. During his time as a Judge Advocate, Professor Jensen served in various positions including as the Chief of the Army’s International Law Branch; Deputy Legal Advisor for Task Force Baghdad; Professor of International and Operational Law at The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School; legal advisor to the US contingent of UN Forces deployed to Skopje, Macedonia as part of UNPREDEP; and legal advisor in Bosnia in support of Operation Joint Endeavor/Guard.
Associate Professor of International Relations, Oxford University
Lucas Kello is Associate Professor of International Relations at Oxford University. He serves as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations and as co-Director of the interdisciplinary Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security in the Department of Computer Science. His publications include The Virtual Weapon and International Order (Yale University Press), “The Meaning of the Cyber Revolution: Perils to Theory and Statecraft” in International Security, and “Security” in The Oxford Companion to International Relations (Oxford University Press).
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.
Reform or Withdraw? The United States and the Future of the United Nations
John O. McGinnis, Grover Joseph Rees, Peter Yeo
The United Nations was founded to promote peace, security, and international cooperation, but critics argue...
Luncheon Discussion: South Africa v. Israel Case: Allegations of Israeli Genocide in Gaza
Samuel Estreicher, Chimène Keitner, David R. Stras
Featuring: Prof. Sam Estreicher, Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Public Law, New York University...
International and National Security Law: Engage or Disengage: How Should the Next United States Administration Interact with the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice?
Stephanos Bibas, Charles Nelson Brower, Diane A. Desierto, Richard A. Epstein, Michael A. Newton
As international courts have addressed issues arising from the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars, we will...
Panel II: The Future of Foreign Policy: What Should be the US’s Grand Strategy Going Forward
Matthew R. A. Heiman, Lt. General Keith Kellogg, Kori Schake
With conflict rising across the globe and a presidential election this year, the United States...
Frozen Funds: Assessing Claims on Russian Central Bank Assets
Nitin R. Nainani, Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk, Phillip D. Zelikow
The ongoing war in Ukraine has sparked discussions within the Group of Seven (G-7) about...
Luncheon & Remarks
Roy Kalman Altman
Zionism: An Indigenous People’s Fight for its Ancient Homeland Judge Altman led us on a...
Henry Kissinger and International Law
Thomas Alan Schwartz, Jeremi Suri, John C. Yoo
On November 29, 2023, Henry Kissinger died at the age of 100. The former US...
BRICS Expansion and Corresponding Implications
Margaret Myers, Nitin R. Nainani, Mihaela Papa
Before the 2010s, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa were flagged as future growth...
The 2022 Mike Lewis Memorial Teleforum: Peace in Cyberspace: How it was Lost and How to Restore It
Eric Jensen, Lucas Kello, Vincent Vitkowsky
Faced with relentless cyberattacks and intrusions that could imperil democracy, how should Western nations respond?...
Topics
Caveat Emptor in the 21st Century: The Forced Sale of Chelsea Football Club
On February 24, 2022, the Russian military invaded Ukraine. International condemnation of Russia and its...