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.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Co-Chairman, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Leonard is Co-Chairman and former Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, joining the organization over 25 years ago. Since that time he has been instrumental in helping the organization top 70,000, focusing on the growth of lawyers membership, operations and activities advancing limited, constitutional government. In addition to his work at the Society, Leonard has advised President Trump on judicial selection, assisted with the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh Supreme Court selection and confirmation process, and served as a member of the transition team. He also organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito U.S. Supreme Court confirmations. Leonard was appointed by President George W. Bush to three terms to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom as chairman. He was also a U.S. Delegate to the UN Council and UN Commission on Human Rights during the Bush Administration. Leonard was the recipient of the 2009 Bradley Prize, along with the other founders and directors of the Federalist Society, for his work in advancing freedom and the rule of law. He is the coeditor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, as well as the author of opinion editorials in the New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Leonard holds degrees from Cornell University and Cornell Law School. He presently resides in Northern Virginia, where he and his wife Sally have raised their seven children.
Distinguished Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Danielle Pletka is a distinguished senior fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on US foreign policy generally and the Middle East specifically. Until January 2020, Ms. Pletka was the senior vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Concurrently, she also teaches US Middle East policy at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Before joining AEI, Ms. Pletka was a senior professional staff member for the Middle East and South Asia for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Ms. Pletka has authored, coauthored, and coedited a variety of studies, monographs, and book chapters, including the introduction to “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East” (AEI Press, 2019); the report “Tehran Stands atop the Syria-Iran Alliance” (Atlantic Council, 2017); the chapter “America in Decline” in “Debating the Obama Presidency” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); “America vs. Iran: The Competition for the Future of the Middle East” (AEI, 2014); “Iranian Influence in the Levant, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan” (AEI, 2012); “Containing and Deterring a Nuclear Iran” (AEI, 2011); and “Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Empowering Democrats” (AEI Press, 2008).
A regular guest on television, Ms. Pletka appears frequently on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” Her broadcast appearances also include CBS News, CNN, C-SPAN, and MSNBC. She has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Hill, and Politico, among other outlets. Ms. Pletka is also the cohost, with AEI’s Marc Thiessen, of the podcast “What the Hell Is Going On? (Making Sense of the World).”
She has an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Smith College.
Former General Counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, Former United States Ambassador to East Timor
Grover Joseph Rees, a native and resident of Louisiana, served as the first United States Ambassador to East Timor from 2002 to 2006.
From October 2006 until January 2009 Ambassador Rees served as Special Representative for Social Issues in the U.S. Department of State. He was responsible for promoting human dignity, including issues affecting vulnerable persons and the family, within the United Nations system. He served as Acting U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Counsel during the fall 2007 session of the UN General Assembly and also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations.
From 1995 until 2002 Rees was a senior staff member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the United States House of Representatives, where he was responsible for human rights and refugee protection and played a major role in the drafting and enactment of important human rights legislation including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the International Religious Freedom Act, and the Torture Victims Relief Act.
Ambassador Rees also formerly served as General Counsel of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (1991-93), as Chief Justice of the High Court of American Samoa (1986-1991), and as Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the United States (1985-86).
Prior to his work in Washington, Rees served for seven years as a law professor at the University of Texas. He has written and spoken widely on international law, human rights, refugees, and related issues.
Rees obtained his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his law degree from Louisiana State University Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Louisiana Law Review and was selected for the academic honor society Order of the Coif.
Rees was born in New Orleans, the oldest of 12 children. He is married to Lan Dai Nguyen Rees and has one son. He retired from government service in January 2009 and now lives and works in Lafayette, Louisiana.
In addition to English, Ambassador Rees speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese, Samoan, and Tetum.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity
Linda Chavez is Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has published opinions and columns in newspapers across the country and appears regularly on cable news. Chavez is the author of the three books: Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. She has been honored by the Library of Congress as a "Living Legend" and as nominee for Secretary of Labor by President George W. Bush.
Chavez has held many appointed positions and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Among her appointed positions has been Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986 and was elected by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Chavez earned her BA from the University of Colorado.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Professor of Law, Notre Dame University
Roger P. Alford joined the Notre Dame Law faculty in January 2012. Alford teaches and writes in a wide range of subject-matter areas, including international trade, international arbitration, international antitrust, and comparative law.
Alford earned his B.A. with Honors from Baylor in 1985, his J.D. with Honors from New York University, and his LL.M. from Edinburgh University. Before entering the legal academy, he served as a law clerk to Judge James Buckley of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Richard Allison of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. He practiced law with Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells) in Washington, D.C., and was also a senior legal advisor to the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Activities in Zurich, Switzerland.
In addition to publishing widely in leading law reviews and journals, Alford is the general editor of Kluwer Arbitration Blog and on the Executive Committee of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration.
He is Concurrent Professor at the Keough School of Global Affairs, a Faculty Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and a Faculty Fellow at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. He was the Academic Director of the London Global Gateway from 2016-2017 and Associate Dean for Graduate and International Programs from 2013-2017.
He served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for International Affairs with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2017-2019.
Leitner Family Professor, Fordham University School of Law
Martin S. Flaherty is Leitner Family Professor of Law and Co-Founding Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he was Fellow in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and a Visiting Professor at the New School in New York.. Professor Flaherty has taught at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, and has recently founded the Rule of Law in Asia Program at the Leitner Center as well as co-founded the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers. He has also taught at Sungkyunkwan Univeristy in Seoul, Queen’s University Belfast, Cardozo School of Law, and the New School. Previously Professor Flaherty served as a law clerk for Justice Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge John Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Flaherty holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Princeton, an M.A. and M.Phil. from Yale (in history) and a J.D. from the Columbia Law School, where he was Book Reviews and Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review. Formerly chair of the New York City Bar Association’s International Human Rights Committee, he has led or participated in human rights missions to Northern Ireland, Turkey, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia, Kenya, and Romania. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Flaherty's publications focus upon constitutional law and history, foreign affairs, and international human rights and appear in such journals as the Columbia Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review. His publications include: “Executive Power Essentialism and Foreign Affairs” [with Curtis Bradley], Michigan Law Review; “The Most Dangerous Branch,” Yale Law Journal; and “History ‘Lite’ in Modern American Constitutionalism,” Columbia Law Review. He has appeared or been quoted in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Daily News, Newsday, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox.
Founder, Latitude, LLC
Brian Hook is the founder of Latitude, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in Washington, DC.
Mr. Hook worked on the Romney campaign as senior advisor on foreign policy. He chaired the foreign policy and national security task forces of the Romney Readiness Project. From 2010-2011, he was the foreign policy director of Governor Tim Pawlenty’s presidential campaign.
Mr. Hook served in a number of positions during the Bush Administration, including Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations; Senior Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Special Assistant to the President for Policy, Office of the Chief of Staff; and Counsel, Office of Legal Policy, at the Justice Department.
From 1999-2003, he practiced corporate law at Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C.
Before practicing law, he served as a policy advisor to Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and to U.S. Congressman James Leach.
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was born in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 1965. He married Ashley Estes in 2004, and they have two daughters - Margaret and Liza. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1987 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990. He served as a law clerk for Judge Walter Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1990-1991, for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1991-1992, and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1993 Term. In 1992-1993, he was an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. From 1994 to 1997 and for a period in 1998, he was Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel. He was a partner at a Washington, D.C., law firm from 1997 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was Associate Counsel and then Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2003 to 2006, he was Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary for President Bush. He was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on October 6, 2018.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Rao was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in March 2019. She graduated from Yale College in 1995 and the University of Chicago Law School in 1999. Following graduation, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and, in the 2001 October Term, as law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Between her clerkships, Judge Rao served as counsel for nominations and constitutional law to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In 2002, she joined the international arbitration group of Clifford Chance LLP in London, England. From 2005-2006, she served as Special Assistant and Associate White House Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2006 to 2017, Judge Rao was a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where she taught constitutional law, legislation and statutory interpretation, and the history and foundations of the administrative state. In 2014, she founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, a non-profit Center that promotes academic scholarship and public policy debates about administrative law. In July 2017, she was appointed to serve as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management Budget. She served in this position until her appointment to the D.C. Circuit.
Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz teaches constitutional law and federal jurisdiction, and he writes articles for the Harvard Law Review and the Stanford Law Review.
He is currently developing a new theory of constitutional interpretation and judicial review. The first installment, entitledThe Subjects of the Constitution, was published in the Stanford Law Review in May of 2010, and it is among the most downloaded articles about constitutional interpretation, judicial review, and/or federal courts in the history of SSRN. The second installment, The Objects of the Constitution, was published in May of 2011, also in the Stanford Law Review. And the comprehensive version is forthcoming as a book by Oxford University Press.
Rosenkranz has served and advised the federal government in a variety of capacities. He clerked for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (1999-2000) and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the U.S. Supreme Court (October Term 2001). He served as an Attorney-Advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice (November 2002 - July 2004). He often testifies before Congress as a constitutional expert—most recently before the House Financial Services Oversight Subcommittee, regarding the Obama Administration's use of bank settlement agreements to circumvent the Appropriations Clause. He has also filed briefs and presented oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. His most recent Supreme Court brief, in Los Angeles v. Patel, was cited by Justice Alito in dissent.
Rosenkranz is a member of the New York Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is a founding member of Heterodox Academy and a member of its Executive Committee. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Federalist Society and as the faculty advisor to the Georgetown chapter.
United States Senator, Texas
Ted Cruz represents 28 million Texans in the U.S. Senate as a passionate fighter for limited government and economic growth. He has authored 39 legislative measures signed into law. Recent victories include expanding 529 college savings accounts to allow parents to save for K–12 public, private, and religious education, leading the effort to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, imposing sanctions on terrorists who use civilians as human shields, designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, reauthorizing and reforming NASA, ensuring the availability of additional records to help solve civil rights cold cases, supporting thousands of Texas jobs, and leading the fight to confirm principled constitutionalists to our courts.
Senator Cruz is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, a former law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and former solicitor general of Texas. He has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court. In November of 2018, he was re-elected to the Senate by the people of Texas.
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Global Law and P, Santa Clara Law
Retired Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Upon his resignation as the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State in January 1993, Mr. Williamson rejoined Sullivan & Cromwell's Washington, D.C. office. He originally joined the Firm in 1964 after graduating from New York University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review. He became a partner of the Firm in 1971, moved to its London office in 1976, returned to its New York office in 1979, moved to its Washington, D.C. office in 1988 and became Of Counsel in 2007. In 2018, he retired from the firm.
At Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Williamson engaged in a broad and wide-ranging domestic and international financing and transactions practice, as well as advice with respect to corporate governance issues, the United States’ economic sanctions laws, the ethics rules applicable to government officials and the immunities of foreign sovereigns and international organizations.
Mr. Williamson has been an active participant on panels and other forums involving public international law and national security issues, such as the domestic and international bases for the use of force, the role of the United States with respect to the International Criminal Court, the law of the sea and the application of international legal principles in the war against terrorism.
Mr. Williamson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, the Executive Committees of the Business and Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD and the U.S. Council for International Business, the United States Advisory Board of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and the Board of Directors of Triton Oil & Gas Limited.
Mr. Williamson has served on the Boards of Regents and Trustees of the University of the South and as chair of the Board of Regents. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a higher education watchdog.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
Former Director (consultant), International Affairs, The Federalist Society
From 2005 to 2025, Jim Kelly served on a consulting basis as the Federalist Society’s Director of International Affairs, responsible for outreach to law students, lawyers, and judges in Canada, Europe, and Israel. From 2005 to 2008, he served on the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO, and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee. From 2001 to 2008, he served as an official U.S. delegate to five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed Jim to serve as one of the two U.S. members on the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”). In 2020, the State Department named him as an expert to the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. In March 2022, he initiated Ukraine’s consideration and use of the Moscow Mechanism to conduct the first official international investigation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in the Report on Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine (1 April – 25 June 2022). Jim is the Founder of, and Director of Research for, Global Governance Watch, a web-based project that monitors the global governance activities of the UN’s sustainable development and ESG agenda. In 2022, in connection with his position as a Lecturer at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, he authored Evolution of Business, Human Rights, & ESG, consisting of 28 one-hour presentations about the technocratic, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, and religious nature and practices of the ESG movement. Jim is Founder and President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., which, since 2001, has filed amicus curiae briefs in five landmark U.S. Supreme Court educational and religious liberty cases. He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Georgia’s largest K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program, which, since 2008, has awarded scholarships worth $224.3 million to 21,744 students for use at the accredited private K-12 schools of their choice. He has served on the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice. In 2005, he authored Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal, a collection of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Jim earned his BBA and Law degrees from the University of Georgia. He also earned a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, a Master of Non-Profit Management degree from Regis University, and a Master of International Relations degree from Salve Regina University. Jim and his wife, Lisa, reside in the Atlanta area.
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