Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His law practice covers cybersecurity, data protection, homeland security, and travel and foreign investment regulation; he has been awarded one patent.
Mr. Baker has been General Counsel of the National Security Agency and General Counsel of the commission that investigated WMD intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. He is the author of Skating on Stilts, a book on terrorism, cybersecurity, and other technology issues; he also hosts the weekly Cyberlaw Podcast.
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.
Director of the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security a, Georgetown University
Professor Catherine Lotrionte is the Director of the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and Visiting Assistant Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Professor Lotrionte teaches courses on national security law, U.S. intelligence law, and international law. In addition to teaching, Professor Lotrionte coordinates research projects and events for the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security at Georgetown. She is the Institute Liaison for the Program on Nonproliferation Policy and Law, funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in cooperation with the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Professor Lotrionte is also the Director of the CyberProject. Professor Lotrionte and the Institute focus on the role of international and domestic law in recent and upcoming developments in cyber technology and cyber threats.
In 2002 she was appointed by General Brent Scowcroft to be Counsel to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at the White House, a position she held until 2006. In 2002 she served as a legal counsel for the Joint Inquiry Committee of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Prior to that, Professor Lotrionte was Assistant General Counsel with the Office of General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, where she provided legal advice relating to information warfare, foreign intelligence and counterintelligence activities, and international terrorism. Before working in the Office of General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, Professor Lotrionte served in the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor Lotrionte earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University and her J.D. from New York University and is the author of numerous publications, including a forthcoming book concerning U.S. national security law in the post-Cold War era. She is a frequent speaker at cyber conferences held by academic, military, government, and media organizations. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His law practice covers cybersecurity, data protection, homeland security, and travel and foreign investment regulation; he has been awarded one patent.
Mr. Baker has been General Counsel of the National Security Agency and General Counsel of the commission that investigated WMD intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. He is the author of Skating on Stilts, a book on terrorism, cybersecurity, and other technology issues; he also hosts the weekly Cyberlaw Podcast.
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.
Director of the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security a, Georgetown University
Professor Catherine Lotrionte is the Director of the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and Visiting Assistant Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Professor Lotrionte teaches courses on national security law, U.S. intelligence law, and international law. In addition to teaching, Professor Lotrionte coordinates research projects and events for the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security at Georgetown. She is the Institute Liaison for the Program on Nonproliferation Policy and Law, funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in cooperation with the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Professor Lotrionte is also the Director of the CyberProject. Professor Lotrionte and the Institute focus on the role of international and domestic law in recent and upcoming developments in cyber technology and cyber threats.
In 2002 she was appointed by General Brent Scowcroft to be Counsel to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at the White House, a position she held until 2006. In 2002 she served as a legal counsel for the Joint Inquiry Committee of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Prior to that, Professor Lotrionte was Assistant General Counsel with the Office of General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, where she provided legal advice relating to information warfare, foreign intelligence and counterintelligence activities, and international terrorism. Before working in the Office of General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, Professor Lotrionte served in the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor Lotrionte earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University and her J.D. from New York University and is the author of numerous publications, including a forthcoming book concerning U.S. national security law in the post-Cold War era. She is a frequent speaker at cyber conferences held by academic, military, government, and media organizations. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Research Director, Independence Institute
David B. Kopel is Research Director at the Independence Institute; Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute; and Senior Fellow at the University of Wyoming College of Law, Firearms Research Center. He received his B.A. in history with Highest Honors from Brown University and his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School.
He is the author of over 20 books, including the textbook Firearm Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy (Aspen Pubs. 4th ed. forthcoming 2026). His scholarship and briefs have been cited 7 Supreme Court cases--including Heller, McDonald, and Bruen--and in 140 lower courts opinions. He is the author of 120 scholarly articles. His shorter articles often appear on The Volokh Conspiracy blog, hosted by Reason magazine. His topics of interest include the right to arms throughout history, the Colorado Constitution, and law enforcement policy.
Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His law practice covers cybersecurity, data protection, homeland security, and travel and foreign investment regulation; he has been awarded one patent.
Mr. Baker has been General Counsel of the National Security Agency and General Counsel of the commission that investigated WMD intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. He is the author of Skating on Stilts, a book on terrorism, cybersecurity, and other technology issues; he also hosts the weekly Cyberlaw Podcast.
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.
Director of the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security a, Georgetown University
Professor Catherine Lotrionte is the Director of the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and Visiting Assistant Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Professor Lotrionte teaches courses on national security law, U.S. intelligence law, and international law. In addition to teaching, Professor Lotrionte coordinates research projects and events for the Institute for Law, Science and Global Security at Georgetown. She is the Institute Liaison for the Program on Nonproliferation Policy and Law, funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in cooperation with the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Professor Lotrionte is also the Director of the CyberProject. Professor Lotrionte and the Institute focus on the role of international and domestic law in recent and upcoming developments in cyber technology and cyber threats.
In 2002 she was appointed by General Brent Scowcroft to be Counsel to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at the White House, a position she held until 2006. In 2002 she served as a legal counsel for the Joint Inquiry Committee of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Prior to that, Professor Lotrionte was Assistant General Counsel with the Office of General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, where she provided legal advice relating to information warfare, foreign intelligence and counterintelligence activities, and international terrorism. Before working in the Office of General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, Professor Lotrionte served in the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor Lotrionte earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University and her J.D. from New York University and is the author of numerous publications, including a forthcoming book concerning U.S. national security law in the post-Cold War era. She is a frequent speaker at cyber conferences held by academic, military, government, and media organizations. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
General Counsel, James Madison Center for Free Speech
JOHN L. RYDER concentrates his practice in the areas of bankruptcy and commercial litigation. He has represented secured lenders, unsecured creditor's committees, trustees and debtors in the bankruptcy process. He has participated in a number of major bankruptcies including: The Julien Companies, Microwave Products, Wexner & Jacobson, Wang's, XpertTune, Braniff and others.
He served as Shelby County Delinquent Tax Attorney (1990-1994) and was a member of the Shelby County Home Rule Charter Commission (1984-1985). He is a member of the Memphis (Chairman, Bankruptcy Section, 1985) and Tennessee (Chairman, Commercial, Banking and Bankruptcy Section, 1986) Bar Associations, and the American Bankruptcy Institute and Mid-South Commercial Law Institute (Director, 1989-Present). He also serves as an Assistant County Attorney. Mr. Ryder is listed in the Best Lawyers in America. He has also been recognized by Business Tennessee as being among 101 Best Lawyers in Tennessee.
Vanderbilt University (J.D., 1974)
Wabash College (A.B., 1971)
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Times. Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University.
Assistant Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law
Jennifer Daskal joined American University Washington College of Law (WCL) in 2013 as an Assistant Professor of Law. She teaches and writes in the fields of criminal law, national security law, and constitutional law. From 2009-2011, Prof. Daskal was counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice and, among other things, served on the Secretary of Defense and Attorney General-led Detention Policy Task Force. Prior to joining DOJ, she was the senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, worked as a staff attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, and clerked for the Honorable Jed S. Rakoff. She spent two years before joining WCL’s faculty as a national security law fellow and adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center.
Prof. Daskal is a graduate of Brown University, Harvard Law School, and Cambridge University, where she was a Marshall Scholar. Recent publications include The Un-Territoriality of Data, 326 Yale L.J. 326 (2015); Pre-Crime Restraints: The Explosion of Targeted, Non-Custodial Prevention, 99 Cornell L. Rev. 327 (2014); After the AUMF, 5 Harvard Nat'l Sec. L. J. 115 (2014) (co-authored with Steve Vladeck); and The Geography of the Battlefield: A Framework for Detention and Targeting Outside the ‘Hot’ Conflict Zone, 171 Penn. L. Rev. 1165 (2013). Prof. Daskal has published op-eds in the New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, L.A. Times, and Salon.com, and she has appeared on BBC, C-Span, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, among other media outlets. She is an Executive Editor of and regular contributor to the Just Security blog.
Professor of Law, Vermont Law School
John Echeverria is a Professor of Law at Vermont Law School where he teaches Property, Public Law and a wide range of environmental and natural resource law courses. Prior to joining the Vermont Law School faculty in 2009, he served for 12 years as Executive Director of the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. He also was General Counsel of the National Audubon Society and General Counsel and Conservation Director of American Rivers, Inc., and was an Associate for four years in the Washington, D.C. office of Hughes, Hubbard & Reed. He served for one year as law clerk to the Honorable Gerhard A. Gesell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia immediately after graduating from law school.
Professor Echeverria has written several books and numerous scholarly articles on environmental and natural resource law topics. He has published pieces for more general audiences in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has represented state and local governments, environmental organizations, and planning groups in a variety of legal matters at all levels of the federal and state court systems. In 2007, Professor Echeverria received the Jefferson Fordham Advocacy Award from the American Bar Association to recognize outstanding excellence within the area of state and local government law over a lifetime of achievement. In addition to teaching at Vermont Law School, he has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor Echeverria received a JD degree from the Yale Law School. He received a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as a BA degree from Yale College (summa cum laude).
Founder and Executive Director, National Security Institute; Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jamil N. Jaffer is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University where he also serves as an Assistant Professor of Law, Director of the National Security Law and Policy Program, and Director of the Cyber, Intelligence, and National Security LLM Program. Jamil also teaches classes on counterterrorism, intelligence, surveillance, cybersecurity, and other national security matters, as well as a summer course held abroad with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Jamil is also affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and previously served as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2016 to 2019.
Jamil is also a Venture Partner with Paladin Capital Group, where he assists the firm with investments across the full range of its themes and theses, including a focus on dual-use national security technologies. Jamil also serves on the board of directors of RangeForce, a cybersecurity training and readiness platform startup and Tozny, a digital identity startup, and on the advisory boards of U.S. Strategic Metals, North America’s largest primary producer of cobalt, a critical mineral used in EV batteries, aerospace, and other national security applications; and Constella Intelligence, a deep and dark web intelligence startup. Jamil also serves as an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm and Duco, a technology platform startup that connects corporations with geopolitical and international business experts. Jamil is also the managing director of Trigraph Caveat Capital, a private investment vehicle.
Among other things, Jamil currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Board of Advisors for the Global Cyber Alliance, and the Advisory Board of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Tech Innovation, the Executive Committee of the Reagan Institute Strategy Group. Jamil is also a Fellow at the Academy for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Studies, an advisor to the Concordia Summit, and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Intelligence Policy, the Board of Directors of Speech First, and the Executive Committee of the International Law and National Security Practice Group of the Federalist Society.
Immediately prior to his current positions, from 2015-2021, Jamil served as a senior business leader at IronNet Cybersecurity, helping take the company from a bootstrapped first-year technology products startup through two rounds of venture capital fundraising, growing from 40 employees to over 300, and through its listing on New York Stock Exchange. In his role as IronNet's Senior Vice President for Strategy, Partnerships & Corporate Development, Jamil worked directly for the co-CEOs of the company, Gen (ret.) Keith B. Alexander, the former Director of the National Security Agency and Founding Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, and Bill Welch, the former COO of Zscaler and Duo; in that role, Jamil led all of the company’s strategic and technology partnership efforts, including developing go-to-market and technology integration plans with some of the largest cloud platforms and cybersecurity companies in the market, evaluating potential acquisition targets, and developing overall corporate strategy and thought leadership around collective security and collaborative defense in the cyber arena.
Prior to his time at IronNet, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor under Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN), where he worked on key national security and foreign policy issues, including leading the drafting of the proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS in 2014 and 2015, the AUMF against Syria in 2013, and revisions to the 9/11 AUMF against al Qaeda. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and two sanctions laws against Russia for its first intervention in Ukraine.
Prior to joining SFRC, Jamil served as Senior Counsel to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) where he led the committee’s oversight of NSA surveillance, NRO intelligence issues, and NGA analytic and collection matters, as well as intelligence community-wide counterterrorism issues. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the nation’s first cyber threat intelligence sharing legislation that was signed into law in 2015.
In the Bush Administration, Jamil served in the White House as an Associate Counsel to the President, handling Defense Department, State Department, and intelligence community matters, and serving as one of the White House Counsel’s primary representatives to the National Security Council Deputies Committee.
Prior to the White House, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Justice Department’s National Security Division as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, where he focused on counterterrorism and intelligence matters. At NSD, Jamil helped lead the division’s work on In re: Directives, the first ever two-party litigated matter in the FISA Court and the second case before the FISA Court of Review in its 30-year history. Jamil also led NSD’s efforts on the President’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), including the drafting of NSPD-54/HSPD-23, and related classified matters, and advised the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command’s predecessor organization, the Joint Function Component Command for Network Warfare (JFCC-NW), on matters related to cyber intelligence collection and offensive cyber activities. For his work on these matters, Jamil was awarded the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Special Initiative and was among the group of lawyers awarded the Director of National Intelligence’s 2008 Legal Award (Team of the Year – Cyber Legal).
Jamil also served in other positions in the Justice Department, including in the Office of Legal Policy, where he worked on the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Jamil also served as a lawyer in private practice at Kellogg Huber, a Washington, DC-based litigation boutique, as a policy advisor to Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and as a staff member or senior advisor on a number of political campaigns, including two presidential campaigns and a presidential transition team. While in law school, Jamil was a member of the University of Chicago Law Review, managing editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law, and National Symposium Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Following law school, Jamil served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, later in his career, as a law clerk to then-Judge Neil M. Gorsuch when he first joined the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit as well as a law clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch when he joined the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jamil has published multiple op-eds and academic articles on national security, foreign policy, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, encryption, and intelligence matters, and is the co-author of a book chapter with former NSA Director Gen. (Ret.) Keith B. Alexander on national security and the press in National Security, Leaks, and the Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On (2021) and a book chapter with former CIA Director Gen. (ret.) Mike Hayden on ISIS, al Qaeda, and other international terrorist groups in Choosing to Lead: American Foreign Policy for a Disordered World (2015). Jamil has also written book chapters on cybersecurity and surveillance, as well as op-eds and policy papers with former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen, and Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), among others.
Jamil has previously taught graduate-level courses in intelligence law and policy at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and the National Intelligence University, served an outside advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and has recently testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on China, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and other national security matters. Jamil has also recently appeared on a range of national television and radio outlets including CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, Bloomberg, PBS, Voice of America, and National Public Radio, and in various print and online publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post on a range of national security matters including cybersecurity, counterterrorism, surveillance, encryption, privacy, and foreign policy issues.
Jamil holds degrees from UCLA (BA, cum laude), the University of Chicago Law School (JD, with honors), and the United States Naval War College (MA, with distinction).
Ella A. and Ernest H. Fisher Professor of Law, Ohio Northern University Claude W. Pettit College of Law
Professor Lewis joined the Ohio Northern faculty in August, 2006. Lewis flew F-14's for the United States Navy in Operation Desert Shield, conducted strike planning for Desert Storm and was deployed to the Persian Gulf to enforce the no-fly zone over Iraq. He was a Topgun graduate in 1992 and was featured in a NOVA documentary on Topgun and aircraft carriers.
After his naval service, Lewis graduated from Harvard Law School, cum laude, was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company, and served as a litigation associate with McGuireWoods, LLP, in Norfolk, Virginia.
Professor Lewis has published more than a dozen articles and essays on various aspects of the law of war and the conflict between the US and al Qaeda. His work has been cited by the Seventh, Ninth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has testified before Congress on the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and on the civil liberties tradeoffs associated with trying some Al Qaeda members or terrorist suspects before military commissions. His op-eds have appeared in numerous media outlets including the LA Times and the New York Post and he has appeared on Public Radio International to discuss the increasing use of armed drones in warfare. He has delivered scores of presentations and panel presentations before military and law school audiences alike including presentations to the international Military Operations Law conference in Queensland, Australia, the US Army's JAG School in Charlottesville, VA and law school events at Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, Penn, Duke, Texas and Northwestern among others.
Professor Lewis received the Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching for the 2007-08 academic year.
He currently teaches Commercial Law, International Law, a Law of War Seminar and Torts. He has also taught Corporate Finance and Accounting for Lawyers. His other teaching interests include Civil Procedure and Contracts.
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.
Professor of Practice, Cardozo School of Law
Gabor Rona received his B.A. from Brandeis University, J.D. from Vermont Law School and LL.M from Columbia Law School.
As the former International Legal Director of Human Rights First, he advised Human Rights First programs on questions of international law and coordinates international human rights litigation. He also represented Human Rights First with governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, the media and the public on matters of international human rights and international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict).
Before Human Rights First, Rona was a Legal Advisor in the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. At the ICRC he focused on the application of international humanitarian and human rights law in the context of counter-terrorism policies and practices. He represented the ICRC in intergovernmental, nongovernmental, academic and public forums and his articles on the topic have appeared in the Financial Times, the Fletcher Forum on World Affairs and the Chicago Journal of International Law, among other publications. In addition, he represented the ICRC in connection with the establishment of international and other criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court. He has also taught International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, the University Centre for International Humanitarian Law in Geneva, Switzerland and Columbia Law School in New York.
Senior Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia School of Law, George Mason University; Retired Professor, Distinguished Fellow and Co-Founder, Center for National Security Law, University of Virginia School of Law (1987-2020)
Robert F. Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law. He co-founded the Center for National Security Law with Professor John Norton Moore in April 1981 and served as its associate director for 39 years, except for two periods of government service in the 1980s and during 1994-95, when he occupied the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He retired from UVA in January 2020 and currently serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the GMU National Security Institute. He also served briefly in 2020 as President of the Crime Prevention Research Center—one of the most respected pro-Second Amendment groups in the country—while its founder, Dr. John Lott, was on leave of absence.
A former Army captain and veteran of two tours in Vietnam, Turner served as a research associate and public affairs fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace before spending five years in the mid-1970s as national security adviser to U.S. Senator Robert P. Griffin, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (where Turner anticipated by seven years the Supreme Court’s landmark INS v. Chadha decision, striking down legislative vetoes). He also served in the executive branch during the Reagan administration as a member of the Senior Executive Service, first in the Pentagon as special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for policy, then in the White House as counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, and at the State Department as principal deputy and then acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs. In 1986, he became the first president of the congressionally established United States Institute of Peace.
A former three-term chairman of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security (and for many years editor of the ABA National Security Law Report), Turner also chaired the Executive-Congressional Relations Subcommittee of the ABA Section on International Law and Practice and chaired or co-chaired the National Security Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group for several years.
Turner taught undergraduate courses at Virginia on international law, U.S. foreign policy, the Vietnam War and foreign policy and the law in what is now the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. In addition, he co-taught National Security Law and advanced national security law seminars on the Indochina War and on war and peace with Moore at the Law School.
The author or editor of 17 books and monographs (including co-editor of the Center's 1,600-page National Security Law & Policy casebook, National Security Law Documents, and Legal Issues in the Struggle Against Terror) and numerous articles in law reviews and other professional journals, Turner has also contributed articles to most of the major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today. In an op-ed published in The International Herald Tribune in September 1990, he and Moore were the first to call for a war-crimes trial for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and for international controls over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and the following month he wrote the lead story in The Washington Post Sunday Outlook Section, “Killing Saddam: Would It Be a Crime?,” arguing that Hussein would be a lawful target during Operation Desert Storm. (His reasoning contributed to the modern legal justification for drone strikes targeting specific terrorist leaders.) Three years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turner published an op-ed in USA Today entitled: “In Self-defense, U.S. Has Right to Kill bin Laden.”
In July 2007, he co-authored an article in The Washington Post with former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General P.X. Kelley, “War Crimes and the White House,” criticizing the use of unlawful “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the Central Intelligence Agency. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon he authored an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Saigon’s Fall Still Echoes Today,” noting that after the war ended, Hanoi admitted it had made a decision in 1959 to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and start sending troops, weapons and supplies into South Vietnam to overthrow its government — just as the United States had charged. In 2010 Turner received the first “person of the year” award from SACEI, a major Vietnamese-American human rights organization.
A frequent lecturer and debater, Turner has spoken at more than 100 law schools around the nation and in other fora — taking on as many as four opponents at a time. His debate opponents have included former or future deans of Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Berkeley law schools. Following a 1987 debate against Dean Harlan Cleveland (Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) in which Turner defended the legality of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan Administration, the host student debating societies awarded Turner the victory by an 85-to-15 percent margin.
Turner has also written and lectured widely on University of Virginia founder and America’s third president Thomas Jefferson. In 2000-2001 he chaired the Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission. In his 2012 book Master of the Mountain, Jefferson critic Henry Wiencek described Turner as “Jefferson’s chief scholarly defender."
A former distinguished lecturer at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Turner is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Academy of Political Science, the Committee on the Present Danger, The Heterodox Academy, and other professional organizations. He maintained a 4.0 gpa as a graduate student at Stanford in History and Political Science and in the UVA Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and was the first person admitted directly to the UVA academic law doctorate (SJD) program without first being required to earn an LL.M. master’s degree. He was selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Law less than two years after graduating from law school and Who’s Who in the World before he reached the age of 40. Turner has testified before more than a dozen different congressional committees on issues of international or constitutional law and other topics.
23rd Annual Siegan Award Dinner
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