Reporter, SCOTUSblog
Amy Howe is the co-founder of SCOTUSblog, a news site devoted to coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court, and its primary reporter. She was part of the blog team that won a Peabody Award in 2013, as well as a National Press Club Journalism Award for Breaking News. Since the spring of 2025, she has also served as the Supreme Court analyst for the PBS NewsHour. In the fall of 2025, she is a fellow in Georgetown University's Institute of Politics.
Before turning to full-time journalism, Amy was a practicing lawyer and served as a lawyer in over two dozen cases at the Supreme Court, on issues ranging from international child custody to the death penalty, and argued two cases there. She has taught or co-taught courses on Supreme Court litigation at Vanderbilt Law School, Stanford Law School, and Harvard Law School. Amy is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds a master's in Arab Studies and a law degree from Georgetown University.
Of Counsel, Fisher & Phillips, LLP
Greg Grisham has over 25 years of successful experience counseling and representing employers in all aspects of workplace law in Tennessee and across the United States.
He has helped employers avoid claims, charges and lawsuits with a focus on preventative practices. Preventative practices include counseling in situations involving discipline, termination, demotion, promotion and other workplace changes in the terms and conditions of employment, harassment investigations, wage and hour compliance, FMLA Compliance, Reasonable Accommodation assessment, supervisor training and the review of employment policies and procedures. In addition, Greg's practice includes the representation of business entities subject to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act in Public Accommodation cases.
Greg has successfully litigated hundreds of administrative charges, employment lawsuits, and arbitration demands on behalf of employers, including federal and state law claims alleging discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, defamation, invasion of privacy, breach of contract, wage and hour violations and ERISA violations, among others. He also represents employers before the National Labor Relations Board in unfair labor practice proceedings. He represents employers in the enforcement of post-employment restrictive covenants such as non-compete, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements and related trade secret litigation. Greg's practice also includes the defense of property owners and property management companies in federal and state Housing Discrimination charges and litigation. He also advises Tennessee Public Charter Schools on education law and workplace compliance matters.
Greg has extensive experience working with insurance carriers and their insureds in the defense of EPLI claims. He is a regular speaker at public seminars on workplace law issues and has authored numerous articles on a variety of labor and employment law related topics.
Greg holds an AV Preeminent Peer Review rating from Martindale-Hubbell and has been selected for inclusion in Mid-South Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers in America for Employment Litigation-Management side. Greg was elected as a 2016 Fellow to the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and has been selected to the “Top 20 Lawyers in Traditional Labor & Employment Law” list in conjunction with Human Resource Executive Magazine and LawDragon’s 2017 and 2018 “Most Powerful Employment Attorneys” lists and specialty guides. Greg was also named a Fellow in the American Bar Foundation in 2017.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Daniel Blomberg is vice president and senior counsel for Becket. Before joining Becket, he clerked for Chief Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as litigation counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Daniel’s clients have included an international order of nuns, the world’s largest religious media organization, synagogues, members of the U.S. military, religious healthcare ministries, peaceful protestors, halfway houses, religious colleges, state legislators, homeless shelters, religious business owners, an art gallery, and churches. Daniel has represented a wide variety of faith groups, including Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Hindus, Hutterites, Jews, Lutherans, Mennonites, Muslims, Presbyterians, Russian Orthodox, and Sikhs. Cases on which he has served as counsel to a party include: Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey-Berru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020); Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 141 S. Ct. 63 (2020); Zubik v. Burwell, 136 S. Ct. 1557 (2016); Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius, 134 S. Ct. 1022 (2014); Wheaton College v. Burwell, 134 S. Ct. 2806 (2014); Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. SJUSD, 82 F.4th 664 (9th Cir. 2023) (en banc); Singh v. Berger, 56 F.4th 88 (D.C. Cir. 2022); Demkovich v. St. Andrew the Apostle Parish, 3 F.4th 968 (7th Cir. 2021) (en banc); Maxon v. Fuller Theological Seminary, 2021 WL 5882035 (9th Cir. 2021); Intervarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. University of Iowa, 5 F.4th 855, 867 (8th Cir. 2021); Business Leaders in Christ v. University of Iowa, 991 F.3d 969 (8th Cir. 2021); Whole Woman’s Health v. Smith, 896 F.3d 362 (5th Cir. 2018); Lee v. Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, 903 F.3d 113 (3d Cir. 2018); Gagliardi v. TJCV, 889 F.3d 728 (11th Cir. 2018); Harvest Family Church v. FEMA, 2018 WL 386192 (5th Cir. 2018); Fratello v. Archdiocese of New York, 863 F.3d 190 (2d Cir. 2017); Eternal Word Television Network v. U.S. Dep’t of HHS, 756 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2014); InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. Bd. of Governors of Wayne State Univ., 534 F. Supp. 3d 785 (E.D. Mich. 2021); and Singh v. Carter, 168 F. Supp. 3d 216 (D.D.C. 2016).
Daniel has been featured on CNN, Huffington Post Live, Fox News, EWTN Nightly News, and CBS Evening News.
He earned his J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law, graduating magna cum laude. While in law school, Daniel clerked for the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office, served on a South Carolina Supreme Court task force, and interned with Judge J. Michelle Childs of the Circuit Court for the Fifth Judicial Circuit as a part of the Judicial Observation and Education program. He is a Blackstone Fellow. Daniel received his undergraduate degree from Columbia International University. He and his wife have five children and too many animals.
Director, Washington Ofice, Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy
Elise Bean became counsel to U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., on the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in 1985. She worked for him on three subcommittees, under the leadership of Linda Gustitus. In 2003, Levin appointed Bean as staff director and chief counsel of the committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which he chaired. Bean retired from the Senate with Levin at the end of 2014.
During her tenure, Bean handled a variety of investigations, hearings and legislation, including matters involving offshore tax abuses, money laundering, foreign corruption, unfair credit card practices, health care fraud, abuses involving derivatives and structured finance, and shell companies with hidden owners. Investigations headed by her included inquiries into the 2008 financial crisis, HSBC money laundering problems, London whale trades at JPMorgan Chase, collapse of Enron, and offshore tax avoidance by Apple, Microsoft and Caterpillar.
In 2016 and 2015, she was included in the Global Tax 50, a list compiled by International Tax Review of the year's top 50 individuals and organizations influencing tax policy and practice. In 2013 and 2011, the Washingtonian magazine named her one of Washington's 100 most powerful women. In 2010, she was selected by the National Law Journal as one of Washington's most influential women lawyers.
Bean graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University in 1978 and earned her law degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 1982. She served as a law clerk to former Chief Judge of the U.S. Claims Court Alex Kozinski, who later served as the chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She worked for two years as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Frauds Section. Earlier in her career, she worked for U.S. Rep. John Joseph Moakley, D-Mass.
Senior Counsel, Akin Gump
Stanley M. Brand’s practice covers all levels of state and federal courts, with an emphasis on defending the rights of witnesses involved in government investigations.
Mr. Brand has represented numerous individuals and organizations investigated by and/or called to testify before the U.S. Congress. He has developed particular experience in the application of the separation-of-powers doctrine. His diverse litigation and counseling practice also includes representing corporations, trade associations, labor unions and individuals in major Department of Justice, grand jury, and independent counsel investigations and trial proceedings, including Whitewater, Housing and Urban Development, the savings and loan crisis, and the campaign finance task force investigations. Mr. Brand has also represented individuals and entities involved in contested election proceedings.
From 1976 to 1983, Mr. Brand served as general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O'Neill, Jr. and was the House's chief legal officer responsible for representing the House, its members, officers and employees in connection with legal procedures and litigation arising from the conduct of their official activities. Since leaving the House, Mr. Brand has had a succession of high-profile, political and public corruption cases and clients, including former White House aide George Stephanopoulos in the Whitewater investigation, former congressman and Gore 2000 campaign manager Tony Coelho, former House Majority Whip Bill Gray, congressmen Dan Rostenkowski and Joe McDade, and former executive agency officials.
Prior to joining Akin Gump, Mr. Brand was the founding partner of Brand Law Group, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm specializing in matters at the intersection of politics and criminal law.
Founder, Quell Strategies
Machalagh Carr is a trusted and strategic counselor with decades of private sector and government experience. She has nimbly navigated the intersection of congressional investigations and oversight, law, geopolitics, and policy, most recently as the top staffer in Article I as Chief of Staff to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
Prior to her role as Chief of Staff, she served as General Counsel for the Speaker and Office of the Republican Leader at the U.S. House of Representatives. Previously, she served as General Counsel & Parliamentarian for the Committee on Ways and Means, where she handled all legal and procedural issues for the Committee. Before that, she was the Oversight Staff Director at the Committee where she led the investigations and oversight of all issues within the Committee’s jurisdiction. Prior to joining Ways and Means, she served as the Director of Oversight and Investigations for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and as Senior Oversight Counsel at the Committee on Natural Resources.
Previously, Machalagh served in the Office of Global Compliance of an international energy company where she conducted internal anti-corruption investigations, audits, and compliance reviews for the company. Before her in-house experience she practiced in the Litigation, White Collar, and Government Investigations Group at Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal LLP (now Dentons). Directly after law school, Machalagh clerked for the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
She taught Trial Practice at Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law and lives in Virginia with her husband and three sons.
Chief Counsel for Oversight (R), Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives
Director of the Congressional Oversight Initiative, The Project On Government Oversight
Justin Rood directs POGO's Congressional Oversight Initiative. The Initiative aims to improve and enhance Congress's ability to do effective oversight by providing information, advice, and other assistance.
Previously, Rood served under Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) on his Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as director of investigations on Homeland Security matters.
Prior to that, he worked under Senator Coburn as senior investigator on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Minority Staff. There he led a 2012 investigation into domestic intelligence fusion centers, finding them "pools of ineptitude, waste, and civil liberties intrusions," in the words of The Washington Post's front-page coverage of the report.
Before joining Senator Coburn’s staff, Rood was an award-winning investigative producer and reporter with ABC News and other outlets. At ABC, Rood helped uncover the D.C. Madam scandal, which led to a number of resignations including that of Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias. In 2006, while at Talking Points Memo, Rood was part of a two-person reporting/blogging team that broke the story about the Bush administration dismissing seven U.S. Attorneys during a midterm purge. The story earned Talking Points Memo a Polk Award.
Rood is a 2015 non-resident fellow with the Yale Law School's Information Society Project.
A native Washingtonian, Rood is also co-founder of the Funk Parade, a celebration of local music, arts, and culture that brings the diverse communities of the city together.
Partner, Wiley Rein LLP
Paul Khoury counsels and represents government contractors in solicitation review, multiple award schedule contracting, state and local procurements, subcontracting, teaming agreements, corporate transactions, bid protests, terminations, contract disputes litigation, compliance reviews, mandatory disclosures, inspector general investigations, and False Claims Act actions. Paul is regularly rated as one of the country’s “Leading Lawyers” in his field by Chambers USA, which commends him as “a fantastic bid protest attorney”. Paul was also chair of the firm’s Pro Bono Committee from 1998 to 2014.
Assistant Professor of Law, Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University
Prof. Dakota Rudesill is a scholar, practitioner, and teacher of legislation and national security law and policy. At Moritz, he teaches National Security Law & Process, Legislation and Regulation, and the Legislation Clinic.
His scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Georgetown Law Journal, Stanford Journal of International Law, Yale Journal of International Law, Harvard National Security Journal, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the Washington University Law Review, among others. Professor Rudesill is a member of the editorial board of the peer-review Journal of National Security Law and Policy. He is Chair of the National Security Section of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS).
Particular areas of emphasis in Professor Rudesill’s work are intelligence and secrecy (including secret law), arms control and nuclear weapons, legislation, and the experiential “learning-by-doing” training of professionals. Professor Rudesill leads a coalition pushing for a congressional clerkship program analogous to the judiciary’s law clerk program, and is the creator and director of The Ohio State National Security Simulation. This immersive annual exercise places over 130 OSU students from law, policy, intelligence, military, communications, and business management backgrounds in their respective roles as they grapple with current national security challenges and advise top practitioners in real time over two days.
Professor Rudesill has advised senior leaders in all three branches of the federal government. He served the U.S. Congress for nine years, doing national security legislative work for the Senate Budget Committee and Sen. Kent Conrad. In the Executive Branch, as a member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team, Professor Rudesill advised the President-Elect’s nominees for Director of National Intelligence and CIA Director. He served in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and on the President’s Detention Policy Task Force at the U.S. Department of Justice. In the Judicial Branch, Professor Rudesill was a law clerk to James B. Loken, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to coming to Ohio State, from 2010 to 2013, Professor Rudesill was Visiting Associate Professor at Georgetown Law Center, and directed the Federal Legislation & Administrative Clinic. Earlier in his career he was a law firm associate, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, and was selected for the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship.
Professor Rudesill received his B.A. from St. Olaf College and J.D. from Yale Law School.
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.
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