Of Counsel, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Prerak Shah is Of Counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. He was most recently the Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, leading a team of approximately 120 Assistant U.S. Attorneys handling a wide range of cases, including securities fraud, health care fraud, the False Claims Act, computer crime, national security, tax fraud, money laundering, public corruption, and terrorism. Mr. Shah previously held several leadership positions at the Department of Justice, including Deputy Associate Attorney General in the office overseeing the work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment & Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. Before joining the Justice Department, Mr. Shah served as Chief of Staff to Senator Ted Cruz and as a Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
William Cranch Research Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School
Bradford R. Clark teaches and writes in the areas of civil procedure, constitutional structure, federal courts, and foreign relations. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals including California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. His book, The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution (co-authored with Anthony J. Bellia Jr.), was published in 2017 by Oxford University Press. Professor Clark has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan Law School. Professor Clark also served as a special master appointed by the Supreme Court to make recommendations in an original action between states, Alabama, et al. v. North Carolina, Orig. No. 132.
Before joining the law school faculty, Professor Clark spent several years practicing law in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he specialized in trial and appellate litigation. Previously, he served as an attorney adviser in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, where he provided legal advice to the president, the attorney general, and the heads of executive departments. Professor Clark also served as a law clerk to The Honorable Robert H. Bork of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to The Honorable Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Senior Director, Liberty & National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein is senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.
Goitein is a nationally-recognized expert on presidential emergency powers, government surveillance, and government secrecy. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Magazine, and The New Republic, and she has appeared frequently on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. She has testified on several occasions before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
Before coming to the Brennan Center, Goitein served as counsel to Senator Russ Feingold, chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Goitein graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2021–22, she was a member of the inaugural class of Senior Practitioner Fellows at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.
Senior Lecturer; Director, The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, The University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Adam Klein is Director of the Strauss Center and Director of Strauss’ Program on Technology, Security, and Global Affairs. Adam also serves as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law. Before joining the Strauss Center, Adam served as Chairman of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the independent, bipartisan federal agency responsible for overseeing counterterrorism programs at the NSA, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies. As the Board’s Senate-confirmed Chairman, he oversaw its oversight and advice engagements with other federal agencies, while also serving as the Board’s chief executive officer.
Before entering government, Adam was the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan national-security research institution in Washington, DC. There, his research focused on government surveillance, intelligence powers, and national security law. Previously, Adam practiced law at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, LLP and served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also worked on national-security policy at the RAND Corporation, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (the non-profit successor to the 9/11 Commission), and in the U.S. Congress. He received his BA from Northwestern University and his JD from Columbia Law School.
Adam is a former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Berlin. He speaks German and French.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas
Hon. Charles Eskridge, Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and arrived in Houston, Texas, at the age of 11 with his parents in 1974.
Judge Eskridge received a B.S. from Trinity University and a J.D. from Pepperdine University School of Law. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Charles Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, as a law clerk to Justice Byron White of the Supreme Court of the United States, and as a special assistant to the Hon. Howard Holtzmann of the Iran/U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague.
From 1994 to 2019, Judge Eskridge was in private practice in Houston, Texas, litigating complex commercial disputes. He teaches Origins of the Federal Constitution at the University of Houston Law Center and has served as the Distinguished Visiting Practitioner of Law at the Pepperdine University School of Law.
President Donald J. Trump nominated him to the federal bench on May 3, 2019. Following confirmation by the Senate, Judge Eskridge took his seat on October 22, 2019.
William Cranch Research Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School
Bradford R. Clark teaches and writes in the areas of civil procedure, constitutional structure, federal courts, and foreign relations. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals including California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. His book, The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution (co-authored with Anthony J. Bellia Jr.), was published in 2017 by Oxford University Press. Professor Clark has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan Law School. Professor Clark also served as a special master appointed by the Supreme Court to make recommendations in an original action between states, Alabama, et al. v. North Carolina, Orig. No. 132.
Before joining the law school faculty, Professor Clark spent several years practicing law in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he specialized in trial and appellate litigation. Previously, he served as an attorney adviser in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, where he provided legal advice to the president, the attorney general, and the heads of executive departments. Professor Clark also served as a law clerk to The Honorable Robert H. Bork of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to The Honorable Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Senior Director, Liberty & National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein is senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.
Goitein is a nationally-recognized expert on presidential emergency powers, government surveillance, and government secrecy. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Magazine, and The New Republic, and she has appeared frequently on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. She has testified on several occasions before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
Before coming to the Brennan Center, Goitein served as counsel to Senator Russ Feingold, chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Goitein graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2021–22, she was a member of the inaugural class of Senior Practitioner Fellows at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts, Georgetown Law
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.
Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.
Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.
Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.
Senior Lecturer; Director, The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, The University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Adam Klein is Director of the Strauss Center and Director of Strauss’ Program on Technology, Security, and Global Affairs. Adam also serves as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law. Before joining the Strauss Center, Adam served as Chairman of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the independent, bipartisan federal agency responsible for overseeing counterterrorism programs at the NSA, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies. As the Board’s Senate-confirmed Chairman, he oversaw its oversight and advice engagements with other federal agencies, while also serving as the Board’s chief executive officer.
Before entering government, Adam was the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan national-security research institution in Washington, DC. There, his research focused on government surveillance, intelligence powers, and national security law. Previously, Adam practiced law at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, LLP and served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also worked on national-security policy at the RAND Corporation, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (the non-profit successor to the 9/11 Commission), and in the U.S. Congress. He received his BA from Northwestern University and his JD from Columbia Law School.
Adam is a former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Berlin. He speaks German and French.
Reed Larson Professor of Labor Law, Ave Maria School of Law and, National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation
John Raudabaugh is a labor lawyer and former Member of the U.S. National Labor Relations Board. He was a partner in law firms representing management concerning domestic and international labor law matters. Currently, he represents employees seeking relief from union and/or employer unfair labor practices. Mr. Raudabaugh has presented testimony to both Senate and House Committees regarding labor law reform. Professor Raudabaugh teaches Labor Law and a Labor Law Practicum at the Ave Maria School of Law. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce and New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations with B.S. and M.S. degrees in labor economics and a J.D. degree from the University of Virginia Law School of Law.
Director, Commercial Freedom; Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
C. Jarrett Dieterle researches and writes on regulatory affairs, alcohol policy, occupational licensing and other commercial freedom issues. He also oversees the Institute’s postal, labor and disintermediation policy programs.
Jarrett previously worked as a regulatory attorney at a Washington law firm. In that role, he advised private companies on how to navigate complex regulatory regimes and helped them challenge overreaching regulations. He also practiced appellate advocacy, co-authoring several Supreme Court amicus briefs. He previously clerked for a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and has worked and written for numerous policy organizations and think tanks such as the Reason Foundation, Manhattan Institute, Mackinac Center, Federalist Society, Institute for Justice, Atlantic Legal Foundation and the Washington Legal Foundation.
Jarrett earned his bachelor’s from the University of Richmond, with a major in political science and minor in economics. He received his juris doctor from Georgetown University Law Center.
Jarrett currently lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife, Maria, and their Australian shepherd, Pepper.
Texas v. United States: What Happens Now?
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