Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law
Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.
Prior to assuming this position, from 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science. Before that he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. He also has taught at DePaul College of Law and UCLA Law School.
He is the author of eleven books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century (Picador Macmillan) published in November 2018, and two books published by Yale University Press in 2017, Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable and Free Speech on Campus (with Howard Gillman).
He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He writes a regular column for the Sacramento Bee, monthly columns for the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.
In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Sandra Segal Ikuta was confirmed as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 19, 2006. She filled a judgeship vacant since September 1, 2000, when Chief Judge Emeritus James R. Browning took senior status.
Before becoming a U.S. Circuit Judge, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to be deputy secretary and general counsel of the California Resources Agency in January 2004.
Prior to her political appointment, Judge Ikuta was a partner at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She joined the law firm in 1990 as an associate and became a partner in 1997. She specialized in environmental and natural resources law and co-chaired the firm's environmental practice group. She previously served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 1989-90, and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1988-89.
Prior to her legal career, Judge Ikuta took an unorthodox career path, which included serving as the first female editor-in-chief of a national martial arts magazine.
She received her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and a Master of Science from Columbia University School of Journalism. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.
In addition to her duties as an active U.S. Circuit Judge, Judge Ikuta was an appointed member of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.
Professor of Environmental Practice and Director, California Env, UC Davis School of Law
Richard M. Frank is a Professor of Environmental Practice and Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center (CELPC). Formerly the executive director of the Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law, Frank returned to UC Davis School of Law in January 2010. In addition to leading the CELPC, he teaches classroom courses in the environmental law curriculum.
Before coming to CLEE and UC Berkeley, Professor Frank practiced law with federal and state agencies for 32 years, most of that time with the California Department of Justice. Immediately before joining Berkeley Law, he served as California's Chief Deputy Attorney General for Legal Affairs.
In 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Frank to the Delta Vision Task Force, an advisory body asked to develop policy recommendations for the Governor and Legislature, addressing environmental problems confronting the California Delta. He served in that capacity in 2007-08. In May 2009, the Chair of the California Air Resources Board appointed Frank Vice Chair of the Economic Allocation & Advisory Committee, an advisory body formed to assist the Air Resources Board in implementing California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32).
Senior Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Damien Schiff is a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. He leads its environmental practice group, a unique initiative that draws broadly from PLF’s expertise and success in property rights and separation of powers litigation. Over the years, Damien has represented hundreds of landowners and property rights advocates to defend their liberties against heavy-handed and unwarranted environmental and land-use regulation. His litigation experience includes Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a groundbreaking decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of landowners to challenge Clean Water Act compliance orders issued by EPA, and Contoski v. Norton, PLF’s successful effort to force the federal government to make good on its promise to delist the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act.
Besides litigation, Damien has written academic articles on a variety of subjects, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, greenhouse gas torts, the duty to rescue, and international water law. He has appeared on a variety of television and radio programs and has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, and The Economist, among other publications.
He obtained his law degree magna cum laude from the University of San Diego School of Law, and his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University. While at USD, he was a research assistant for Professor Bernard Siegan, a leading constitutional theorist and advocate for property rights and economic liberty. Immediately prior to joining PLF, Damien clerked for Judge (and former PLF attorney) Victor Wolski of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Damien credits the mentoring and examples of Professor Siegan and Judge Wolski for his decision to pursue a career in liberty-based public interest litigation.
Damien lives in Sacramento with his wife, two young sons, four chickens, and a cat named Princess. In his off hours he enjoys stamp collecting, Gregorian chant, and martinis—preferably at the same time.
Former Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Kozinski served as a United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit from November 1985 until December 2017. He served as Chief Judge from 2007 to 2014. He graduated from UCLA, receiving an A.B. degree in 1972, and from UCLA Law School, receiving a J.D. degree in 1975.
Prior to his appointment to the appellate bench, Judge Kozinski served as Chief Judge of the United States Claims Court, 1982-85; Special Counsel, Merit Systems Protection Board, 1981-82; Assistant Counsel, Office of Counsel to the President, 1981; Deputy Legal Counsel, Office of President-Elect Reagan, 1980-81; Attorney, Covington & Burling, 1979-81; Attorney, Forry Golbert Singer & Gelles, 1977-79; Law Clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, 1976-77; and Law Clerk to Circuit Judge Anthony M. Kennedy, 1975-76.
Judge Kozinski is married to Marcy Jane Tiffany and has three children: Yale, Wyatt and Clayton, and three grandchildren: Quinn, Owen and Anna.
Vice President & Senior Counsel, Becket
Luke Goodrich is the author of Free to Believe: The Battle over Religious Liberty in America and vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
While at Becket, Luke has argued and won precedent-setting cases in the Third, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, and has helped Becket win four major Supreme Court cases in the last seven years: including victories for the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby against the contraception mandate, a victory for a Muslim prisoner under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and a unanimous victory in the Supreme Court’s first decision ever on the ministerial exception, which The Wall Street Journal called one of “the most important religious liberty cases in a half century.”
He frequently discusses religious freedom on networks such as CNN, Fox News, ABC, and NPR, and in publications like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times magazine. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, where he teaches constitutional law.
Before joining Becket, he clerked for Judge Michael W. McConnell on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with high honors as a member of the Law Review and the Order of the Coif.
Executive Director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Director of the Program in Human Rights, Catholic University of America
William L. Saunders is Chair Emeritus of the Religious Liberties Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is also a religious liberty and human rights scholar as well as director of the Center for Human rights at The Catholic University of America. He is Law Fellow with the Institute for Human Ecology, Professor and Director of the Program in Human Rights in the School of Arts & Sciences and Co-director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Columbus School of Law. Before joining The Catholic University of America, Mr. Saunders served as Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel with Americans United for Life for ten years. From 1999 to 2009, he was Senior Fellow in Bioethics and Human Rights Counsel at the Family Research Council.
Mr. Saunders attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead scholarship. He obtained his degree in law from the Harvard Law School.
Mr. Saunders was featured in Harvard’s first Guide to Conservative Public Interest Law in 2003 and again in the 2008 edition. He served on Harvard’s Advisory Committee for its 2008 celebration of public interest law. A member of the Supreme Court bar, he has authored numerous legal briefs in state, federal, foreign, and international courts.
Mr. Saunders’ book, Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases Under Scrutiny, was published in 2019. His articles and book chapters have been published by the university presses of Harvard, Villanova, Brigham Young, Fordham, Georgetown, Houston, Scranton, and the Catholic University of America, as well as by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Freedom House, Greenhaven Press, Rowan & Littlefield, Praeger, St. Augustine’s, and Intervarsity press. He has given lectures and participated in debates at many colleges, universities, and law schools, including Princeton, Harvard, Georgetown, and Notre Dame. He delivered the annual J. Michael Miller Lecture at the University of St. Thomas (on international law) in February 2007, the annual R. Wayne Kraft Memorial Lecture (on bioethics) at DeSales University in February 2004 and the annual James Moore Lecture (on human rights violations in Sudan) at Millikin University in 1999. He has also lectured, and/or has been published, in many foreign countries, including Italy, Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Mexico, Qatar, Malaysia, Romania, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to speaking and writing frequently on bioethics topics, Mr. Saunders has submitted testimony to the President’s Council on Bioethics, as well as to UNESCO’s Committee on Bioethics, and has briefed Congressional staff and state legislatures. He is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.
Mr. Saunders has appeared often in the media, including BBC World News, CNN, Fox News, Vatican Radio, and National Public Radio. His articles on issues have appeared in a variety of journals, such as First Things, Human Events, Human Life Review, The Legal Times, Communio, The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy, Ethics & Medics, and Touchstone.
Mr. Saunders served on the official United States delegation to the UN Special Session on Children in 2001/02. In 2011, he was a speaker at an official briefing at the UN, addressing the topic, why euthanasia is not a human right.
In 2004, he served on the NGO Working Committee in connection with the Doha Intergovernmental Conference for the Family.
Mr. Saunders is Senior Fellow with the Religious Freedom Institute, and Affiliated Scholar with the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Ethics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a member of the boards of the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists, the International Right to Life Federation, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.
In 1999, Mr. Saunders founded Sudan Relief and Rescue, Inc., to aid the persecuted church in Sudan. He has worked for and written on behalf of the persecuted church for many years.
Partner, Jenner & Block LLP
Paul M. Smith is a partner in the Firm's Litigation Department. He is a member of the Firm's Policy Committee. He is Chair of the Appellate and Supreme Court Practice and a Co-Chair of the Creative Content, Media and First Amendment, and Election Law and Redistricting Practices. Mr. Smith is AV Peer Review Rated, Martindale-Hubbell's highest peer recognition for ethical standards and legal ability.
Mr. Smith has had an active Supreme Court practice for two decades, including oral arguments in thirteen Supreme Court cases. These arguments have included Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), the Indiana Voter ID case; LULAC v. Perry (2006), and Vieth v. Jubelirer (2003), two congressional redistricting cases; Lawrence v. Texas (2003), involving the constitutionality of the Texas sodomy statute; United States v. American Library Ass'n (2003), involving a First Amendment challenge to the Children's Internet Protection Act and Mathias v. WorldCom (2001), dealing with the Eleventh Amendment immunity of state commissions. His first argument was in Celotex Corp. v. Catrett in 1986. Mr. Smith also worked extensively on several other First Amendment cases in the Supreme Court, involving issues ranging from commercial speech to defamation to "adult" speech on the Internet.
Mr. Smith also represents various clients in trial and appellate cases involving commercial and telecommunications issues, the First Amendment, intellectual property, antitrust, and redistricting and voting rights, among other areas. His recent trial work has included several cases involving congressional redistricting as well as challenges to state video game restrictions under the First Amendment.
Mr. Smith graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College in 1976 and received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. The following year, Mr. Smith was a law clerk to Judge James L. Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. From 1980-81, Mr. Smith was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
Mr. Smith was a member of the Board of Governors of the District of Columbia Bar from 2002-2008. He is a former board member and former Chair of the National Board of Directors of The American Constitution Society, Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Lambda Legal and a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
Since 2003, Chambers USA has named him one of the country's leading lawyers in the areas of Appellate Litigation and Media & Entertainment Law. In 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 Chambers USA also named him one of the country's leading lawyers in the area of First Amendment Litigation. Mr. Smith was recognized in the 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 Editions of Washington DC Super Lawyers for Appellate Law and as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in DC. In 2010, Mr. Smith was named one of the Top 10 lawyers in Washington, DC by Washington DC Super Lawyers and one of "Washington's Top Lawyers" by Washingtonian magazine. Mr. Smith was also named one of the "Decade's Most Influential Lawyers" by The National Law Journal in 2010. The Firm was also selected as 2010 "Copyright Firm of the Year" by Managing Intellectual Property magazine. In 2010, Mr. Smith was awarded the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities.
Mr. Smith is admitted to practice in Maryland, New York and the District of Columbia.
Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Vice President & Senior Counsel, Becket
Luke Goodrich is the author of Free to Believe: The Battle over Religious Liberty in America and vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
While at Becket, Luke has argued and won precedent-setting cases in the Third, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, and has helped Becket win four major Supreme Court cases in the last seven years: including victories for the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby against the contraception mandate, a victory for a Muslim prisoner under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and a unanimous victory in the Supreme Court’s first decision ever on the ministerial exception, which The Wall Street Journal called one of “the most important religious liberty cases in a half century.”
He frequently discusses religious freedom on networks such as CNN, Fox News, ABC, and NPR, and in publications like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times magazine. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, where he teaches constitutional law.
Before joining Becket, he clerked for Judge Michael W. McConnell on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with high honors as a member of the Law Review and the Order of the Coif.
Executive Director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Director of the Program in Human Rights, Catholic University of America
William L. Saunders is Chair Emeritus of the Religious Liberties Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is also a religious liberty and human rights scholar as well as director of the Center for Human rights at The Catholic University of America. He is Law Fellow with the Institute for Human Ecology, Professor and Director of the Program in Human Rights in the School of Arts & Sciences and Co-director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Columbus School of Law. Before joining The Catholic University of America, Mr. Saunders served as Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel with Americans United for Life for ten years. From 1999 to 2009, he was Senior Fellow in Bioethics and Human Rights Counsel at the Family Research Council.
Mr. Saunders attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead scholarship. He obtained his degree in law from the Harvard Law School.
Mr. Saunders was featured in Harvard’s first Guide to Conservative Public Interest Law in 2003 and again in the 2008 edition. He served on Harvard’s Advisory Committee for its 2008 celebration of public interest law. A member of the Supreme Court bar, he has authored numerous legal briefs in state, federal, foreign, and international courts.
Mr. Saunders’ book, Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases Under Scrutiny, was published in 2019. His articles and book chapters have been published by the university presses of Harvard, Villanova, Brigham Young, Fordham, Georgetown, Houston, Scranton, and the Catholic University of America, as well as by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Freedom House, Greenhaven Press, Rowan & Littlefield, Praeger, St. Augustine’s, and Intervarsity press. He has given lectures and participated in debates at many colleges, universities, and law schools, including Princeton, Harvard, Georgetown, and Notre Dame. He delivered the annual J. Michael Miller Lecture at the University of St. Thomas (on international law) in February 2007, the annual R. Wayne Kraft Memorial Lecture (on bioethics) at DeSales University in February 2004 and the annual James Moore Lecture (on human rights violations in Sudan) at Millikin University in 1999. He has also lectured, and/or has been published, in many foreign countries, including Italy, Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Mexico, Qatar, Malaysia, Romania, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to speaking and writing frequently on bioethics topics, Mr. Saunders has submitted testimony to the President’s Council on Bioethics, as well as to UNESCO’s Committee on Bioethics, and has briefed Congressional staff and state legislatures. He is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.
Mr. Saunders has appeared often in the media, including BBC World News, CNN, Fox News, Vatican Radio, and National Public Radio. His articles on issues have appeared in a variety of journals, such as First Things, Human Events, Human Life Review, The Legal Times, Communio, The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy, Ethics & Medics, and Touchstone.
Mr. Saunders served on the official United States delegation to the UN Special Session on Children in 2001/02. In 2011, he was a speaker at an official briefing at the UN, addressing the topic, why euthanasia is not a human right.
In 2004, he served on the NGO Working Committee in connection with the Doha Intergovernmental Conference for the Family.
Mr. Saunders is Senior Fellow with the Religious Freedom Institute, and Affiliated Scholar with the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Ethics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a member of the boards of the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists, the International Right to Life Federation, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.
In 1999, Mr. Saunders founded Sudan Relief and Rescue, Inc., to aid the persecuted church in Sudan. He has worked for and written on behalf of the persecuted church for many years.
Partner, Jenner & Block LLP
Paul M. Smith is a partner in the Firm's Litigation Department. He is a member of the Firm's Policy Committee. He is Chair of the Appellate and Supreme Court Practice and a Co-Chair of the Creative Content, Media and First Amendment, and Election Law and Redistricting Practices. Mr. Smith is AV Peer Review Rated, Martindale-Hubbell's highest peer recognition for ethical standards and legal ability.
Mr. Smith has had an active Supreme Court practice for two decades, including oral arguments in thirteen Supreme Court cases. These arguments have included Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), the Indiana Voter ID case; LULAC v. Perry (2006), and Vieth v. Jubelirer (2003), two congressional redistricting cases; Lawrence v. Texas (2003), involving the constitutionality of the Texas sodomy statute; United States v. American Library Ass'n (2003), involving a First Amendment challenge to the Children's Internet Protection Act and Mathias v. WorldCom (2001), dealing with the Eleventh Amendment immunity of state commissions. His first argument was in Celotex Corp. v. Catrett in 1986. Mr. Smith also worked extensively on several other First Amendment cases in the Supreme Court, involving issues ranging from commercial speech to defamation to "adult" speech on the Internet.
Mr. Smith also represents various clients in trial and appellate cases involving commercial and telecommunications issues, the First Amendment, intellectual property, antitrust, and redistricting and voting rights, among other areas. His recent trial work has included several cases involving congressional redistricting as well as challenges to state video game restrictions under the First Amendment.
Mr. Smith graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College in 1976 and received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. The following year, Mr. Smith was a law clerk to Judge James L. Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. From 1980-81, Mr. Smith was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
Mr. Smith was a member of the Board of Governors of the District of Columbia Bar from 2002-2008. He is a former board member and former Chair of the National Board of Directors of The American Constitution Society, Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Lambda Legal and a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
Since 2003, Chambers USA has named him one of the country's leading lawyers in the areas of Appellate Litigation and Media & Entertainment Law. In 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 Chambers USA also named him one of the country's leading lawyers in the area of First Amendment Litigation. Mr. Smith was recognized in the 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 Editions of Washington DC Super Lawyers for Appellate Law and as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in DC. In 2010, Mr. Smith was named one of the Top 10 lawyers in Washington, DC by Washington DC Super Lawyers and one of "Washington's Top Lawyers" by Washingtonian magazine. Mr. Smith was also named one of the "Decade's Most Influential Lawyers" by The National Law Journal in 2010. The Firm was also selected as 2010 "Copyright Firm of the Year" by Managing Intellectual Property magazine. In 2010, Mr. Smith was awarded the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities.
Mr. Smith is admitted to practice in Maryland, New York and the District of Columbia.
United States Senator, Texas
Ted Cruz represents 28 million Texans in the U.S. Senate as a passionate fighter for limited government and economic growth. He has authored 39 legislative measures signed into law. Recent victories include expanding 529 college savings accounts to allow parents to save for K–12 public, private, and religious education, leading the effort to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, imposing sanctions on terrorists who use civilians as human shields, designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, reauthorizing and reforming NASA, ensuring the availability of additional records to help solve civil rights cold cases, supporting thousands of Texas jobs, and leading the fight to confirm principled constitutionalists to our courts.
Senator Cruz is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, a former law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and former solicitor general of Texas. He has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court. In November of 2018, he was re-elected to the Senate by the people of Texas.
Managing Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California
Justice, Texas First District Court of Appeals
Susanna Dokupil was elected to the First Court of Appeals in November 2024. With over two decades of experience, Susanna’s career has spanned all three branches of government as well as private practice. She has been a Special Counsel and Assistant Solicitor General in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas as well as a Special Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and a law clerk to the Hon. Jerry Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
In her role as Special Counsel at the Texas Attorney General’s office, Susanna led teams of litigators focused on protecting Texas’s interests against agency regulations that exceeded the agency’s statutory and constitutional power. As an Assistant Solicitor General, she drafted briefs before the Fifth Circuit and United States Supreme Court, primarily focused on First Amendment issues. Susanna’s experience in private practice has combined traditional commercial litigation with advising technology companies and founders on strategic communications.
Susanna has been a prolific speaker and writer on law and public policy topics, including articles in The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, The Texas Review of Law & Politics, American Enterprise, the Washington Times, and the Houston Chronicle, among others.
Susanna is a graduate of Harvard Law School and also holds degrees from The George Washington University and Baylor University. She lives in Houston and has four children.
Senior Counsel & Director of the Center for Religious Schools, Alliance Defending Freedom
Gregory S. Baylor serves as senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, where he is the director of the Center for Religious Schools and senior counsel with the Center for Public Policy.
Since joining ADF in 2009, Baylor has focused on defending and advancing the religious freedom of faith-based educational institutions through advice, education, legislative and public advocacy, and representation in disputes. He has testified about religious liberty issues three times before congressional committees and numerous times before state legislative committees.
Greg serves on the board of directors of the International Alliance for Christian Education, the board of directors of the Association for Biblical Higher Education, the board of directors of the Association for Christian Schools International, the board of advisors of the Museum of the Bible, and advisory board of the Center for Academic Faithfulness and Flourishing.
Greg earned his Juris Doctor in 1990 from Duke University School of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif, with high honors, and served on the editorial board of the Duke Law Journal. He received his bachelor’s degree in Honors English in 1987 from Dartmouth College. Following graduation from law school, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Jerry E. Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He practiced labor and employment law at two large international law firms for three years before joining the staff of Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom, where he served for 15 years prior to joining ADF. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife (a medical doctor) and two daughters.
Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel, Americans United for Life
Steven H. Aden serves as Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel at Americans United for Life. Aden joined Americans United for Life in August 2017, overseeing all legal operations of America’s most effective pro-life organization. Aden is a highly experienced litigator, having appeared in court against Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry dozens of times and appointed by the attorneys general of six states to defend prolife laws. Mr. Aden secured court victories that upheld an Arizona law that resulted in six abortion businesses ceasing to offer abortion, applied Missouri’s abortion laws to chemical abortion and upheld the right of Louisiana regulators to shut down dangerous abortion facilities. A prolific author and analyst on sanctity of life issues and constitutional jurisprudence, Aden is admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Hawaii (inactive), and is a member of the bars of the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal circuit and district courts. He has practiced law since 1990 and earned his J.D. (cum laude) from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.A. from the University of Hawaii.
Supreme Court Round-Up
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Jeffrey Bossert Clark
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Luke Goodrich, Barry W. Lynn, Roger Pilon, Dean Reuter, William L. Saunders, Paul Smith
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Christian Legal Society v. Martínez
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Ted Cruz, Peter J. Eliasberg, Susanna Dokupil
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Gregory Baylor
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Steven H. Aden
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