Boochever and Bird Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom a, UC-Davis School of Law
Alan Brownstein, a nationally recognized Constitutional Law scholar, teaches Constitutional Law, Law and Religion, and Torts at UC Davis School of Law. While the primary focus of his scholarship relates to church-state issues and free exercise and establishment clause doctrine, he has also written extensively on freedom of speech, privacy and autonomy rights, and other constitutional law subjects. His articles have been published in numerous academic journals including the Stanford Law Review, Cornell Law Review, UCLA Law Review and Constitutional Commentary. Brownstein received the UC Davis School of Law's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1995 and the UC Davis Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award in 2008. He is a member of the American Law Institute.
Professor Brownstein has testified on several occasions before various California Senate Committees on legislation promoting religious liberty and bills that raise Establishment Clause concerns. His assistance is often sought by advocacy groups on issues relating to religious liberty and equality. He is a frequent invited lecturer at academic conferences and regularly participates as a speaker or panelist in law related programs before civic, legal, religious, and educational groups. He is the co-author of dozens of Findlaw columns discussing a range of legal issues.
A graduate of Antioch College and Harvard Law School (where he served as a Case Editor of the Harvard Law Review), Brownstein was an attorney in general litigation and corporate practice with the law firm of Tuttle & Taylor in Los Angeles before joining the UC Davis law faculty. From 1977-78, he clerked for the Honorable Frank M. Coffin, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Portland, Maine.
"Most lawyers do not practice constitutional law," Brownstein notes, "but members of the Bar bear a special responsibility for understanding constitutional doctrine and communicating its meaning to non-lawyers. The role that constitutional law plays in our society depends in part on the interplay between courts and the political culture. If judicial decisions are unintelligible to the polity and no group accepts responsibility for explaining the Constitution's evolving meaning to the polity, we undermine part of the foundation of the constitutional scheme of things."
Senior Counsel, First Liberty Institute
Jordan Lorence is Senior Counsel in FLI’s Washington, D.C. office, where he represents First Liberty in strategic efforts promoting religious liberty, and works on important First Amendment projects and litigation, including those at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lorence has a long career of litigating religious liberty cases since 1984. He has worked for many public interest law firms, including Alliance Defending Freedom, Home School Legal Defense Association, the North Star Legal Center and Concerned Women for America.
He has worked on important religious liberty cases. Lorence worked on school choice cases at the Supreme Court, such as Witters v. Washington Department of Services for the Blind (1986), and Trinity Lutheran (2016), which laid the foundation for First Liberty’s crucial win in Carson v. Makin (2022), requiring Maine to include religious schools in its school choice program.
Lorence argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Regents of the University of Wisconsin v. Southworth (2000). He represented prolife Christian law students from the University of Wisconsin Law School who objected to the University’s requirement that they pay a mandatory student fee that funded the advocacy of student pro-abortion groups. Other Supreme Court cases Lorence has worked on include NIFLA v. Becerra (2018), protecting prolife pregnancy centers from a California statute requiring them to post signs explaining how pregnant women could obtain state-funded abortions; Masterpiece Cakeshop (2017), involving a Christian cake artist sued by the State of Colorado for declining to design a case celebrating the wedding of a same-sex couple and other cases such as Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2012), Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995), Hurley v. GLIB (1995) and Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Center Moriches School District (1993).
Churches and other religious groups in New York City obtained the right to rent vacant public schools on weekends to conduct worship services after Lorence’s tenacious 20 years of litigation in Bronx Household of Faith. Lorence won protection for churches facing eviction from discriminatory zoning ordinances in Minnesota in Cornerstone Bible Church v. City of Hastings, Minnesota (1991). He also argued at the New Mexico Supreme Court one of the first cases in the nation defending a Christian wedding photographer charged by the State of New Mexico with discrimination for declining to create photos celebrating the commitment ceremony of a lesbian couple in Elane Photography v. Willock (2013).
Lorence defended home schooling families from intrusive school officials during his time working at Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in the 1980s and 1990s. HSLDA also tasked Lorence with establishing a sister organization in Canada to protect home schooling families there. He traveled extensively in Canada from British Columbia to Prince Edward Island speaking to families how they could protect their right to home school under relevant Canadian law.
Lorence earned his undergraduate degree in journalism from Stanford University and his law degree from the University of Minnesota, his home state. Lorence was born and raised in Minnesota, where he worked one summer building Mighty Dump trucks at Tonka Toys in Mound, Minnesota. For two years immediately after he graduated from law school, Lorence served as the head administrator for a Minnesota Senate committee.
He speaks extensively on First Amendment and other legal issues. Lorence has spoken at least 75 law schools and many legal conferences. Prominent publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and others have printed his opinion pieces on key legal issues involving religious liberty and freedom of speech. He has appeared on such media outlets as Fox News, CNN, National Public Radio, NBC’s Today Show, BBC radio and many others.
Lorence and his wife Marilyn have been married 40 years. They live in the Washington, D.C. area where they raised their seven children.
Associate Dean and Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Jessie Hill’s teaching and scholarship focus on constitutional law, civil rights, reproductive rights, and law and religion. Her articles have been published in the Michigan Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, and Texas Law Review, among others. She has also appeared in numerous local and national press outlets, including CNN, the New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and NPR.
She is the founding director of the Reproductive Rights Law Initiative at the School of Law, which provides education and legal support relating to reproductive rights. Her work was recently profiled in the Case Law-Med magazine. She is a recipient of the university’s Distinguished Research Award. She has also been appointed a Nootbaar Fellow in Law and Religion at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law. In 2023, she received both the Black Law Students Association Faculty Award and the Champion for Women Award from the Cuyahoga Democratic Women’s Caucus, and she has been recognized by the ACLU of Ohio for her reproductive rights advocacy.
Professor Hill joined the faculty in 2003 after practicing First Amendment and civil rights law with the firm of Berkman, Gordon, Murray & DeVan in Cleveland. Before entering private practice, Professor Hill worked at the Reproductive Freedom Project of the National ACLU office in New York. She also served as law clerk to the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She received her JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and her AB, magna cum laude, from Brown University.
Associate Dean & Principle Lecturer, Regent University School of Law
Professor Jacob has been a law professor at Regent University since January 2001. Prior to coming to Regent, his career began in a big-firm law practice and included years as a religious liberty lawyer, in Christian ministry leadership, and in Christian higher education.
Most of his teaching and scholarship is in the area of constitutional law. His published articles include"Griswold and the Defense of Traditional Marriage” in the North Dakota Law Review; “Will the Real Constitutional Originalist Please Stand Up?” in the Creighton Law Review; “Back to Basics: Constitutional Meaning and ‘Tradition,’” in the Texas Tech Law Review; and “Free Exercise in the ‘Lobbying Nineties,’” in the Nebraska Law Review.
Chief Legal Officer, Pacem Solutions International
Prior to his current position as the Chief Legal Officer for PACEM Solutions, Mr. Schmitz served as a foreign policy/national security advisor to Donald J. Trump from March 2016 through the November 2016 election. His government service includes service as the 5th Senate-confirmed Inspector General of the Department of Defense from April 2002 to September 2005. For his service as Inspector General, Mr. Schmitz was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award presented by the Secretary of Defense to non-career federal employees.
In 2013, Mr. Schmitz published “The Inspector General Handbook: Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Other Constitutional ‘Enemies, Foreign and Domestic’,” the first-ever handbook for the inspector general profession – written also for those who work with inspectors general. Mr. Schmitz has extensive anti-corruption experience in overseeing compliance with various international and security-related laws, including but not limited to the Inspector General Act, Intelligence Oversight laws, the Posse Comitatus Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), and laws administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Prior to his service as Inspector General of the Department of Defense, Mr. Schmitz was a Partner in the international law firm of Patton Boggs LLP, serving as head of the Aviation Practice Group, and at the same time a Captain in the United States Naval Reserves, serving as Inspector General of the Naval Reserve Intelligence Command. After his Inspector General service, Mr. Schmitz served as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of the Prince Group in McLean, Virginia, after which he served as Managing Director in the Washington D.C. Office of Freeh Group International. His pre-Inspector General public service included: twenty-seven years of naval service, first on active duty and then as a reserve officer; law clerk to the Honorable James L. Buckley, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, the Honorable Edwin Meese III.
Mr. Schmitz has published numerous articles and has testified as a constitutional expert before U.S. Senate committees, and before various state legislature committees. From 1995 until 2002, he was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he developed and taught a seminar on advanced Constitutional Law.
Mr. Schmitz graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978, and received his Doctor of Jurisprudence from Stanford University in 1986. He is a Senior Fellow for the Center for Security Policy, and a regular Newsmax “Insider” on constitutional issues under the banner, “Support and Defend.” In 2013, Mr. Schmitz was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame (Virginia Chapter) as an “Outstanding American.” Joe and his wife of 40 years, Mollie, have raised six sons and two daughters.
Legal Director, Appeal for Justice, A Human Rights and Civil Liberties Law Practice
David Remes is a human rights lawyer and one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Hedges case. Best known for his representation of Guantánamo detainees, David has also represented individuals in dozens of cases involving freedom of speech and religion, equal protection, and due process of law. For many years, David was a partner at Covington & Burling LLP, a premier Washington, D.C. law firm. He left the firm in 2008 to devote himself exclusively to human rights matters; he calls his practice Appeal for Justice. David also assists advocacy groups in federal legislative matters. David is a frequent guest on public affairs programs and is widely quoted in the US and foreign media. He has also been extensively profiled. David received his B.A. from Columbia University, magna cum laude, in 1976, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
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.
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Miguel A. Estrada is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Mr. Estrada has represented clients before federal and state courts throughout the country in a broad range of matters. He has argued 24 cases before the United States Supreme Court, and briefed many others. He has also argued dozens of appeals in the lower federal courts.
Best Lawyers® recognized Mr. Estrada as a 2020 Lawyer of the Year in Intellectual Property Litigation and as a Lawyer of the Year in Appellate Practice. He has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a 2020 U.S. Appellate Litigation “Star”. In 2014, The American Lawyer named Mr. Estrada a “Litigator of the Year,” praising his “brains and tenacity” and noting he is the lawyer to call for “a tough, potentially unwinnable case.” From 2014-2021, Chambers & Partners has named him as one of a handful of attorneys that it ranked in the top tier among the nation’s leading appellate lawyers. Chambers & Partners noted that “clients are impressed by his intellect and ability, with one saying, ‘His papers are just blindingly clear in what they say and devastating in how they marshal the arguments.’” The Atlantic described his oral argument in a 2014 high-profile separation-of-powers case as “one of the most dazzling arguments the marble chamber has heard in many years.”
Mr. Estrada was selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® in the area of Appellate Law, in addition to previous recognition by the publication in the specialties of Bet-the-Company Litigation, Commercial Litigation and Criminal Defense: White Collar, Intellectual Property Litigation, and Regulatory Enforcement Litigation in the areas of SEC, Telecom, and Energy. In 2017, he was elected as a member of the American Law Institute. In 2021, Mr. Estrada was named among the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. In 2004, Legal Times named him one of the top 12 appellate litigators in the D.C. area, noting that “people who follow appellate practice in Washington have known for several years that Estrada . . . is one of the best around.” Also in 2004, Washingtonian Magazine named him one of the top constitutional law lawyers “who could become one of the legends of the Supreme Court bar.”
Mr. Estrada joined Gibson Dunn in 1997, after serving for five years as Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States. He previously served as Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York. In those capacities, Mr. Estrada represented the government in numerous jury trials and in many appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Estrada practiced corporate law in New York with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Mr. Estrada is a Trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society. He was formerly a member of the Board of Visitors of Harvard Law School.
Mr. Estrada served as a law clerk to the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy in the U.S. Supreme Court from 1988 to 1989 and to the Honorable Amalya L. Kearse in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1986 to 1987. He received a J.D. degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. Mr. Estrada graduated with an A.B. degree magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1983 from Columbia College, New York. He is fluent in Spanish and proficient in French.
Representative Supreme Court matters include:
In 2011, the Supreme Court appointed Mr. Estrada to brief and argue two criminal cases –Dorsey v. United States and Hill v. United States – in which the Solicitor General declined to defend the judgments of the court of appeals. Mr. Estrada was appointed to argue the position that the Solicitor General had declined to defend.
Mr. Estrada was also part of the team that successfully presented then Governor Bush’s position to the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000). Other cases that Mr. Estrada handled in the Supreme Court include Granholm v. Heald (2005) (dormant Commerce Clause and Twenty-First Amendment), Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens (2000) (False Claims Act, Article III standing and Eleventh Amendment immunity), Old Chief v. United States (1997) (rules of evidence), United States v. Mezzanatto (1995) (evidence and plea bargaining), United States v. Robertson (1995) (constitutional limits on Congress’s Commerce Clause powers), Citizens Bank of Maryland v. Strumpf (1995) (bankruptcy law), and NOW, Inc. v. Scheidler (1994) (RICO).
Recent Court of Appeals matters include:
In addition, Mr. Estrada is lead appellate counsel to Vivendi S.A. in two securities-fraud appeals from jury verdicts that are currently pending in the Second Circuit, and to the National Association of Broadcasters in a challenge to certain procedures promulgated by the FCC in connection with the upcoming Spectrum Auction. Mr. Estrada also recently presented argument before the D.C. Circuit on behalf of the tobacco industry in a first amendment challenge to certain compelled disclosures that were imposed as part of the government’s long-running civil RICO case against the industry.
Other matters:
Laura Carlisle is an associate in the New Orleans office of Baker Donelson, and a member of the Advocacy Department. She assists in a wide variety of business litigation matters for clients.
Jennifer McNamara, of counsel in the New Orleans office of Baker Donelson, has litigated in state and federal courts for fifteen years and concentrates her practice in the areas of commercial litigation, employment, and intellectual property. Her commercial litigation experience includes representing corporate and individual clients in a variety of business disputes, including class actions, contract disputes, defamation claims, franchise disputes, and unfair trade practices. Ms. McNamara has also represented national insurance companies in class actions and the defense of first-party claims.
Ms. McNamara's employment law experience includes defending employers against claims brought under state discrimination statutes, the Family Medical Leave Act, Title VII, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act before the EEOC, in mediation, and in state and federal courts. She also counsels employers regarding personnel policies and covenants not to compete.
With respect to her intellectual property practice, Ms. McNamara counsels clients on copyright, trademark, and defamation issues arising from Internet publications and Web sites. She is experienced in handling trademark litigation, including litigation arising from the transfer and use of domain names. Ms. McNamara has also counseled and represented media clients in areas such as access to public records and protection of the reporter's privilege in civil and criminal court.
*Dr. Ron D. Katznelson is the President of Bi-Level Technologies, a signal processing technology startup company in Encinitas, CA. He is a technologist, an inventor named on 23 U.S. patents, entrepreneur, an intellectual property development and management expert, and an independent scholar of the patent system. He serves on the IP Committee of IEEE-USA and is a member of the San Diego Intellectual Property Association. He can be reached at ron@bileveltech.com.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Throughout his 40-year career in private law practice in Washington, D.C., Richard Samp has specialized in appellate litigation with a focus on constitutional law. He served as Chief Counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation for more than 30 years. He has participated directly in more than 200 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Samp is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School and clerked for a federal judge in Detroit.
General Counsel and Vice-President of Litigation, Washington Legal Foundation
Cory Andrews is General Counsel and Vice-President of Litigation for the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF). As counsel of record for WLF and other clients, he has authored more than 100 briefs, at petition and merits stages, in the U.S. Supreme Court. He also frequently litigates in state and federal appellate courts. Before joining WLF, Cory practiced trial and appellate law for White & Case LLP, where he litigated in state and federal courts on behalf of clients in the telecommunications, hospitality, and banking industries. He received his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Florida, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Florida Law Review and elected to the Order of the Coif. Upon graduation, Cory served as a law clerk to the Honorable Steven D. Merryday of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Partner, Wiley Rein, LLP
Megan L. Brown is a partner at Wiley Rein LLP. She has significant litigation, appellate and regulatory experience before state and federal courts and agencies.
Ms. Brown helps businesses respond to federal, state and local regulation and investigations raising administrative law, statutory interpretation, and constitutional issues, including the First Amendment.
Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Battery Council International
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