Dean, Delaware Law School
Dean Todd Clark is Dean of Delaware Law School. He joins Delaware Law School after serving as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs & Professor of Law at St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law. Before St. Thomas, Dean Clark was Professor of Law at North Carolina Central University School of Law where he taught Business Associations, Contracts, Corporate Justice, Employment Discrimination, and Hip Hop, Law & Justice. At NCCU, he also served on the ABA Compliance team and was the Director of the Justice in the Practice of Law Certificate Program and the Director of New Initiatives. Before that, Dean Clark was a Lecturer in Law at West Virginia University College of Law, where he taught Legal Writing and Appellate Advocacy.
Dean Clark earned his B.A. in Political Science from Wittenberg University, his M.B.A. from West Virginia University College of Business and Economics, and his J.D. from University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Following his graduation from law school, he practiced law at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson.
His scholarship includes a book, CORPORATE JUSTICE (Carolina Academic Press), as well as numerous law review articles and other scholarship on social justice, corporate discretion, and sexual harassment. He is currently working on a casebook on Sports Law.
Dean, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
André Douglas Pond Cummings is the incoming Dean of Widener University Commonwealth Law School. Dean cummings currently serves as associate dean for faculty development and the Charles C. Baum distinguished professor of law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law. During his time at the Bowen School of Law, cummings served for five years on the university Diversity Counsel and three years on the chancellor’s race and ethnicity advisory committee. Prior to joining the Bowen School of Law, cummings taught at the West Virginia University College of Law and clerked for Associate Chief Justice Christine M. Durham of the Utah Supreme Court and Chief Judge Joseph W. Hatchett of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Dean cummings is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Howard University School of Law.
Director of Housing Policy and the American Identity Project, Progressive Policy Institute
Richard D. Kahlenberg is the Director of Housing Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Director of the American Identity Project, where he is working on to strengthen American identity through public education. The author or editor of seventeen books, he has expertise in education, civil rights, and equal opportunity. Kahlenberg has been called “the intellectual father of the economic integration movement” in K–12 schooling and “arguably the nation’s chief proponent of class-based affirmative action in higher education admissions.” He is also an authority on teachers’ unions, charter schools, community colleges, housing segregation, and labor organizing.
Kahlenberg’s articles have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and NPR.
Previously, Kahlenberg was a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. a fellow at the Center for National Policy, a visiting associate professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, and a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA). He also serves on the advisory board of the Pell Institute, and the Albert Shanker Institute, and as a professorial lecturer at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. In addition, he is the winner of the William A. Kaplin Award for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy Scholarship. Reflecting on Kahlenberg’s work on higher education, William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson wrote that he “deserves more credit than anyone else for arguing vigorously and relentlessly for stronger efforts to address disparities by socioeconomic status.” He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and was a rotary scholar at the University of Nairobi School of Journalism.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Menashi was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on November 14, 2019. Previously, he served as special assistant and associate counsel to the President in the White House and as acting general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. He was assistant professor of law at Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he taught administrative law and civil procedure, and a research fellow at New York University School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center. He was also a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in New York, where he practiced appellate and commercial litigation, and served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as senior articles editor of the Stanford Law Review, and from Dartmouth College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Partner, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC
Mr. Norris helps clients win important questions of federal law in trial and appellate courts across the country. He has represented prominent nonprofits, many States, the Republican Party, and the former President of the United States. He has argued in eight of the twelve federal circuits and twice at the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Mr. Norris is barred in Tennessee and Virginia, and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Mr. Norris lives with his family in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Legal Fellow, Center for the Separation of Powers, Pacific Legal Foundation
Alison Somin joined Pacific Legal Foundation in May 2020 as a legal fellow in the Center for the Separation of Powers and part of the equality before the law practice group.
Before joining the Pacific Legal Foundation team, Alison was a special assistant and counsel for over a decade to Gail Heriot, a member of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also has deep roots in the liberty movement. Alison was a Koch Associate at the National Federation for Independent Business Legal Foundation and, during law school, completed summer clerkships at the Institute for Justice and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. She holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in history from Dartmouth College.
Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Journal, Texas Journal of Law and Politics, and The Federalist Society’s Engage magazine and blog.
She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Ilya; two children; and golden retriever Willow. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking and cooking, children’s art projects, and training and exercising Willow.
President, EmpiriLaw
Dr. Adam Feldman is the creator and author of the blog Empirical SCOTUS and the Substack Legalytics. He is also the statistics editor for SCOTUSblog. He also runs the legal analytics/AI consulting business Empiri-Law and teaches college courses in political science. He has a law degree from U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law and practiced law as a trial lawyer for several years before starting a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California. Upon completion of the Ph.D. Adam pursued a postdoctoral fellowship through Columbia Law School. He has fifteen published articles in law and peer-reviewed journals.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Kenneth Kiyul Lee is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was appointed in June 2019 and is based in San Diego, California.
Prior to his appointment, he was a partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block in Los Angeles. Judge Lee previously served as an Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush and as Special Counsel to Senator Arlen Specter, then-chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He started his legal career at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York.
Judge Lee received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, and his A.B. from Cornell University, summa cum laude. He clerked for Judge Emilio M. Garza of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Joseph Tartakovsky, Author of The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America's Supreme Law.
Joseph Tartakovsky is author of The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America’s Supreme Law (2018) and the former Deputy Solicitor General of Nevada. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Lawrence VanDyke serves as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to that appointment in January 2020, he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice. Before that, he served consecutively as the Solicitor General of two western states – Nevada and Montana. At the beginning of his legal career, he worked as an attorney in the Appellate and Constitutional Issues practice group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.
Judge VanDyke received his law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He has engineering and theology undergraduate degrees and a masters degree in engineering management. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge VanDyke and his wife Cheryl live in Reno, Nevada, and they have three children.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Andrew Brasher served as a United States District Judge for the Middle District of Alabama. Before taking the bench in May 2019, Judge Brasher was the Solicitor General of the State of Alabama, where he argued cases before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the Alabama Supreme Court. He previously served for several years as the Deputy Solicitor General and practiced in the litigation and white-collar criminal defense practice groups in the Birmingham, Alabama office of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Brasher served as a law clerk to Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Brasher earned his B.A., summa cum laude, from Samford University and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Judge, U.S. District Court, Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri
Josh Divine was most recently the Solicitor General of Missouri, where he oversaw the office's appellate and special litigation divisions. As Solicitor General, Mr. Divine led Missouri's trial and appellate teams to some of its most significant victories. Mr. Divine was lead counsel in blocking $700 billion in student loan bailouts attempted by the federal government. He was lead counsel in obtaining a $25 billion judgment against China for antitrust violations. And he was lead counsel in successfully defending the Missouri law that prohibits gender transition interventions in minors, making Missouri the only state in the nation to prevail at trial against an equal protection challenge to one of these laws. In addition, Mr. Divine's work at the trial court in Missouri v. Biden (restyled Murthy v. Missouri) helped expose systemic violations of the First Amendment by the federal government, which the trial court found was unconstitutionally pressuring social media companies to suppress millions of free speech posts.
Before serving as Solicitor General, Mr. Divine was Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, where he oversaw all legal issues, managed matters related to the Judiciary Committee, and developed tech policy. Mr. Divine clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Thomas and on the Eleventh Circuit for Judge William Pryor. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Northern Colorado. His recent legal scholarship has appeared in the Virginia Law Review and the Hastings Law Journal.
U.S. Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit
Allison Hartwell Eid is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. She joined the court in 2017 after a nomination from President Donald Trump.
Prior to her service on the Tenth Circuit, Judge Eid was a justice on the Colorado Supreme Court. She was the 95th justice to serve on the court, serving from 2006 to 2017. Before joining the Court, Judge Eid was the Solicitor General of the State of Colorado, serving as the chief legal officer to the Colorado Attorney General and representing Colorado officials and agencies in state and federal court. She was also a tenured Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Constitutional Law, Legislation, and Torts, and writing on the topic of constitutional federalism.
Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Law, Judge Eid practiced commercial and appellate litigation with the Denver office of the national law firm of Arnold & Porter. She clerked for the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Judge Eid earned her bachelor’s degree in American Studies (With Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa) from Stanford University in 1987. She then served as a Special Assistant and Speechwriter to U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. In 1991, she graduated with High Honors from The University of Chicago Law School, where she was Articles Editor of The University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed her to serve on the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise, established by Congress in 1955 to prepare the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a member of the American Law Institute and studied comparative law in London as a Temple Bar Scholar.
Judge Eid grew up in Spokane, Washington. She and her husband Troy, an attorney, have two children.
United States Attorney, Southern District of Texas
Director, Senior Mountain Resorts Counsel, Vail Resorts
Judge, United States District Court, Southern District of New York
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Dean, Delaware Law School
Dean Todd Clark is Dean of Delaware Law School. He joins Delaware Law School after serving as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs & Professor of Law at St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law. Before St. Thomas, Dean Clark was Professor of Law at North Carolina Central University School of Law where he taught Business Associations, Contracts, Corporate Justice, Employment Discrimination, and Hip Hop, Law & Justice. At NCCU, he also served on the ABA Compliance team and was the Director of the Justice in the Practice of Law Certificate Program and the Director of New Initiatives. Before that, Dean Clark was a Lecturer in Law at West Virginia University College of Law, where he taught Legal Writing and Appellate Advocacy.
Dean Clark earned his B.A. in Political Science from Wittenberg University, his M.B.A. from West Virginia University College of Business and Economics, and his J.D. from University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Following his graduation from law school, he practiced law at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson.
His scholarship includes a book, CORPORATE JUSTICE (Carolina Academic Press), as well as numerous law review articles and other scholarship on social justice, corporate discretion, and sexual harassment. He is currently working on a casebook on Sports Law.
Dean, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
André Douglas Pond Cummings is the incoming Dean of Widener University Commonwealth Law School. Dean cummings currently serves as associate dean for faculty development and the Charles C. Baum distinguished professor of law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law. During his time at the Bowen School of Law, cummings served for five years on the university Diversity Counsel and three years on the chancellor’s race and ethnicity advisory committee. Prior to joining the Bowen School of Law, cummings taught at the West Virginia University College of Law and clerked for Associate Chief Justice Christine M. Durham of the Utah Supreme Court and Chief Judge Joseph W. Hatchett of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Dean cummings is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Howard University School of Law.
Director of Housing Policy and the American Identity Project, Progressive Policy Institute
Richard D. Kahlenberg is the Director of Housing Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Director of the American Identity Project, where he is working on to strengthen American identity through public education. The author or editor of seventeen books, he has expertise in education, civil rights, and equal opportunity. Kahlenberg has been called “the intellectual father of the economic integration movement” in K–12 schooling and “arguably the nation’s chief proponent of class-based affirmative action in higher education admissions.” He is also an authority on teachers’ unions, charter schools, community colleges, housing segregation, and labor organizing.
Kahlenberg’s articles have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and NPR.
Previously, Kahlenberg was a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. a fellow at the Center for National Policy, a visiting associate professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, and a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA). He also serves on the advisory board of the Pell Institute, and the Albert Shanker Institute, and as a professorial lecturer at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. In addition, he is the winner of the William A. Kaplin Award for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy Scholarship. Reflecting on Kahlenberg’s work on higher education, William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson wrote that he “deserves more credit than anyone else for arguing vigorously and relentlessly for stronger efforts to address disparities by socioeconomic status.” He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and was a rotary scholar at the University of Nairobi School of Journalism.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
Judge Menashi was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on November 14, 2019. Previously, he served as special assistant and associate counsel to the President in the White House and as acting general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. He was assistant professor of law at Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he taught administrative law and civil procedure, and a research fellow at New York University School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center. He was also a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in New York, where he practiced appellate and commercial litigation, and served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court of the United States and to Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as senior articles editor of the Stanford Law Review, and from Dartmouth College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Partner, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC
Mr. Norris helps clients win important questions of federal law in trial and appellate courts across the country. He has represented prominent nonprofits, many States, the Republican Party, and the former President of the United States. He has argued in eight of the twelve federal circuits and twice at the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Mr. Norris is barred in Tennessee and Virginia, and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Mr. Norris lives with his family in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Legal Fellow, Center for the Separation of Powers, Pacific Legal Foundation
Alison Somin joined Pacific Legal Foundation in May 2020 as a legal fellow in the Center for the Separation of Powers and part of the equality before the law practice group.
Before joining the Pacific Legal Foundation team, Alison was a special assistant and counsel for over a decade to Gail Heriot, a member of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also has deep roots in the liberty movement. Alison was a Koch Associate at the National Federation for Independent Business Legal Foundation and, during law school, completed summer clerkships at the Institute for Justice and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. She holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in history from Dartmouth College.
Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Journal, Texas Journal of Law and Politics, and The Federalist Society’s Engage magazine and blog.
She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Ilya; two children; and golden retriever Willow. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking and cooking, children’s art projects, and training and exercising Willow.
Plenary Session 2: Race and Education After Students for Fair Admissions
Washington, DCPlenary Session 2: Race and Education After Students for Fair Admissions
Todd Clark, andré douglas pond cummings, Richard D. Kahlenberg, Steven J. Menashi, Cameron T. Norris, Alison E. Somin
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