President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence; Co-Director of the Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic, New York University School of Law
Sally Katzen served in the Clinton administration as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as deputy assistant to the president for economic policy and deputy director of the National Economic Council in the White House, and then as the deputy director for management at OMB. She served as the head of the Agency Review Group for the Obama/Biden transition with responsibility for the Executive Office of the President and all government-wide agencies. She has taught both undergraduates and at various law schools. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the National Academy of Public Administration, has served on multiple panels for the National Academy of Sciences, testified frequently before Congress, and is on the board of several non-profit organizations. Before joining the Clinton administration, Katzen was a partner in the Washington, DC, law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, specializing in regulatory and legislative matters, while serving in leadership roles in the American Bar Association (including chair of the Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice and as DC delegate to the ABA’s House of Delegates), as president of the Federal Communications Bar Association and as president of the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. She graduated from Smith College and the University of Michigan Law School, where she was the first woman editor-in-chief of the Law Review. She clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and served in the Carter administration as the general counsel of the Council on Wage and Price Stability in the Executive Office of the President.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Nelson was confirmed to the Ninth Circuit in October 2018, as the youngest Circuit Judge to serve from Idaho and he has chambers in his hometown of Idaho Falls. Prior to his confirmation, Judge Nelson served for nine years as General Counsel of Idaho Falls-based Melaleuca, Inc., a consumer goods company. He previously worked in Washington, DC, where he served in all three branches of the federal government, including as Special Counsel for Supreme Court nominations to the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Deputy General Counsel to the White House Office of Management and Budget; Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice; and a law clerk to Judge Henderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has argued in most of the federal courts of appeals and worked on dozens of Supreme Court briefs. He started in the Washington, DC office of Sidley Austin as an appellate lawyer, after clerking for Judges Mosk and Brower of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague, and for now-Judge Tom Griffith, then-Senate Legal Counsel, during the impeachment trial of President Clinton. Judge Nelson earned his B.A. from Brigham Young University and his J.D., with honors, from BYU Law School. Judge Nelson has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1998.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
Partner, Earth & Water Law
Susan Bodine is a partner at Earth & Water Law.
Susan Bodine is a former Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA). Prior to this position, Susan served as Chief Counsel for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and previously worked for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
This is Susan’s second position at EPA, having served as Assistant Administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (now the Office of Land and Emergency Management) from 2006 to 2009.
Susan has also practiced environmental law at Covington and Burling LLP and at Barnes and Thornburg LLP.
Susan is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.
President, Environmental Law Institute
In September 2015, Scott Fulton was selected as ELI’s fifth President. Previously, Mr. Fulton was a Principal at the environmental law firm Beveridge & Diamond, P.C., and served as General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and in a number of other high-ranking government leadership positions.
Scott has a steadfast commitment to ensuring that ELI’s core functions as a convener, educator, publisher of legal scholarship and policy dialogue, and research engine remain a sound foundation on which to build for the future. He also is focused on making sure that ELI is adapting and modernizing in alignment with a rapidly changing world. Under his leadership, ELI has:
Mr. Fulton’s Past Record of Service
In addition to his role as EPA’s General Counsel, Mr. Fulton served in a number of other key leadership roles in both Republican and Democratic Administrations, including as Acting EPA Deputy Administrator, head of EPA’s Office of International Affairs, Judge on the Environmental Appeals Board, and head of the Agency’s enforcement program. He also served as Assistant Chief of the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Environment and Natural Resources Division. An international expert on environmental governance and rule of law, he serves as a member of the United Nations Advisory Council on Environmental Justice and teaches International Environmental Governance as an adjunct professor at George Washington School of Law. He received the two highest awards given by the U.S. government for outstanding leadership—the Presidential Meritorious Executive Service Award, and the Presidential Distinguished Executive Service Award—and has been inducted into the American College of Environmental Lawyers.
Highlights of Mr. Fulton’s EPA career include:
Managing Co-Founder, Water Finance Exchange
Hank has served in many areas of environmental business and policy. His career in the environmental policy world has included leadership positions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as COO (Deputy Administrator) from 1989-1993. During his time with the EPA he oversaw the development of innovative air and water programs to prevent pollution, including the development of the Energy Star program and implementation of market based trading programs under the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. He has also served at the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Environment and Natural Resources Division from 1983-87.
In business and investing, Hank has served as Senior Vice President in charge of acquisitions and other divisions of Safety-Kleen, a billion-dollar environmental service company. He has also served as Managing Partner of SAIL Capital Partners and Vice President of William D. Ruckelshaus Associates, which co-managed the successful Environmental Venture Fund. As Co-Founder of Capital E, LLC, a strategic consultancy, he advised Fortune 100 and early stage ventures on sustainable growth strategies. He also previously served as CEO of the Global Environment & Technology Foundation (GETF).
Hank has held numerous Board seats over the years. These positions include serving as Managing Director of the US Water Partnership, Chairman of the Board of WaterHealth International, Co-Founder of the American Council on Renewable Energy and Member of the Board of the Global Water Challenge. He served as Commissioner of the National Commission on Energy Policy, has advised several Cabinet Secretaries and serves on the Advisory Board to the National Renewable Energy Lab and the Pacific Northwest National Lab. In 1991 the EPA awarded him with the Total Quality Leadership Award and in 2009 he received the national Richard Mellon Award for Environmental Stewardship. Hank holds a Bachelors degree with High Honors from Princeton University (Woodrow Wilson School) and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.
Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Lisa Heinzerling is the Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. Professor of Law at Georgetown University. Her primary specialties are administrative law and environmental law. She is the author of several books, including Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, a critique of the use of cost-benefit analysis in environmental policy. Professor Heinzerling has received the Georgetown University President's Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers, the faculty teaching award at Georgetown Law, and several awards related to her scholarship and advocacy in environmental law. She was the lead author of the winning briefs in Massachusetts v. EPA, in which the Supreme Court held that the Clean Air Act gives EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. From January 2009 to July 2009, Heinzerling served as Senior Climate Policy Counsel to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and then, from July 2009 to December 2010, she served as Associate Administrator of EPA’s Office of Policy. She was a law clerk to Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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.
Partner, Earth & Water Law
Susan Bodine is a partner at Earth & Water Law.
Susan Bodine is a former Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA). Prior to this position, Susan served as Chief Counsel for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and previously worked for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
This is Susan’s second position at EPA, having served as Assistant Administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (now the Office of Land and Emergency Management) from 2006 to 2009.
Susan has also practiced environmental law at Covington and Burling LLP and at Barnes and Thornburg LLP.
Susan is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.
President, Environmental Law Institute
In September 2015, Scott Fulton was selected as ELI’s fifth President. Previously, Mr. Fulton was a Principal at the environmental law firm Beveridge & Diamond, P.C., and served as General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and in a number of other high-ranking government leadership positions.
Scott has a steadfast commitment to ensuring that ELI’s core functions as a convener, educator, publisher of legal scholarship and policy dialogue, and research engine remain a sound foundation on which to build for the future. He also is focused on making sure that ELI is adapting and modernizing in alignment with a rapidly changing world. Under his leadership, ELI has:
Mr. Fulton’s Past Record of Service
In addition to his role as EPA’s General Counsel, Mr. Fulton served in a number of other key leadership roles in both Republican and Democratic Administrations, including as Acting EPA Deputy Administrator, head of EPA’s Office of International Affairs, Judge on the Environmental Appeals Board, and head of the Agency’s enforcement program. He also served as Assistant Chief of the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Environment and Natural Resources Division. An international expert on environmental governance and rule of law, he serves as a member of the United Nations Advisory Council on Environmental Justice and teaches International Environmental Governance as an adjunct professor at George Washington School of Law. He received the two highest awards given by the U.S. government for outstanding leadership—the Presidential Meritorious Executive Service Award, and the Presidential Distinguished Executive Service Award—and has been inducted into the American College of Environmental Lawyers.
Highlights of Mr. Fulton’s EPA career include:
Managing Co-Founder, Water Finance Exchange
Hank has served in many areas of environmental business and policy. His career in the environmental policy world has included leadership positions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as COO (Deputy Administrator) from 1989-1993. During his time with the EPA he oversaw the development of innovative air and water programs to prevent pollution, including the development of the Energy Star program and implementation of market based trading programs under the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. He has also served at the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Environment and Natural Resources Division from 1983-87.
In business and investing, Hank has served as Senior Vice President in charge of acquisitions and other divisions of Safety-Kleen, a billion-dollar environmental service company. He has also served as Managing Partner of SAIL Capital Partners and Vice President of William D. Ruckelshaus Associates, which co-managed the successful Environmental Venture Fund. As Co-Founder of Capital E, LLC, a strategic consultancy, he advised Fortune 100 and early stage ventures on sustainable growth strategies. He also previously served as CEO of the Global Environment & Technology Foundation (GETF).
Hank has held numerous Board seats over the years. These positions include serving as Managing Director of the US Water Partnership, Chairman of the Board of WaterHealth International, Co-Founder of the American Council on Renewable Energy and Member of the Board of the Global Water Challenge. He served as Commissioner of the National Commission on Energy Policy, has advised several Cabinet Secretaries and serves on the Advisory Board to the National Renewable Energy Lab and the Pacific Northwest National Lab. In 1991 the EPA awarded him with the Total Quality Leadership Award and in 2009 he received the national Richard Mellon Award for Environmental Stewardship. Hank holds a Bachelors degree with High Honors from Princeton University (Woodrow Wilson School) and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.
Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Lisa Heinzerling is the Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. Professor of Law at Georgetown University. Her primary specialties are administrative law and environmental law. She is the author of several books, including Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, a critique of the use of cost-benefit analysis in environmental policy. Professor Heinzerling has received the Georgetown University President's Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers, the faculty teaching award at Georgetown Law, and several awards related to her scholarship and advocacy in environmental law. She was the lead author of the winning briefs in Massachusetts v. EPA, in which the Supreme Court held that the Clean Air Act gives EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. From January 2009 to July 2009, Heinzerling served as Senior Climate Policy Counsel to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and then, from July 2009 to December 2010, she served as Associate Administrator of EPA’s Office of Policy. She was a law clerk to Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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.
Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of International Law, Yale Law School
Lea Brilmayer is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. In addition to teaching Contracts to first-year students, she also teaches Conflict of Laws and International Courts and Tribunals, as well as seminars on the laws of war and on African current affairs. Her degrees include a B.A. in mathematics and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as an LL.M. from Columbia Law School. Brilmayer has taught at a number of different law schools as either a professor or visiting professor, including the University of Texas, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, and the New York University School of Law (where she led a weekly seminar on International Jurisprudence.) She is a member of the Texas and Supreme Court bars. She has given numerous endowed lectures at other American law schools and has also taught twice at the summer session of the Hague Academy of International Law.
During her first decade of teaching, her writing interests mainly concerned conflict of laws (in particular, personal jurisdiction and choice of law); federal jurisdiction; and jurisprudence. Her conflict of laws writings have included one theoretical book on the subject and a leading casebook (in the more recent editions, co-authored with Jack Goldsmith). Together with a group of Yale student contributors, she published An Introduction to Jurisdiction in the American Federal System. Her writings on the conflict of laws have resulted in her being asked on a number of occasions to testify before Congressional committees, most recently on the Full Faith and Credit implications of same sex marriage. More recently, her interests have gradually turned to international law and international relations, and she is frequently cited for her academic writings about nationalism and the international legal status of secessionist movements. Her research in international jurisprudence has also led to two books, Justifying International Acts and American Hegemony: Political Morality in a One-Superpower World.
In addition to her academic interests, Brilmayer carries on an active life in interstate and international adjudication. In addition to contributing to amicus briefs, she has served as counsel of record before the United States Supreme Court and has been an expert consultant on many lower and intermediate appellate court cases. For the last decade she has served as lead counsel in several international public (state-to-state) arbitrations dealing with island sovereignty, maritime delimitation, land boundaries, and mass claims for violations of the laws of war.
Founding Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and the chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, “one of the Nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above The Law 2017). The National Law Journal recently wrote that Mr. Cooper’s “brilliant legal career has so far spanned five decades and thrust Cooper into the spotlight in some of the most historic moments of the country’s modern history.” He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. He has been lead trial counsel in numerous complex, weeks-long trials in federal courts throughout the country. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the 10 best litigators in Washington D.C., Mr. Cooper’s work has been reported in numerous press accounts, and he has been called a “powerhouse attorney” (Fortune 2015), “a hard-nosed litigator” (Washington Post 2017), and “one of the country’s most in-demand civil litigators and a Washington legal institution unto himself” (The American Spectator 2014).
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978–79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of, among other things, appellate matters. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office responsible for providing legal opinions and advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues covering the full spectrum of federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.
In 1988 he returned to private practice as a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.
Mr. Cooper has represented a wide range of public and private clients in highly complex constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, healthcare, banking, intellectual property, elections, campaign finance, administrative, commercial, and government contract cases. He has led trial teams in cases that have won judgments and settlements valued in the billions of dollars and that have established ground-breaking constitutional precedents.
Much of Mr. Cooper’s practice has involved representing high-profile clients in nationally prominent matters, including: the State of Florida in a First Amendment suit brought by the Disney Company concerning its autonomous regulatory authority over its Disney World property; the Commonwealth of Virginia in a suit seeking to enjoin the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls; 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team falsely accused of rape by officials of Duke University and the City of Durham; Harper Lee in a copyright dispute with the heirs of Gregory Peck; high-ranking former government officials such as former Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr, and Ambassador John Bolton; several Governors and United States Senators; over 100 Members of Congress; and many state, territorial, and local government bodies and officials. He has also represented and advised government officials and public figures in connection with sensitive private issues that needed to be, and were, resolved discreetly without becoming matters of public record.
In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he served for three terms. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the American Law Institute (since 1993) and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (since 1996). He is also an active member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, which in 2010 named him Republican Lawyer of the Year and in 2016 honored him with its Edwin Meese III Award.
Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 26 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues, including the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to administrative agencies, the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of federal courts, statehood bills for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the impeachment of President Clinton.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Patrick Errol Higginbotham is a federal judge on senior status with the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. He joined the court in 1982 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Contributing Writer, Vanity Fair
Michael Kinsley is a Contributing Writer for Vanity Fair, where his column appears monthly. Over a long career in the media, he has been Managing Editor of the Washington Monthly, Editor of the New Republic, and Editorial and Opinion Editor of the Los Angeles Times. He was the Founding Editor of Slate, one of the first on-line magazines. For over six years Kinsley was the liberal host of Crossfire, a CNN show where he sparred with Pat Buchanan five days a week. He played a similar role for many years with William F. Buckley on PBS’s Firing Line. He has written for The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler, and other publications.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Stephen Roy Reinhardt is a federal appeals judge with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. He joined the Court in 1980 after being nominated by President Jimmy Carter.
Born in New York City, New York, Reinhardt graduated from Pomona College with his Bachelor's degree in 1951 and later received a Bachelors of Laws degree, LL.B, from Yale Law School in 1954. Reinhardt served in the U.S. Air Force from 1954 to 1956 before becoming a law clerk for the Honorable Luther Youngdahl in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia until 1957. Reinhardt was a private practice attorney in the State of California from 1957 to 1980. Reinhardt was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Jimmy Carter on November 30, 1979, to a new seat created by 92 Stat. 1629, which was approved by Congress. Reinhardt was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on September 11, 1980 and received commission on September 11, 1980.
Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of International Law, Yale Law School
Lea Brilmayer is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. In addition to teaching Contracts to first-year students, she also teaches Conflict of Laws and International Courts and Tribunals, as well as seminars on the laws of war and on African current affairs. Her degrees include a B.A. in mathematics and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as an LL.M. from Columbia Law School. Brilmayer has taught at a number of different law schools as either a professor or visiting professor, including the University of Texas, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, and the New York University School of Law (where she led a weekly seminar on International Jurisprudence.) She is a member of the Texas and Supreme Court bars. She has given numerous endowed lectures at other American law schools and has also taught twice at the summer session of the Hague Academy of International Law.
During her first decade of teaching, her writing interests mainly concerned conflict of laws (in particular, personal jurisdiction and choice of law); federal jurisdiction; and jurisprudence. Her conflict of laws writings have included one theoretical book on the subject and a leading casebook (in the more recent editions, co-authored with Jack Goldsmith). Together with a group of Yale student contributors, she published An Introduction to Jurisdiction in the American Federal System. Her writings on the conflict of laws have resulted in her being asked on a number of occasions to testify before Congressional committees, most recently on the Full Faith and Credit implications of same sex marriage. More recently, her interests have gradually turned to international law and international relations, and she is frequently cited for her academic writings about nationalism and the international legal status of secessionist movements. Her research in international jurisprudence has also led to two books, Justifying International Acts and American Hegemony: Political Morality in a One-Superpower World.
In addition to her academic interests, Brilmayer carries on an active life in interstate and international adjudication. In addition to contributing to amicus briefs, she has served as counsel of record before the United States Supreme Court and has been an expert consultant on many lower and intermediate appellate court cases. For the last decade she has served as lead counsel in several international public (state-to-state) arbitrations dealing with island sovereignty, maritime delimitation, land boundaries, and mass claims for violations of the laws of war.
Founding Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and the chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, “one of the Nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above The Law 2017). The National Law Journal recently wrote that Mr. Cooper’s “brilliant legal career has so far spanned five decades and thrust Cooper into the spotlight in some of the most historic moments of the country’s modern history.” He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. He has been lead trial counsel in numerous complex, weeks-long trials in federal courts throughout the country. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the 10 best litigators in Washington D.C., Mr. Cooper’s work has been reported in numerous press accounts, and he has been called a “powerhouse attorney” (Fortune 2015), “a hard-nosed litigator” (Washington Post 2017), and “one of the country’s most in-demand civil litigators and a Washington legal institution unto himself” (The American Spectator 2014).
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978–79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of, among other things, appellate matters. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office responsible for providing legal opinions and advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues covering the full spectrum of federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.
In 1988 he returned to private practice as a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.
Mr. Cooper has represented a wide range of public and private clients in highly complex constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, healthcare, banking, intellectual property, elections, campaign finance, administrative, commercial, and government contract cases. He has led trial teams in cases that have won judgments and settlements valued in the billions of dollars and that have established ground-breaking constitutional precedents.
Much of Mr. Cooper’s practice has involved representing high-profile clients in nationally prominent matters, including: the State of Florida in a First Amendment suit brought by the Disney Company concerning its autonomous regulatory authority over its Disney World property; the Commonwealth of Virginia in a suit seeking to enjoin the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls; 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team falsely accused of rape by officials of Duke University and the City of Durham; Harper Lee in a copyright dispute with the heirs of Gregory Peck; high-ranking former government officials such as former Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr, and Ambassador John Bolton; several Governors and United States Senators; over 100 Members of Congress; and many state, territorial, and local government bodies and officials. He has also represented and advised government officials and public figures in connection with sensitive private issues that needed to be, and were, resolved discreetly without becoming matters of public record.
In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he served for three terms. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the American Law Institute (since 1993) and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (since 1996). He is also an active member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, which in 2010 named him Republican Lawyer of the Year and in 2016 honored him with its Edwin Meese III Award.
Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 26 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues, including the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to administrative agencies, the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of federal courts, statehood bills for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the impeachment of President Clinton.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Patrick Errol Higginbotham is a federal judge on senior status with the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. He joined the court in 1982 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Contributing Writer, Vanity Fair
Michael Kinsley is a Contributing Writer for Vanity Fair, where his column appears monthly. Over a long career in the media, he has been Managing Editor of the Washington Monthly, Editor of the New Republic, and Editorial and Opinion Editor of the Los Angeles Times. He was the Founding Editor of Slate, one of the first on-line magazines. For over six years Kinsley was the liberal host of Crossfire, a CNN show where he sparred with Pat Buchanan five days a week. He played a similar role for many years with William F. Buckley on PBS’s Firing Line. He has written for The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler, and other publications.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Stephen Roy Reinhardt is a federal appeals judge with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. He joined the Court in 1980 after being nominated by President Jimmy Carter.
Born in New York City, New York, Reinhardt graduated from Pomona College with his Bachelor's degree in 1951 and later received a Bachelors of Laws degree, LL.B, from Yale Law School in 1954. Reinhardt served in the U.S. Air Force from 1954 to 1956 before becoming a law clerk for the Honorable Luther Youngdahl in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia until 1957. Reinhardt was a private practice attorney in the State of California from 1957 to 1980. Reinhardt was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Jimmy Carter on November 30, 1979, to a new seat created by 92 Stat. 1629, which was approved by Congress. Reinhardt was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on September 11, 1980 and received commission on September 11, 1980.
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.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
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.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
President, Constitutional Accountability Center
Elizabeth is Constitutional Accountability Center’s President. From 2008-2016, she served as CAC's Chief Counsel, representing the Center as well as clients including preeminent constitutional scholars and historians, state and local government organizations, and groups such as the League of Women Voters and the AARP. She frequently participates in Supreme Court litigation and her legal brief writing has been recognized as “exemplary” by the Green Bag Almanac & Reader. Elizabeth has also argued several important cases in the federal courts of appeals on a range of issues, including immigration law, habeas corpus, and sovereign immunity. She joined CAC from private practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in San Francisco, where she was an attorney working with former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan in the firm’s Supreme Court/appellate practice. Previously, Elizabeth was a supervising attorney and teaching fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center appellate litigation clinic, a law clerk for Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and a lawyer at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a law firm in Washington. She has appeared as a legal expert for NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, Current TV, and NPR, among other outlets. Elizabeth has been quoted extensively in the print media and is a regular contributor to the ABA’s Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, Politico, CNN.com, Slate, and on numerous political and legal blogs, such as Huffington Post, SCOTUSblog, and ACSblog. She has also published in the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Syracuse Law Review, The Cato Institute’s Supreme Court Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law. Elizabeth is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Founding Principal, Gupta Wessler PLLC
Deepak Gupta is the founding principal of Gupta Wessler PLLC. He focuses on Supreme Court, appellate, and complex litigation on a wide range of issues, including constitutional law, class actions, and consumers’ and workers’ rights.
Deepak is “known as a skilled appellate lawyer” (New York Times), “one of the emerging giants of the appellate and the Supreme Court bar,” a “heavy hitter,” and a “principled” and “incredibly talented lawyer” (Law 360). He is described in Chambers and Partners USA as “an excellent lawyer” with a “vibrant appellate practice focused on public interest cases and plaintiff-side representations.” Fastcase recently recognized him as “one of the country’s top litigators,” noting that “what sets him apart” is his legal creativity. The National Law Journal has singled out Deepak’s “calm, comfortable manner that conveys confidence” in oral argument.
Deepak regularly appears in the U.S. Supreme Court and appellate courts nationwide. In the 2016-2017 U.S. Supreme Court term, Deepak’s firm was counsel of record for parties in three merits cases; he was lead counsel in two, prevailing in both. Beyond the Supreme Court, Deepak has handled appeals in every federal circuit and seven state supreme courts. He is frequently sought out by trial lawyers to defend their most consequential victories or resurrect worthy claims on appeal—often after years of hard-fought litigation. He also works with co-counsel to design cases from the ground up—focusing on class actions and administrative and constitutional challenges. In one class action, Deepak represented all of the nation’s federal bankruptcy judges, recovering more than $50 million in back pay for the judges over Congress’s violation of the Constitution’s Judicial Compensation Clause. As the American Lawyer observed, “it’s hard to imagine a higher compliment than being hired to represent federal judges.”
Deepak’s clients have included national nonprofits, state and local governments, members of Congress, retail merchants, tech companies, and classes of consumers and workers harmed by corporate wrongdoing. He currently represents the American Association for Justice (on forced arbitration and civil justice issues), Everytown for Gun Safety (in Second Amendment litigation), and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (in litigation over the Emoluments Clauses).
Before founding the firm in 2012, Deepak served as Senior Counsel for Litigation and Senior Counsel for Enforcement Strategy at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As the first appellate litigator hired under Elizabeth Warren’s leadership, he launched the Bureau’s amicus program, defended its regulations, and worked with the Solicitor General’s office on Supreme Court matters. For seven years previously, he was an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, where he founded and directed the Consumer Justice Project and was the Alan Morrison Supreme Court Project Fellow. Before that, he worked on voting rights litigation at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, prisoners’ rights litigation at the ACLU, and religion clause litigation at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Deepak frequently engages in public advocacy and speaking, has testified multiple times before the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, and appears frequently in the national print and broadcast media. He is currently a 2018-2019 Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School and has previously taught courses on public interest law and appellate advocacy as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown and American universities. He served as a law clerk to Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California and studied law at Georgetown, Sanskrit at Oxford, and philosophy at Fordham.
Deepak is an elected member of the American Law Institute and sits on the boards of directors of the National Consumer Law Center, The Impact Fund, and the Alliance for Justice, and the advisory boards of the University of California’s Civil Justice Research Initiative, the Biden Institute, and the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Judge Hardiman was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on January 9, 2007 and was confirmed by the Senate (95-0) on March 15, 2007. Prior to becoming an appellate judge, Judge Hardiman served as a trial judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania as of November 1, 2003. In 2008, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Judge Hardiman to the Information Technology Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Judge Hardiman was appointed Chairman of the IT Committee in 2013 and served in that capacity until September 2021. In 2021 he was appointed by the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts to serve as Chair of the Judiciary IT Security Task Force, which completed its work in fall 2023. Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge Hardiman to the Board of the Federal Judicial Center to serve from March 2020 until March 2024. As part of his work with the Center, Judge Hardiman now serves as Editor in Chief for the Manual for Complex Civil Litigation, Fifth.
Before entering judicial service, Judge Hardiman handled a wide variety of litigation matters in state and federal trial and appellate courts as a partner at Reed Smith LLP (1999-2003), a partner at Titus & McConomy LLP (1996-1999), and as an associate with its predecessor firm, Cindrich & Titus (1992-1996). Judge Hardiman began his legal career as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (1990-1992).
A 1987 honors graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Judge Hardiman received his law degree in 1990 from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as a Notes and Comments Editor on the Georgetown Law Journal. In 2012, Judge Hardiman was elected as a member of the American Law Institute and was elected to its Council in 2019 and its Executive Committee in 2025. Judge Hardiman regularly teaches a seminar on Advanced Constitutional Law at Duquesne University School of Law and a one-week course entitled “Constitutional Law: the First and Second Amendments” at Georgetown University Law Center.
A native of Waltham, Massachusetts, Judge Hardiman has chambers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Lori married in 1992 and have three children.
Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
John Ohlendorf has extensive experience with every aspect of litigation, from arguing discovery disputes and cross-examining trial witnesses to working on appeals at all levels of the state and federal judicial systems. Mr. Ohlendorf has written dozens of briefs in the United States Supreme Court and has argued numerous cases, including appeals in both state and federal court. While much of his career has focused on appellate advocacy, he has also developed deep experience litigating at the trial-court level, consistent with the Firm’s frequent approach of handling a matter over its entire lifespan, from the filing of the complaint to proceedings in the Supreme Court.
Mr. Ohlendorf’s litigation experience is wide-ranging, but it includes a particular focus on constitutional law and suits against the government. He has litigated multiple claims involving the separation of powers, the Appointments Clause, freedom of speech, the Second Amendment, the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Takings Clause. He has been heavily involved in over thirty matters defending the right to keep and bear arms, and he was Counsel of Record on an amicus brief in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a recent Supreme Court case involving the Second Amendment right to carry a firearm, that was singled out by Justice Kavanaugh during the oral argument as very helpful to his consideration of the case. Mr. Ohlendorf has also litigated many cases involving administrative law and government contracts.
Before coming to Cooper & Kirk, Mr. Ohlendorf clerked for Judge Raymond Gruender of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, taught at Northwestern University School of Law as an Olin-Searle-Smith Fellow, and then at Georgetown University Law Center as a Visiting Lecturer and Fellow at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. His articles have been published in the Notre Dame Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, National Affairs (with Joel Alicea), the Georgia Law Review, and the Maine Law Review. He received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, in 2010, where he was an Editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and graduated with a B.A. from Bethany Lutheran College, summa cum laude, in 2007.
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.
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford; Presidential Scholar and a Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at The King’s College; and Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law.
He is a constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel—which provides scholarly and historical analyses of the Second Amendment. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author.
Administrative Law & Regulation: Regulatory Practice and Oversight in 2021 and Beyond
Ronald A. Cass, Sally Katzen, Ryan D. Nelson, Adam White
On November 9, 2020, The Federalist Society's Administration Law & Regulation Practice Group hosted a...
Environmental Law & Property Rights: EPA Turns 50: A Debate on Environmental Progress and Regulatory Overreach
Susan P. Bodine, Scott Fulton, F. Henry "Hank" Habicht, Lisa Heinzerling, Lawrence VanDyke
On November 9, 2020, The Federalist Society's Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted...
Environmental Law & Property Rights: EPA Turns 50: A Debate on Environmental Progress and Regulatory Overreach
Susan P. Bodine, Scott Fulton, F. Henry "Hank" Habicht, Lisa Heinzerling, Lawrence VanDyke
On November 9, 2020, The Federalist Society's Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted...
Panel V: The Conflict Between Text and Precedent in Constitutional Adjudication [Archive Collection]
Lea Brilmayer, Charles J. Cooper, Frank H. Easterbrook, Patrick E. Higginbotham, Michael Kinsley, Stephen Reinhardt
On April 3-5, 1987, the Federalist Society's Chicago Student Chapter hosted the sixth annual National...
Panel V: The Conflict Between Text and Precedent in Constitutional Adjudication [Archive Collection]
Lea Brilmayer, Charles J. Cooper, Frank H. Easterbrook, Patrick E. Higginbotham, Michael Kinsley, Stephen Reinhardt
On April 3-5, 1987, the Federalist Society's Chicago Student Chapter hosted the sixth annual National...
The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law
Chicago Lawyers Chapter
VIRTUAL: The Essential Scalia: Discussion with Judge Jeff Sutton and Ed Whelan
Columbus Lawyers Chapter
Federalism & Separation of Powers: Emergency Powers and the Rule of Law
2020 National Lawyers Convention
Special Session: The Future of the Second Amendment's Right to Keep and Bear Arms: From the Supreme Court to Social Unrest in the Streets
2020 National Lawyers Convention
2020 National Lawyers Convention
The Future of the Second Amendment's Right to Keep and Bear Arms: From the Supreme Court to Social Unrest in the Streets