Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
Secretary, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Alex M. Azar II was sworn in as the Secretary of Health and Human Services on Jan. 29, 2018. Azar has spent his career working in both the public and private sectors, as an attorney and in senior leadership roles focused on advancing healthcare reform, research and innovation.
From 2001 to 2007, Azar served at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – first as its General Counsel (2001–2005) and then as Deputy Secretary. During his time as Deputy Secretary, Azar was involved in improving the department’s operations; advancing its emergency preparedness and response capabilities as well as its global health affairs activities; and helping oversee the rollout of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program.
In 2007, Azar rejoined the private sector as senior vice president for corporate affairs and communications at Eli Lilly and Co. From 2012 to 2017, he served as president of Lilly USA LLC, the company’s largest affiliate.
Azar clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia prior to practicing law for several years.
Azar graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in economics and government from Dartmouth College and earned his law degree from Yale University.
For the past 10 years, Azar has lived in Indiana with his wife and their two children.
Principal Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Sharon L. Browne is a principal attorney in Pacific Legal Foundation's Individual Rights Practice group. She is an accomplished trial and appellate lawyer. Her practice focuses on litigation at all court levels to prohibit government from utilizing race or sex based discrimination or preferences in public contracting, employment or education. She was actively involved in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County, Ky Board of Education as an amicus and sat second chair during oral argument before the United States Supreme Court to assist the attorney arguing on behalf of Crystal Meredith.
Ms. Browne was named a California Lawyer of the Year in 2004 for her achievements in defending and implementing Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which ended race- and sex- based discrimination and preferences in public contracting, public employment, and public education. A few of her cases include Hi-Voltage Wire Works v. San Jose, 24 Cal. 4th 537 (2000), a unanimous judgment of the California Supreme Court interpreting Proposition 209, the voter approved initiative, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit race- and sex-based discrimination and preferences in public education, public employment, and public education; Crawford v. Huntington Beach Union High School District, 98 Cal. App. 4th 1275 (2002), the first case to apply Proposition 209 to K-12 public education; and C & C Construction v. Sacramento Municipal Utility District, 122 Cal. App. 4th 284 (2004), the first case to interpret Proposition 209's federal funding exception.
Appellate Counsel, Theodore Cooperstein PLLC
Theodore Cooperstein currently is an appellate attorney in the boutique law firm of Theodore Cooperstein PLLC, available for criminal and civil appeals in both state and federal courts. A former career prosecutor with twenty five years of service in the US Department of Justice, he was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of Mississippi, and has served as a Military Intelligence Officer in the Army Reserves from 1989 to 2011, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. During the Trump Administration, he was appointed and served as the General Counsel of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Prior to joining the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Cooperstein served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland. He previously had served as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, and as Assistant General Counsel in the FBI Office of the General Counsel.
A.B., Dartmouth College; J.D., Stanford University; LL.M., Comparative and International Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Masters of Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College
Shareholder, Kirton McConkie
R. Shawn Gunnarson is a shareholder with Kirton McConkie in Salt Lake City.
Director of Asian Studies and Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Dan Blumenthal is the director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on China issues for over a decade. From 2001 to 2004, he served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the Department of Defense. Additionally, he served as a commissioner on the congressionally-mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission since 2006-2012, and held the position of vice chairman in 2007. He has also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Mr. Blumenthal is the co-author of “An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century” (AEI Press, November 2012).
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Michael B. Brennan was confirmed and sworn in as a Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in May 2018.
He previously worked as a partner in the Milwaukee law firm of Gass Weber Mullins LLC, where he tried cases and handled appeals in federal and state courts, as a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit, where he presided over a variety of criminal and civil calendars, and as an assistant district attorney in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office.
Brennan’s undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame, and his law degree from Northwestern University School of Law, where he was an editor on the law review and the moot court champion. He served as a law clerk on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School
Professor of Law Michael S. Greve joined the faculty of the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University in fall 2012 after having served as John G. Searle Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specialized in constitutional law, courts, and business regulation and served as chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI, Greve was founder and co-director of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm specializing in constitutional litigation.
Greve has served previously as an adjunct professor at a number of universities, including Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities, and has been a visiting professor at Boston College since 2004. He was awarded a PhD and an MA in government by Cornell University. Greve also earned a Diploma from the University of Hamburg in Germany.
A prolific writer, Greve is the author of nine books and a multitude of articles appearing in scholarly publications, as well as numerous editorials, short articles, and book reviews. He is a frequent speaker for professional and scholarly organizations and has made many appearances on radio and television.
In addition Greve has provided congressional and state legislative testimony, has lobbied and consulted in federal agency proceedings, and has provided litigation services and management in over 30 cases, including matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Attorney at Law
Paula Stannard is a former deputy general counsel and acting general counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she oversaw the Food and Drug, Civil Rights and Legislation divisions of the 450-attorney HHS Office of the General Counsel and provided legal advice and counsel to senior HHS officials, including the Secretary of the department, on the issues arising in their respective areas.
At Alston & Bird, Paula advises clients on regulatory questions that arise out of the on-going health care reform effort and focuses her practice on HIPAA and health information technology (including certified EHR and meaningful use issues), food and drug and other regulatory issues in the health care sector. Her HHS experience provides clients substantive knowledge of, and experience in, FDA, HIPAA, e-health and health IT, federal health insurance regulation, patient safety, and public health preparedness and emergency response issues.
Paula received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1990, where she was an executive editor of the Stanford Law Review, and her B.A., magna cum laude, in political science and Latin from Amherst College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She clerked for the Honorable J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Stanford University
(J.D., 1990)
Amherst College
(B.A., 1987)
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Throughout his 40-year career in private law practice in Washington, D.C., Richard Samp has specialized in appellate litigation with a focus on constitutional law. He served as Chief Counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation for more than 30 years. He has participated directly in more than 200 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Samp is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School and clerked for a federal judge in Detroit.
Secretary, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Alex M. Azar II was sworn in as the Secretary of Health and Human Services on Jan. 29, 2018. Azar has spent his career working in both the public and private sectors, as an attorney and in senior leadership roles focused on advancing healthcare reform, research and innovation.
From 2001 to 2007, Azar served at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – first as its General Counsel (2001–2005) and then as Deputy Secretary. During his time as Deputy Secretary, Azar was involved in improving the department’s operations; advancing its emergency preparedness and response capabilities as well as its global health affairs activities; and helping oversee the rollout of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program.
In 2007, Azar rejoined the private sector as senior vice president for corporate affairs and communications at Eli Lilly and Co. From 2012 to 2017, he served as president of Lilly USA LLC, the company’s largest affiliate.
Azar clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia prior to practicing law for several years.
Azar graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in economics and government from Dartmouth College and earned his law degree from Yale University.
For the past 10 years, Azar has lived in Indiana with his wife and their two children.
The Obama Administration, the New Haven Firefighters Case, and More
Roger B. Clegg
Brought to you by the Civil Rights Practice Group The Obama administration filed an amicus brief...
Does IP Harm or Help Developing Countries?
Alex M. Azar, Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Bruce A. Lehman, Jerome H. Reichman, Robert Sherwood
The Federalist Society's Intellectual Property Practice Group presented this panel discussion at the 2006 Annual...
Does IP Harm or Help Developing Countries?
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Washington, DCColwell v. United States Department of Health and Human Services: Feds Order Physicians and Health Care Providers to Provide Free Language Translation Services to Limited English Proficient Patients
Sharon L. Browne
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The War on Terrorism: Law Enforcement or National Security?
Theodore Cooperstein, R. Shawn Gunnarson, Daniel Blumenthal, Robert Parker, George J. Terwilliger
George Terwilliger*Theodore Cooperstein**Shawn Gunnarson***Daniel Blumenthal****Robert Parker***** The horrific events of September 11th were immediately labeled...
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Bert W. Rein, Kristina Reynolds Osterhaus
By: Bert W. Rein and Kristina R. Osterhaus [1]The September 11 attack and recent anthrax...
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When President George W. Bush announced his first nominations for the federal bench, he declared,...
2002 National Lawyers Convention
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Kimberly Schuld
Being a male in today's feminized society is something akin to being (in the words...