Partner, Hunton Andrews Kurth
Mr. Leopold is a Partner with the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth in Washington, DC. He is the former Senate-confirmed general counsel of the U.S. EPA from 2018-2020, and he previously was a litigator at the U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division form 2007-2013. As EPA General Counsel, he counseled on the development and defense of EPA’s most significant rulemakings, including the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, and the Safe Affordable Fuel‐Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule, as well as several pesticide actions. He was personally involved in defending EPA in litigation, including the County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund in the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Leopold’s prior government service also includes working in Florida as general counsel of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. He now represents clients in regulatory advocacy before federal agencies, litigates federal environmental actions, and defends clients with EPA enforcement issues.
Chair, Issues & Appeals, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP
The former Solicitor General of West Virginia, Mr. Lin has been on the front lines of many precedent-setting cases in appellate courts across the country, including in a US Supreme Court victory that George Will called “the court’s most severe rebuke of a president” since the Truman administration. Having argued more than 60 appeals, he brings to clients a well-honed ability to identify the most persuasive issues for appeal and a practiced understanding of how best to frame complex legal questions in appellate courts.
With experience in the private sector and multiple branches of government, Mr. Lin’s practice has spanned a wide range of issues, including major questions of constitutional and administrative law at the federal and state levels. On behalf of more than two dozen states, he won a stay from the US Supreme Court of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Described by the New York Times as an “unprecedented” order, the stay was the first time the Supreme Court had ever put a regulation on hold before review by a federal appeals court. In that same case, Elbert argued before the en banc DC Circuit in an historic proceeding that one commenter quoted in E&E News compared to “the NBA All-Star Game.” At the state level, Elbert led the effort that persuaded the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to overturn an injunction of the state’s right-to-work law.
In 2013, Mr. Lin was appointed the Solicitor General of West Virginia. During his four-and-a-half year tenure, he served as a member of the Attorney General’s senior management team, oversaw all civil and criminal appeals, and argued nearly two dozen cases in federal and state appellate courts. He authored more than twenty-five briefs in the US Supreme Court and more than forty-five formal Opinions of the Attorney General.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Lin served as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the US Department of Justice’s Civil Division, where he received a Special Service Award. He has also been a law clerk at all three levels of the federal judiciary: for Justice Clarence Thomas on the US Supreme Court; for Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit; and for Senior Judge Robert E. Keeton on the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Mr. Lin speaks regularly on a wide variety of topics, including constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, state and federal relations, the US Supreme Court, and appellate practice. He has testified before Congress, and has spoken at the national conventions of the American Bar Association, the Association of Corporate Counsel, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Federalist Society, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Mr. Lin is admitted to practice in the following federal courts: the Supreme Court of the United States; the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, D.C., and Federal Circuits; the District of Massachusetts; the Northern and Southern Districts of West Virginia; and the Eastern and Western Districts of Virginia.
Director of the Center for Energy and Environment and Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Daren Bakst is Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a Senior Fellow. In this role, he manages, develops, and leads the coalition, advocacy, and research activities of the Center, which is one of the most effective advocates for Free Market Environmentalism.
Before joining CEI as Deputy Director in March, 2023, Daren was a Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Policy and Regulation at the Heritage Foundation, where he played a leading role in the launch of the organization’s new energy and environment center, and created and hosted the Heritage Foundation’s energy and environment podcast the “PowerCast.” During his decade at Heritage, Daren wrote about energy and environmental policy, food and agricultural policy (including editing and co-authoring the book Farms and Free Enterprise), regulation, and trade among other topics.
Daren also worked on environmental policy and regulation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he was a policy counsel and served as the executive to the association’s Government Oversight, Operations & Consumer Affairs committee, which was responsible for issues such as regulatory process reform. Daren has significant state level experience, working for seven years at the Raleigh, N.C.-based John Locke Foundation, one of the largest state-based, free-market think tanks. As director of legal and regulatory studies, his broad portfolio included energy and environmental policy, regulatory reform, and property rights.
Daren has testified numerous times before Congress, regularly submits comments to federal agencies and has appeared in or been quoted by a wide range of media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Al-Jazeera America, and U.S. News and World Report. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Executive Committee and serves on the College Level Advisory Board for Constituting America, an organization that informs and educates about the importance of the U.S. Constitution.
Daren, who hails from Florida, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Washington University. A licensed attorney, he holds a law degree from the University of Miami and a master of laws degree from American University.
Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
William W. Buzbee is a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. In his teaching and scholarship, he specializes in environmental law, legislation and regulation, and administrative law. Recent publications focus on climate regulation, deregulation and law governing agency policy change, and federalism. He also offers seminars on advanced environmental, regulatory, and constitutional law subjects, with his most recent seminar focused on “The Art of Regulatory War.”
Professor Buzbee’s books include the recently published Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War that Transformed New York City (Cornell University Press 2014) and Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question(Cambridge University Press, hardcover 2009, paperback 2011) (William W. Buzbee editor and contributor). He has been a co-author of the 5th , 6th, 7th and forthcoming 8th editions of Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (Aspen/Wolters Kluwer). Law review scholarship includes publications in New York University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review (co-authored), Cornell Law Review (co-authored), Duke Law Journal (forthcoming), George Washington Law Review, Iowa Law Review, The Journal of Law and Politics and in an array of other journals, books, news outlets, and blogs. Three of his articles have been named among the 10 best environmental or land use law articles of that year and republished in the Land Use and Environment Law Review. He regularly assists with appellate and Supreme Court environmental, federalism, and regulatory litigation, and also has testified before congressional committees on environmental and regulatory matters. He has published op-eds on regulatory and environmental issues with The New York Times, The Hill, CNN, and been quoted and interviewed by numerous press and media outlets.
Professor Buzbee joined Georgetown from Emory Law School, where he was a professor of law and directed its Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. He also co-directed Emory’s Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance. He has been a visiting professor of law at Columbia, Cornell and Illinois law schools. He has also served as a professor for the Leiden-Amsterdam-Columbia Law School Summer Program in American Law. Professor Buzbee is a founding Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, a Washington D.C.-based regulatory think tank. Professor Buzbee was awarded the 2007-2008 Emory Williams Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. Professor Buzbee clerked for United States Judge Jose A. Cabranes, and before becoming a professor was an attorney-fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and did environmental, land use and litigation work for the New York City law firm, Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. JD, Columbia Law School, 1986; BA, Amherst College, magna cum laude, 1983.
Senior Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Damien Schiff is a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. He leads its environmental practice group, a unique initiative that draws broadly from PLF’s expertise and success in property rights and separation of powers litigation. Over the years, Damien has represented hundreds of landowners and property rights advocates to defend their liberties against heavy-handed and unwarranted environmental and land-use regulation. His litigation experience includes Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a groundbreaking decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of landowners to challenge Clean Water Act compliance orders issued by EPA, and Contoski v. Norton, PLF’s successful effort to force the federal government to make good on its promise to delist the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act.
Besides litigation, Damien has written academic articles on a variety of subjects, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, greenhouse gas torts, the duty to rescue, and international water law. He has appeared on a variety of television and radio programs and has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, and The Economist, among other publications.
He obtained his law degree magna cum laude from the University of San Diego School of Law, and his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University. While at USD, he was a research assistant for Professor Bernard Siegan, a leading constitutional theorist and advocate for property rights and economic liberty. Immediately prior to joining PLF, Damien clerked for Judge (and former PLF attorney) Victor Wolski of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Damien credits the mentoring and examples of Professor Siegan and Judge Wolski for his decision to pursue a career in liberty-based public interest litigation.
Damien lives in Sacramento with his wife, two young sons, four chickens, and a cat named Princess. In his off hours he enjoys stamp collecting, Gregorian chant, and martinis—preferably at the same time.
Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor James W. Coleman is a scholar of energy law. He specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focused on energy policy.
Professor Coleman has testified before Congress on steps to speed up energy infrastructure permits. He also worked with a team of experts as part of Alberta's Royalty Review to revise the Canadian province's management of its vast oil and gas resources.
Before joining Minnesota, Professor Coleman taught at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, the University of Calgary’s law and business schools, and Harvard Law School. Earlier, he practiced environmental and appellate law at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Professor Coleman received two degrees from Harvard University—a J.D. (cum laude) and B.A. in biology (magna cum laude with highest honors in the field). As a result of his undergraduate thesis on butterfly genetics, which required fieldwork in Central Asia, a species of lycaenid butterfly was named after him—Agrodiaetus ripartii colemani.
Sho Sato Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, University of California, Berkeley
Dan Farber is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Co-Director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. Professor Farber serves on the editorial board of Foundation Press. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Life Member of the American Law Institute. He is the editor of Issues in Legal Scholarship.
Professor Farber is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees. He graduated, summa cum laude, from the College of Law, where he was the class valedictorian and served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. After graduation from law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Philip W. Tone of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then for Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Farber practiced law with Sidley & Austin, where he primarily worked on energy issues, before joining the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in 1978. He was a member of the University of Minnesota Law School faculty from1981 to 2002, where he was the McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law. He also has been a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School.
Among Professor Farber’s eighteen books are RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON PUBLIC CHOICE AND PUBLIC LAW (Elgar 2010) (with A. O’Connell); JUDGMENT CALLS: POLITICS AND PRINCIPLE IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (Oxford University Press 2008) (with S. Sherry); RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE: THE “SILENT” NINTH AMENDMENT AND THE RIGHTS AMERICANS DON’T KNOW THEY HAVE (Basic Books 2007); and LINCOLN’S CONSTITUTION (University of Chicago Press 2003).
Senior Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs, Boeing
Adam Gustafson is a Senior Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at Boeing.
Prior to joining Boeing, he served as Deputy General Counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to that, he was a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, where he represented States, federal judges, environmental groups, biofuel producers, agricultural interests, and public policy organizations, on such issues as the constitutional separation of powers, the First Amendment, automotive regulations, environmental computer models, healthcare regulation, and judicial deference to federal agencies.
Mr. Gustafson received his J.D. in 2009 from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, a managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, and an executive editor of the symposium issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Mr. Gustafson served as a Vice President of the Yale Law School Federalist Society. He was a Coker Fellow, and his legal writing won the Joseph A. Chubb Competition Prize and the Edward D. Robbins Memorial Prize.
Mr. Gustafson graduated with high distinction in 2005 from the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar, a member of the Raven Society, a member of the rowing team, and a Lawn resident.
Before joining Boyden Gray & Associates, Mr. Gustafson was an associate at Cooper & Kirk, where he specialized in appellate litigation. Mr. Gustafson served as a law clerk to Judge Richard R. Clifton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Senior Fellow for Law, Economics, and Technology, The Heritage Foundation; Professor, Florida International University
Mario Loyola is a Senior Fellow for Law, Economics, and Technology at The Heritage Foundation.
Loyola served in the Trump Administration as Associate Director for Regulatory Reform at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In that role, he was one of the principal drafters of the One Federal Decision policy, which helped to streamline the permitting and environmental review of large infrastructure projects. While at CEQ, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the USMCA free trade negotiations with Mexico and Canada, as well as the United Nations conference on biodiversity on the high seas. Loyola initially joined the White House in February 2017 as a Presidential Speechwriter, employing his expertise in many areas of foreign and domestic policy.
After beginning his career in M&A and corporate finance law, Loyola served in the Bush 43 Administration as a special assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. He left that position to start writing on national defense issues in magazines such as National Review and The Weekly Standard, reporting from the front lines of the war on terrorism in Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq. He finished the Bush Administration as Foreign and Defense Counsel to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, then under the chairmanship of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. He subsequently moved to Texas and joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he specialized in energy, environment, and federalism.
Loyola is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and The Atlantic, among others. He teaches environmental and administrative law at Florida International University, where he is Founding Director of the Environmental Finance and Risk Management program in FIU’s prestigious Institute of Environment. He received a bachelor’s degree in European history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a J.D. from Washington University School of Law.
Director of the Center for Energy and Environment and Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Daren Bakst is Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a Senior Fellow. In this role, he manages, develops, and leads the coalition, advocacy, and research activities of the Center, which is one of the most effective advocates for Free Market Environmentalism.
Before joining CEI as Deputy Director in March, 2023, Daren was a Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Policy and Regulation at the Heritage Foundation, where he played a leading role in the launch of the organization’s new energy and environment center, and created and hosted the Heritage Foundation’s energy and environment podcast the “PowerCast.” During his decade at Heritage, Daren wrote about energy and environmental policy, food and agricultural policy (including editing and co-authoring the book Farms and Free Enterprise), regulation, and trade among other topics.
Daren also worked on environmental policy and regulation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he was a policy counsel and served as the executive to the association’s Government Oversight, Operations & Consumer Affairs committee, which was responsible for issues such as regulatory process reform. Daren has significant state level experience, working for seven years at the Raleigh, N.C.-based John Locke Foundation, one of the largest state-based, free-market think tanks. As director of legal and regulatory studies, his broad portfolio included energy and environmental policy, regulatory reform, and property rights.
Daren has testified numerous times before Congress, regularly submits comments to federal agencies and has appeared in or been quoted by a wide range of media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Al-Jazeera America, and U.S. News and World Report. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Executive Committee and serves on the College Level Advisory Board for Constituting America, an organization that informs and educates about the importance of the U.S. Constitution.
Daren, who hails from Florida, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Washington University. A licensed attorney, he holds a law degree from the University of Miami and a master of laws degree from American University.
Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
William W. Buzbee is a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. In his teaching and scholarship, he specializes in environmental law, legislation and regulation, and administrative law. Recent publications focus on climate regulation, deregulation and law governing agency policy change, and federalism. He also offers seminars on advanced environmental, regulatory, and constitutional law subjects, with his most recent seminar focused on “The Art of Regulatory War.”
Professor Buzbee’s books include the recently published Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War that Transformed New York City (Cornell University Press 2014) and Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question(Cambridge University Press, hardcover 2009, paperback 2011) (William W. Buzbee editor and contributor). He has been a co-author of the 5th , 6th, 7th and forthcoming 8th editions of Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (Aspen/Wolters Kluwer). Law review scholarship includes publications in New York University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review (co-authored), Cornell Law Review (co-authored), Duke Law Journal (forthcoming), George Washington Law Review, Iowa Law Review, The Journal of Law and Politics and in an array of other journals, books, news outlets, and blogs. Three of his articles have been named among the 10 best environmental or land use law articles of that year and republished in the Land Use and Environment Law Review. He regularly assists with appellate and Supreme Court environmental, federalism, and regulatory litigation, and also has testified before congressional committees on environmental and regulatory matters. He has published op-eds on regulatory and environmental issues with The New York Times, The Hill, CNN, and been quoted and interviewed by numerous press and media outlets.
Professor Buzbee joined Georgetown from Emory Law School, where he was a professor of law and directed its Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. He also co-directed Emory’s Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance. He has been a visiting professor of law at Columbia, Cornell and Illinois law schools. He has also served as a professor for the Leiden-Amsterdam-Columbia Law School Summer Program in American Law. Professor Buzbee is a founding Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, a Washington D.C.-based regulatory think tank. Professor Buzbee was awarded the 2007-2008 Emory Williams Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. Professor Buzbee clerked for United States Judge Jose A. Cabranes, and before becoming a professor was an attorney-fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and did environmental, land use and litigation work for the New York City law firm, Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. JD, Columbia Law School, 1986; BA, Amherst College, magna cum laude, 1983.
Senior Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Damien Schiff is a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. He leads its environmental practice group, a unique initiative that draws broadly from PLF’s expertise and success in property rights and separation of powers litigation. Over the years, Damien has represented hundreds of landowners and property rights advocates to defend their liberties against heavy-handed and unwarranted environmental and land-use regulation. His litigation experience includes Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a groundbreaking decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of landowners to challenge Clean Water Act compliance orders issued by EPA, and Contoski v. Norton, PLF’s successful effort to force the federal government to make good on its promise to delist the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act.
Besides litigation, Damien has written academic articles on a variety of subjects, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, greenhouse gas torts, the duty to rescue, and international water law. He has appeared on a variety of television and radio programs and has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, and The Economist, among other publications.
He obtained his law degree magna cum laude from the University of San Diego School of Law, and his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University. While at USD, he was a research assistant for Professor Bernard Siegan, a leading constitutional theorist and advocate for property rights and economic liberty. Immediately prior to joining PLF, Damien clerked for Judge (and former PLF attorney) Victor Wolski of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Damien credits the mentoring and examples of Professor Siegan and Judge Wolski for his decision to pursue a career in liberty-based public interest litigation.
Damien lives in Sacramento with his wife, two young sons, four chickens, and a cat named Princess. In his off hours he enjoys stamp collecting, Gregorian chant, and martinis—preferably at the same time.
Director of the Center for Energy and Environment and Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Daren Bakst is Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a Senior Fellow. In this role, he manages, develops, and leads the coalition, advocacy, and research activities of the Center, which is one of the most effective advocates for Free Market Environmentalism.
Before joining CEI as Deputy Director in March, 2023, Daren was a Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Policy and Regulation at the Heritage Foundation, where he played a leading role in the launch of the organization’s new energy and environment center, and created and hosted the Heritage Foundation’s energy and environment podcast the “PowerCast.” During his decade at Heritage, Daren wrote about energy and environmental policy, food and agricultural policy (including editing and co-authoring the book Farms and Free Enterprise), regulation, and trade among other topics.
Daren also worked on environmental policy and regulation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he was a policy counsel and served as the executive to the association’s Government Oversight, Operations & Consumer Affairs committee, which was responsible for issues such as regulatory process reform. Daren has significant state level experience, working for seven years at the Raleigh, N.C.-based John Locke Foundation, one of the largest state-based, free-market think tanks. As director of legal and regulatory studies, his broad portfolio included energy and environmental policy, regulatory reform, and property rights.
Daren has testified numerous times before Congress, regularly submits comments to federal agencies and has appeared in or been quoted by a wide range of media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Al-Jazeera America, and U.S. News and World Report. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Executive Committee and serves on the College Level Advisory Board for Constituting America, an organization that informs and educates about the importance of the U.S. Constitution.
Daren, who hails from Florida, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Washington University. A licensed attorney, he holds a law degree from the University of Miami and a master of laws degree from American University.
Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
William W. Buzbee is a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. In his teaching and scholarship, he specializes in environmental law, legislation and regulation, and administrative law. Recent publications focus on climate regulation, deregulation and law governing agency policy change, and federalism. He also offers seminars on advanced environmental, regulatory, and constitutional law subjects, with his most recent seminar focused on “The Art of Regulatory War.”
Professor Buzbee’s books include the recently published Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War that Transformed New York City (Cornell University Press 2014) and Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question(Cambridge University Press, hardcover 2009, paperback 2011) (William W. Buzbee editor and contributor). He has been a co-author of the 5th , 6th, 7th and forthcoming 8th editions of Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (Aspen/Wolters Kluwer). Law review scholarship includes publications in New York University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review (co-authored), Cornell Law Review (co-authored), Duke Law Journal (forthcoming), George Washington Law Review, Iowa Law Review, The Journal of Law and Politics and in an array of other journals, books, news outlets, and blogs. Three of his articles have been named among the 10 best environmental or land use law articles of that year and republished in the Land Use and Environment Law Review. He regularly assists with appellate and Supreme Court environmental, federalism, and regulatory litigation, and also has testified before congressional committees on environmental and regulatory matters. He has published op-eds on regulatory and environmental issues with The New York Times, The Hill, CNN, and been quoted and interviewed by numerous press and media outlets.
Professor Buzbee joined Georgetown from Emory Law School, where he was a professor of law and directed its Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. He also co-directed Emory’s Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance. He has been a visiting professor of law at Columbia, Cornell and Illinois law schools. He has also served as a professor for the Leiden-Amsterdam-Columbia Law School Summer Program in American Law. Professor Buzbee is a founding Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, a Washington D.C.-based regulatory think tank. Professor Buzbee was awarded the 2007-2008 Emory Williams Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. Professor Buzbee clerked for United States Judge Jose A. Cabranes, and before becoming a professor was an attorney-fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and did environmental, land use and litigation work for the New York City law firm, Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. JD, Columbia Law School, 1986; BA, Amherst College, magna cum laude, 1983.
Senior Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Damien Schiff is a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. He leads its environmental practice group, a unique initiative that draws broadly from PLF’s expertise and success in property rights and separation of powers litigation. Over the years, Damien has represented hundreds of landowners and property rights advocates to defend their liberties against heavy-handed and unwarranted environmental and land-use regulation. His litigation experience includes Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a groundbreaking decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of landowners to challenge Clean Water Act compliance orders issued by EPA, and Contoski v. Norton, PLF’s successful effort to force the federal government to make good on its promise to delist the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act.
Besides litigation, Damien has written academic articles on a variety of subjects, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, greenhouse gas torts, the duty to rescue, and international water law. He has appeared on a variety of television and radio programs and has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, and The Economist, among other publications.
He obtained his law degree magna cum laude from the University of San Diego School of Law, and his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University. While at USD, he was a research assistant for Professor Bernard Siegan, a leading constitutional theorist and advocate for property rights and economic liberty. Immediately prior to joining PLF, Damien clerked for Judge (and former PLF attorney) Victor Wolski of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Damien credits the mentoring and examples of Professor Siegan and Judge Wolski for his decision to pursue a career in liberty-based public interest litigation.
Damien lives in Sacramento with his wife, two young sons, four chickens, and a cat named Princess. In his off hours he enjoys stamp collecting, Gregorian chant, and martinis—preferably at the same time.
Sho Sato Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, University of California, Berkeley
Dan Farber is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Co-Director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. Professor Farber serves on the editorial board of Foundation Press. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Life Member of the American Law Institute. He is the editor of Issues in Legal Scholarship.
Professor Farber is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees. He graduated, summa cum laude, from the College of Law, where he was the class valedictorian and served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. After graduation from law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Philip W. Tone of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then for Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Farber practiced law with Sidley & Austin, where he primarily worked on energy issues, before joining the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in 1978. He was a member of the University of Minnesota Law School faculty from1981 to 2002, where he was the McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law. He also has been a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School.
Among Professor Farber’s eighteen books are RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON PUBLIC CHOICE AND PUBLIC LAW (Elgar 2010) (with A. O’Connell); JUDGMENT CALLS: POLITICS AND PRINCIPLE IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (Oxford University Press 2008) (with S. Sherry); RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE: THE “SILENT” NINTH AMENDMENT AND THE RIGHTS AMERICANS DON’T KNOW THEY HAVE (Basic Books 2007); and LINCOLN’S CONSTITUTION (University of Chicago Press 2003).
Senior Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs, Boeing
Adam Gustafson is a Senior Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at Boeing.
Prior to joining Boeing, he served as Deputy General Counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to that, he was a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, where he represented States, federal judges, environmental groups, biofuel producers, agricultural interests, and public policy organizations, on such issues as the constitutional separation of powers, the First Amendment, automotive regulations, environmental computer models, healthcare regulation, and judicial deference to federal agencies.
Mr. Gustafson received his J.D. in 2009 from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, a managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, and an executive editor of the symposium issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Mr. Gustafson served as a Vice President of the Yale Law School Federalist Society. He was a Coker Fellow, and his legal writing won the Joseph A. Chubb Competition Prize and the Edward D. Robbins Memorial Prize.
Mr. Gustafson graduated with high distinction in 2005 from the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar, a member of the Raven Society, a member of the rowing team, and a Lawn resident.
Before joining Boyden Gray & Associates, Mr. Gustafson was an associate at Cooper & Kirk, where he specialized in appellate litigation. Mr. Gustafson served as a law clerk to Judge Richard R. Clifton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Senior Fellow for Law, Economics, and Technology, The Heritage Foundation; Professor, Florida International University
Mario Loyola is a Senior Fellow for Law, Economics, and Technology at The Heritage Foundation.
Loyola served in the Trump Administration as Associate Director for Regulatory Reform at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In that role, he was one of the principal drafters of the One Federal Decision policy, which helped to streamline the permitting and environmental review of large infrastructure projects. While at CEQ, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the USMCA free trade negotiations with Mexico and Canada, as well as the United Nations conference on biodiversity on the high seas. Loyola initially joined the White House in February 2017 as a Presidential Speechwriter, employing his expertise in many areas of foreign and domestic policy.
After beginning his career in M&A and corporate finance law, Loyola served in the Bush 43 Administration as a special assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. He left that position to start writing on national defense issues in magazines such as National Review and The Weekly Standard, reporting from the front lines of the war on terrorism in Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq. He finished the Bush Administration as Foreign and Defense Counsel to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, then under the chairmanship of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. He subsequently moved to Texas and joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he specialized in energy, environment, and federalism.
Loyola is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and The Atlantic, among others. He teaches environmental and administrative law at Florida International University, where he is Founding Director of the Environmental Finance and Risk Management program in FIU’s prestigious Institute of Environment. He received a bachelor’s degree in European history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a J.D. from Washington University School of Law.
Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor James W. Coleman is a scholar of energy law. He specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focused on energy policy.
Professor Coleman has testified before Congress on steps to speed up energy infrastructure permits. He also worked with a team of experts as part of Alberta's Royalty Review to revise the Canadian province's management of its vast oil and gas resources.
Before joining Minnesota, Professor Coleman taught at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, the University of Calgary’s law and business schools, and Harvard Law School. Earlier, he practiced environmental and appellate law at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Professor Coleman received two degrees from Harvard University—a J.D. (cum laude) and B.A. in biology (magna cum laude with highest honors in the field). As a result of his undergraduate thesis on butterfly genetics, which required fieldwork in Central Asia, a species of lycaenid butterfly was named after him—Agrodiaetus ripartii colemani.
Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor James W. Coleman is a scholar of energy law. He specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focused on energy policy.
Professor Coleman has testified before Congress on steps to speed up energy infrastructure permits. He also worked with a team of experts as part of Alberta's Royalty Review to revise the Canadian province's management of its vast oil and gas resources.
Before joining Minnesota, Professor Coleman taught at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, the University of Calgary’s law and business schools, and Harvard Law School. Earlier, he practiced environmental and appellate law at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Professor Coleman received two degrees from Harvard University—a J.D. (cum laude) and B.A. in biology (magna cum laude with highest honors in the field). As a result of his undergraduate thesis on butterfly genetics, which required fieldwork in Central Asia, a species of lycaenid butterfly was named after him—Agrodiaetus ripartii colemani.
Sho Sato Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, University of California, Berkeley
Dan Farber is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Co-Director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. Professor Farber serves on the editorial board of Foundation Press. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Life Member of the American Law Institute. He is the editor of Issues in Legal Scholarship.
Professor Farber is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees. He graduated, summa cum laude, from the College of Law, where he was the class valedictorian and served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. After graduation from law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Philip W. Tone of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then for Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Farber practiced law with Sidley & Austin, where he primarily worked on energy issues, before joining the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in 1978. He was a member of the University of Minnesota Law School faculty from1981 to 2002, where he was the McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law. He also has been a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School.
Among Professor Farber’s eighteen books are RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON PUBLIC CHOICE AND PUBLIC LAW (Elgar 2010) (with A. O’Connell); JUDGMENT CALLS: POLITICS AND PRINCIPLE IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (Oxford University Press 2008) (with S. Sherry); RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE: THE “SILENT” NINTH AMENDMENT AND THE RIGHTS AMERICANS DON’T KNOW THEY HAVE (Basic Books 2007); and LINCOLN’S CONSTITUTION (University of Chicago Press 2003).
Senior Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs, Boeing
Adam Gustafson is a Senior Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at Boeing.
Prior to joining Boeing, he served as Deputy General Counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to that, he was a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, where he represented States, federal judges, environmental groups, biofuel producers, agricultural interests, and public policy organizations, on such issues as the constitutional separation of powers, the First Amendment, automotive regulations, environmental computer models, healthcare regulation, and judicial deference to federal agencies.
Mr. Gustafson received his J.D. in 2009 from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, a managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, and an executive editor of the symposium issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
Mr. Gustafson served as a Vice President of the Yale Law School Federalist Society. He was a Coker Fellow, and his legal writing won the Joseph A. Chubb Competition Prize and the Edward D. Robbins Memorial Prize.
Mr. Gustafson graduated with high distinction in 2005 from the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar, a member of the Raven Society, a member of the rowing team, and a Lawn resident.
Before joining Boyden Gray & Associates, Mr. Gustafson was an associate at Cooper & Kirk, where he specialized in appellate litigation. Mr. Gustafson served as a law clerk to Judge Richard R. Clifton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Senior Fellow for Law, Economics, and Technology, The Heritage Foundation; Professor, Florida International University
Mario Loyola is a Senior Fellow for Law, Economics, and Technology at The Heritage Foundation.
Loyola served in the Trump Administration as Associate Director for Regulatory Reform at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In that role, he was one of the principal drafters of the One Federal Decision policy, which helped to streamline the permitting and environmental review of large infrastructure projects. While at CEQ, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the USMCA free trade negotiations with Mexico and Canada, as well as the United Nations conference on biodiversity on the high seas. Loyola initially joined the White House in February 2017 as a Presidential Speechwriter, employing his expertise in many areas of foreign and domestic policy.
After beginning his career in M&A and corporate finance law, Loyola served in the Bush 43 Administration as a special assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. He left that position to start writing on national defense issues in magazines such as National Review and The Weekly Standard, reporting from the front lines of the war on terrorism in Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq. He finished the Bush Administration as Foreign and Defense Counsel to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, then under the chairmanship of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. He subsequently moved to Texas and joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he specialized in energy, environment, and federalism.
Loyola is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and The Atlantic, among others. He teaches environmental and administrative law at Florida International University, where he is Founding Director of the Environmental Finance and Risk Management program in FIU’s prestigious Institute of Environment. He received a bachelor’s degree in European history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a J.D. from Washington University School of Law.
Deputy Administrator, United States Environmental Protection Agency
David Fotouhi was sworn in as Deputy Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency on June 16, 2025.
Fotouhi is an experienced environmental attorney who previously served in senior roles at EPA. During the first term of the Trump Administration, Fotouhi served as EPA’s Acting General Counsel and Principal Deputy General Counsel. Prior to rejoining the agency, Fotouhi was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP practicing environmental law.
Fotouhi grew up in Oklahoma and holds a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Before entering private legal practice, Fotouhi served as a law clerk to the Honorable Raymond W. Gruender of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Environmental Law Attorney, DLA Piper
Garrett Kral is an attorney in DLA Piper’s Washington, DC, office, and a member of the Regulatory and Government Affairs Practice Group. His practice includes regulatory counseling, enforcement defense, and complex civil litigation on matters arising under major federal environmental statutes.
Garrett builds on a strong background in environmental science, a familiarity with technical processes involved in industrial operations, and valuable insights gained by serving in each branch of the federal government. With this experience, he advances the business objectives of Fortune 500 companies while limiting exposure and risk. Garrett is regarded as a strategic advisor to such clients on matters of environmental law and policy.
Founder, CGCN Law, PLLC
West Virginia v. EPA and Implications for Future Regulations
Richmond Lawyers Chapter
Richmond, VADeep Dive Episode 236 - Sackett v. EPA: How Will the U.S. Supreme Court Define "Waters of the United States?"
Daren Bakst, William W. Buzbee, Damien Michael Schiff
One of the most controversial and long-standing environmental issues deals with what waters are regulated...
Sackett v. EPA: How Will the U.S. Supreme Court Define "Waters of the United States?"
Daren Bakst, William W. Buzbee, Damien Michael Schiff
One of the most controversial and long-standing environmental issues deals with what waters are regulated...
Sackett v. EPA: How Will the U.S. Supreme Court Define "Waters of the United States?"
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
TeleforumTopics
After Fifty Years of Clean Water Act Confusion, the Supreme Court Should, in Sackett v. EPA, Finally Apply a Reasonable Standard to Federal Government Regulation
The first case of the Supreme Court’s October 2022 term is Sackett v. EPA, No....
Topics
Title IX NPRM: Due Process and Potential Challenges
The U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) proposed rulemaking (NPRM) pursuant to Title IX’s anti-sex discrimination...
Deep Dive Episode 231 - West Virginia v. EPA and the Major Questions Doctrine
Daniel Farber, Adam Gustafson, Mario Loyola, James W. Coleman
In the historic decision of West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court held that the Clean...
West Virginia v. EPA and the Major Questions Doctrine
James W. Coleman, Daniel Farber, Adam Gustafson, Mario Loyola
In the historic decision of West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court held that the...
West Virginia v. EPA and the Major Questions Doctrine
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
TeleforumCourthouse Steps Decision Webinar: West Virginia v. EPA
David Fotouhi, Garrett Kral, Justin Schwab
On June 30, 2022, the Supreme Court decided West Virginia v. EPA. In a 6-3...