Shareholder & Co-Chair of the Workplace Policy Institute, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Alexander T. MacDonald advises employers on all aspects of the employment and labor landscape, focusing on emerging legislation and regulation. He has extensive experience advising businesses on worker classification, arbitration, the administrative and regulatory process, and the future of work. He frequently writes, publishes, and speaks on these subjects. His work has been cited by scholars and appellate courts. He is a recognized voice for the management perspective.
Alexander is a co-chair of the Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) team. With WPI, he advises employers on legislative, administrative, and regulatory developments at the state and federal level. He advocates for employers in the regulatory and administrative process. He also helps employers protect their businesses by understanding and anticipating cutting-edge legal developments.
Alexander also has extensive experience in traditional labor law. He represents management in all aspects of labor-management relations, including unfair labor practice charges, grievance arbitrations, representation elections, contract negotiations, and related litigation, including litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals.
Before joining Littler, Alexander served as the director, future of work, for a major technology company. He also worked in a national labor and employment law firm and a major public-sector general counsel’s office. He was a law clerk to the senior judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In law school, he graduated first in his class
Senior Associate, Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC
Drew Watkins is a senior associate with Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC, providing counsel in the areas of campaign finance and election law, lobbying and ethics compliance, and tax-exempt organizations.
Prior to joining the firm, Drew served as a law clerk to the Honorable Joseph R. Goeke, Senior Judge of the United States Tax Court in Washington, D.C., and worked in the Office of General Counsel for the Governor of Kentucky, Matthew G. Bevin. While in law school, Drew served as a law clerk for the Kentucky Executive Branch Ethics Commission and interned for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in his office in Washington, D.C.
Drew graduated from the University of Louisville with a B.S. in Justice Administration. He earned his Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from the University of Kentucky College of Law and was a member of the Order of the Coif. During law school, he served as a senior staff editor on the Kentucky Law Journal and authored a published student note on the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. He is a member of the Kentucky, D.C. and Virginia bars and the Federalist Society.
Judge, U.S. District Court, Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri
Josh Divine was most recently the Solicitor General of Missouri, where he oversaw the office's appellate and special litigation divisions. As Solicitor General, Mr. Divine led Missouri's trial and appellate teams to some of its most significant victories. Mr. Divine was lead counsel in blocking $700 billion in student loan bailouts attempted by the federal government. He was lead counsel in obtaining a $25 billion judgment against China for antitrust violations. And he was lead counsel in successfully defending the Missouri law that prohibits gender transition interventions in minors, making Missouri the only state in the nation to prevail at trial against an equal protection challenge to one of these laws. In addition, Mr. Divine's work at the trial court in Missouri v. Biden (restyled Murthy v. Missouri) helped expose systemic violations of the First Amendment by the federal government, which the trial court found was unconstitutionally pressuring social media companies to suppress millions of free speech posts.
Before serving as Solicitor General, Mr. Divine was Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, where he oversaw all legal issues, managed matters related to the Judiciary Committee, and developed tech policy. Mr. Divine clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Thomas and on the Eleventh Circuit for Judge William Pryor. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Northern Colorado. His recent legal scholarship has appeared in the Virginia Law Review and the Hastings Law Journal.
Partner, Graves Garrett Greim LLC
Edward “Eddie” Greim focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation, free speech and election law, and internal investigations and whistleblower claims. He has been recognized for his successful representation of businesses and individuals in commercial litigation while also being named a “go-to” lawyer on policy and constitutional issues.
Eddie was named a Constitutional and Election Law Trailblazer by the National Law Journal in 2020. His free speech and election law practice has included numerous constitutional challenges to election and campaign finance laws; representation of clients in state and federal ethics and campaign finance enforcement actions and investigations; initiative petition drafting and litigation; litigation and advice regarding First Amendment protections for petition circulation; representation of not-for-profit clients before state regulators; litigation of state and federal redistricting issues; and advice on campaign and election law compliance.
Eddie complements his trial work in complex, high-profile commercial and constitutional cases with oral advocacy and briefing in important appeals. Recognized as a Missouri Lawyers Media POWER 30 Appellate Attorney in 2021, he has argued before the Missouri and Kansas supreme courts multiple times, other state appellate courts across the country, and before the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Eddie’s notable work for clients includes:
Recovering substantial compensation and injunctive relief for plaintiffs, in complex multiyear litigation, as lead counsel in the first and only nationwide class action certified against the Internal Revenue Service for violating taxpayer protection statutes when it targeted hundreds of groups based on their political viewpoints.
Successful First Amendment challenge to Missouri’s 2016 campaign finance restrictions.
Successful challenge to a vast, multiyear, secret criminal investigation into Wisconsin political groups and nonprofits, and follow-up challenge to expose role of state ethics board which secretly aided the investigation and was later dissolved by the legislature.
U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief for the National Republican Redistricting Trust in the 2019 Rucho litigation, and federal and state redistricting litigation and advice since 2011.
Challenges under the First Amendment in federal court, and in briefing to the Michigan Supreme Court on state constitutional grounds, to unprecedented emergency powers claimed by Michigan Governor in 2020.
Representation of numerous public officials and private citizens who are subject to “lawfare” attacks based on their political viewpoints or policy objectives.
Oversight of multiple internal investigations.
Eddie received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 2002, where he taught on the Board of Student Advisers, received the Dean’s Award for Leadership, and served as President of the Harvard Catholic Law Students Association. He received two bachelor’s degrees, summa cum laude, in economics and political science from the University of Missouri.
A native of Excelsior Springs, Missouri, Eddie lives in Kansas City with his family. He enjoys Missouri and military history. On many weekends, he can be found with his wife and daughters exploring sites of local interest. He enjoys reading and debating and has given presentations or organized discussions at numerous gatherings, formal and informal, of professional and personal interest.
Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in US Constitutional Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Lyrissa Lidsky is the Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law at Florida Law. She previously served as Dean of the University of Missouri School of Law from 2017-2022. The focus of her research and teaching is the intersection of Tort Law and the First Amendment, with an emphasis on defamation and free speech issues in social media. Missouri Lawyers Media named Lidsky its 2020 Woman of the Year based on her scholarship, passion for law, mentorship of students, and engagement of constituencies supporting the school of law.
Before becoming dean at Missouri, Lidsky served in a variety of leadership roles at UF Law, including as associate dean for graduate and international programs and associate dean for faculty development. She also held the Stephen C. O’Connell Chair in Law and received a number of teaching awards during her 23-year tenure at UF, including student-selected awards such as Teacher of the Year (twice) and Faculty Graduation Speaker (three times), as well as Teacher of the Year, which was selected by a faculty committee.
Lidsky is co-reporter on the Restatement of Defamation and Privacy, which is now in progress. She is co-author of a leading Media Law casebook, a First Amendment casebook, and a reference book on press freedom and has published dozens of articles, culminating in a forthcoming article in the Virginia Law Review, co-authored with Professor Christina Koningisor, called First Amendment Disequilibrium. Her work on anonymous speech has been cited by a number of state supreme courts and the highest courts of Canada and Hong Kong.
Before becoming a law professor, Lidsky served as a clerk for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Calif. Lidsky received her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law with high honors. She was initiated into Order of the Coif in recognition of her scholastic achievement and served as articles editor of the Texas Law Review. Before law school, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University in England, studying medieval legal history and early development of the Common Law. She received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in English and political science from Texas A&M University.
Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Research Fellow for the Study of Objectivism
An accomplished scholar on Objectivism and privacy law, Professor Amy Peikoff has served as a faculty member at universities around the country over the past decade, teaching and writing in the areas of Contemporary Moral Problems, Contracts, Ethics, Information Privacy Law, Morality and Business, Philosophy of Law, Political Philosophy and Professional Responsibility. She served as a visiting lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003, a visiting assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004, an assistant and associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy from 2005 to 2008, and as a visiting fellow at Chapman University School of Law from 2008 to 2012.
She joined Southwestern’s adjunct faculty in January 2013, also serving as a research fellow, and was appointed as Visiting Associate Professor and Research Fellow for the Study of Objectivism at Southwestern in July 2014. She is teaching courses in Law and Literature, Education Law and Jurisprudence Seminar. In her role as a Research Fellow, Professor Peikoff will engage in scholarly work related to the philosophy and writings of Ayn Rand. The Fellowship is funded by the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship.
In trying to convey to her students some effective ways to approach their studies, Professor Peikoff shares what she found to be true in her own law school career. “If you care about what the law says about a particular issue, you will remember it and do better on exams,” she says. “Always try to connect what you're learning in school to things and people you value.”
Professor Peikoff’s articles have been published in a variety of scholarly journals such as Brandeis Law Journal, NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, St. John’s Law Review and Virginia Journal of Social Policy & The Law, among others. She has lectured and served as a panelist on privacy issues and individual rights at dozens of Objectivist conferences and scholarly forums around the country, including DePaul College of Law, Keck Graduate Institute, Stanford, UCLA and University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Liberty Conference in Brazil.
Professor Peikoff finds the most exciting aspect of her area of interest to be “seeing a problem and coming up with a solution that can affect something you care about.” For example, after writing about privacy issues for many years, she found her interest waning, until the 2012 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones inspired her to solve the problem of the "third-party doctrine" and, one year later, “Edward Snowden's revelations made that solution more relevant than ever.”
Judge, U.S. District Court, Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri
Josh Divine was most recently the Solicitor General of Missouri, where he oversaw the office's appellate and special litigation divisions. As Solicitor General, Mr. Divine led Missouri's trial and appellate teams to some of its most significant victories. Mr. Divine was lead counsel in blocking $700 billion in student loan bailouts attempted by the federal government. He was lead counsel in obtaining a $25 billion judgment against China for antitrust violations. And he was lead counsel in successfully defending the Missouri law that prohibits gender transition interventions in minors, making Missouri the only state in the nation to prevail at trial against an equal protection challenge to one of these laws. In addition, Mr. Divine's work at the trial court in Missouri v. Biden (restyled Murthy v. Missouri) helped expose systemic violations of the First Amendment by the federal government, which the trial court found was unconstitutionally pressuring social media companies to suppress millions of free speech posts.
Before serving as Solicitor General, Mr. Divine was Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, where he oversaw all legal issues, managed matters related to the Judiciary Committee, and developed tech policy. Mr. Divine clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Thomas and on the Eleventh Circuit for Judge William Pryor. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Northern Colorado. His recent legal scholarship has appeared in the Virginia Law Review and the Hastings Law Journal.
Partner, Graves Garrett Greim LLC
Edward “Eddie” Greim focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation, free speech and election law, and internal investigations and whistleblower claims. He has been recognized for his successful representation of businesses and individuals in commercial litigation while also being named a “go-to” lawyer on policy and constitutional issues.
Eddie was named a Constitutional and Election Law Trailblazer by the National Law Journal in 2020. His free speech and election law practice has included numerous constitutional challenges to election and campaign finance laws; representation of clients in state and federal ethics and campaign finance enforcement actions and investigations; initiative petition drafting and litigation; litigation and advice regarding First Amendment protections for petition circulation; representation of not-for-profit clients before state regulators; litigation of state and federal redistricting issues; and advice on campaign and election law compliance.
Eddie complements his trial work in complex, high-profile commercial and constitutional cases with oral advocacy and briefing in important appeals. Recognized as a Missouri Lawyers Media POWER 30 Appellate Attorney in 2021, he has argued before the Missouri and Kansas supreme courts multiple times, other state appellate courts across the country, and before the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Eddie’s notable work for clients includes:
Recovering substantial compensation and injunctive relief for plaintiffs, in complex multiyear litigation, as lead counsel in the first and only nationwide class action certified against the Internal Revenue Service for violating taxpayer protection statutes when it targeted hundreds of groups based on their political viewpoints.
Successful First Amendment challenge to Missouri’s 2016 campaign finance restrictions.
Successful challenge to a vast, multiyear, secret criminal investigation into Wisconsin political groups and nonprofits, and follow-up challenge to expose role of state ethics board which secretly aided the investigation and was later dissolved by the legislature.
U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief for the National Republican Redistricting Trust in the 2019 Rucho litigation, and federal and state redistricting litigation and advice since 2011.
Challenges under the First Amendment in federal court, and in briefing to the Michigan Supreme Court on state constitutional grounds, to unprecedented emergency powers claimed by Michigan Governor in 2020.
Representation of numerous public officials and private citizens who are subject to “lawfare” attacks based on their political viewpoints or policy objectives.
Oversight of multiple internal investigations.
Eddie received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 2002, where he taught on the Board of Student Advisers, received the Dean’s Award for Leadership, and served as President of the Harvard Catholic Law Students Association. He received two bachelor’s degrees, summa cum laude, in economics and political science from the University of Missouri.
A native of Excelsior Springs, Missouri, Eddie lives in Kansas City with his family. He enjoys Missouri and military history. On many weekends, he can be found with his wife and daughters exploring sites of local interest. He enjoys reading and debating and has given presentations or organized discussions at numerous gatherings, formal and informal, of professional and personal interest.
Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in US Constitutional Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Lyrissa Lidsky is the Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law at Florida Law. She previously served as Dean of the University of Missouri School of Law from 2017-2022. The focus of her research and teaching is the intersection of Tort Law and the First Amendment, with an emphasis on defamation and free speech issues in social media. Missouri Lawyers Media named Lidsky its 2020 Woman of the Year based on her scholarship, passion for law, mentorship of students, and engagement of constituencies supporting the school of law.
Before becoming dean at Missouri, Lidsky served in a variety of leadership roles at UF Law, including as associate dean for graduate and international programs and associate dean for faculty development. She also held the Stephen C. O’Connell Chair in Law and received a number of teaching awards during her 23-year tenure at UF, including student-selected awards such as Teacher of the Year (twice) and Faculty Graduation Speaker (three times), as well as Teacher of the Year, which was selected by a faculty committee.
Lidsky is co-reporter on the Restatement of Defamation and Privacy, which is now in progress. She is co-author of a leading Media Law casebook, a First Amendment casebook, and a reference book on press freedom and has published dozens of articles, culminating in a forthcoming article in the Virginia Law Review, co-authored with Professor Christina Koningisor, called First Amendment Disequilibrium. Her work on anonymous speech has been cited by a number of state supreme courts and the highest courts of Canada and Hong Kong.
Before becoming a law professor, Lidsky served as a clerk for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Calif. Lidsky received her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law with high honors. She was initiated into Order of the Coif in recognition of her scholastic achievement and served as articles editor of the Texas Law Review. Before law school, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University in England, studying medieval legal history and early development of the Common Law. She received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in English and political science from Texas A&M University.
Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Research Fellow for the Study of Objectivism
An accomplished scholar on Objectivism and privacy law, Professor Amy Peikoff has served as a faculty member at universities around the country over the past decade, teaching and writing in the areas of Contemporary Moral Problems, Contracts, Ethics, Information Privacy Law, Morality and Business, Philosophy of Law, Political Philosophy and Professional Responsibility. She served as a visiting lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003, a visiting assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004, an assistant and associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy from 2005 to 2008, and as a visiting fellow at Chapman University School of Law from 2008 to 2012.
She joined Southwestern’s adjunct faculty in January 2013, also serving as a research fellow, and was appointed as Visiting Associate Professor and Research Fellow for the Study of Objectivism at Southwestern in July 2014. She is teaching courses in Law and Literature, Education Law and Jurisprudence Seminar. In her role as a Research Fellow, Professor Peikoff will engage in scholarly work related to the philosophy and writings of Ayn Rand. The Fellowship is funded by the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship.
In trying to convey to her students some effective ways to approach their studies, Professor Peikoff shares what she found to be true in her own law school career. “If you care about what the law says about a particular issue, you will remember it and do better on exams,” she says. “Always try to connect what you're learning in school to things and people you value.”
Professor Peikoff’s articles have been published in a variety of scholarly journals such as Brandeis Law Journal, NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, St. John’s Law Review and Virginia Journal of Social Policy & The Law, among others. She has lectured and served as a panelist on privacy issues and individual rights at dozens of Objectivist conferences and scholarly forums around the country, including DePaul College of Law, Keck Graduate Institute, Stanford, UCLA and University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Liberty Conference in Brazil.
Professor Peikoff finds the most exciting aspect of her area of interest to be “seeing a problem and coming up with a solution that can affect something you care about.” For example, after writing about privacy issues for many years, she found her interest waning, until the 2012 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones inspired her to solve the problem of the "third-party doctrine" and, one year later, “Edward Snowden's revelations made that solution more relevant than ever.”
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Justice
Harmeet K. Dhillon is the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. She was nominated by President Donald Trump in December 2024. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 3, 2025, and sworn in as AAG by Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 7, 2025.
Prior to joining the Division, Ms. Dhillon founded both the Dhillon Law Group, Inc., a successful legal practice with offices in California, Florida, Virginia, and New Jersey; and the Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit organization dedicated to pursuing civil liberties legal claims. Her law practice focused on First Amendment / free speech, civil rights, and campaign and election law issues. Among her many notable cases, Ms. Dhillon brought legal challenges against the University of California, Berkeley over its free speech policy, against an Antifa organization for an assault on a conservative journalist, against several states for their restrictive responses to Covid-19, and against various large tech companies for a host of civil rights issues.
Assistant Attorney General Dhillon was born in Chandigarh, India, and lived in London before moving to The Bronx, New York. Her family ultimately settled in rural Smithfield, North Carolina. After graduating high school at age 16, Ms. Dhillon attended Dartmouth College where she became editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth Review. After earning her bachelor’s degree in Classical Studies, she attended the University of Virginia School of Law and served on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. She later clerked for the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Baltimore, Maryland.
Judge, U.S. District Court, Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri
Josh Divine was most recently the Solicitor General of Missouri, where he oversaw the office's appellate and special litigation divisions. As Solicitor General, Mr. Divine led Missouri's trial and appellate teams to some of its most significant victories. Mr. Divine was lead counsel in blocking $700 billion in student loan bailouts attempted by the federal government. He was lead counsel in obtaining a $25 billion judgment against China for antitrust violations. And he was lead counsel in successfully defending the Missouri law that prohibits gender transition interventions in minors, making Missouri the only state in the nation to prevail at trial against an equal protection challenge to one of these laws. In addition, Mr. Divine's work at the trial court in Missouri v. Biden (restyled Murthy v. Missouri) helped expose systemic violations of the First Amendment by the federal government, which the trial court found was unconstitutionally pressuring social media companies to suppress millions of free speech posts.
Before serving as Solicitor General, Mr. Divine was Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, where he oversaw all legal issues, managed matters related to the Judiciary Committee, and developed tech policy. Mr. Divine clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Thomas and on the Eleventh Circuit for Judge William Pryor. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Northern Colorado. His recent legal scholarship has appeared in the Virginia Law Review and the Hastings Law Journal.
Partner, Graves Garrett Greim LLC
Edward “Eddie” Greim focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation, free speech and election law, and internal investigations and whistleblower claims. He has been recognized for his successful representation of businesses and individuals in commercial litigation while also being named a “go-to” lawyer on policy and constitutional issues.
Eddie was named a Constitutional and Election Law Trailblazer by the National Law Journal in 2020. His free speech and election law practice has included numerous constitutional challenges to election and campaign finance laws; representation of clients in state and federal ethics and campaign finance enforcement actions and investigations; initiative petition drafting and litigation; litigation and advice regarding First Amendment protections for petition circulation; representation of not-for-profit clients before state regulators; litigation of state and federal redistricting issues; and advice on campaign and election law compliance.
Eddie complements his trial work in complex, high-profile commercial and constitutional cases with oral advocacy and briefing in important appeals. Recognized as a Missouri Lawyers Media POWER 30 Appellate Attorney in 2021, he has argued before the Missouri and Kansas supreme courts multiple times, other state appellate courts across the country, and before the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Eddie’s notable work for clients includes:
Recovering substantial compensation and injunctive relief for plaintiffs, in complex multiyear litigation, as lead counsel in the first and only nationwide class action certified against the Internal Revenue Service for violating taxpayer protection statutes when it targeted hundreds of groups based on their political viewpoints.
Successful First Amendment challenge to Missouri’s 2016 campaign finance restrictions.
Successful challenge to a vast, multiyear, secret criminal investigation into Wisconsin political groups and nonprofits, and follow-up challenge to expose role of state ethics board which secretly aided the investigation and was later dissolved by the legislature.
U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief for the National Republican Redistricting Trust in the 2019 Rucho litigation, and federal and state redistricting litigation and advice since 2011.
Challenges under the First Amendment in federal court, and in briefing to the Michigan Supreme Court on state constitutional grounds, to unprecedented emergency powers claimed by Michigan Governor in 2020.
Representation of numerous public officials and private citizens who are subject to “lawfare” attacks based on their political viewpoints or policy objectives.
Oversight of multiple internal investigations.
Eddie received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 2002, where he taught on the Board of Student Advisers, received the Dean’s Award for Leadership, and served as President of the Harvard Catholic Law Students Association. He received two bachelor’s degrees, summa cum laude, in economics and political science from the University of Missouri.
A native of Excelsior Springs, Missouri, Eddie lives in Kansas City with his family. He enjoys Missouri and military history. On many weekends, he can be found with his wife and daughters exploring sites of local interest. He enjoys reading and debating and has given presentations or organized discussions at numerous gatherings, formal and informal, of professional and personal interest.
Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in US Constitutional Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Lyrissa Lidsky is the Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law at Florida Law. She previously served as Dean of the University of Missouri School of Law from 2017-2022. The focus of her research and teaching is the intersection of Tort Law and the First Amendment, with an emphasis on defamation and free speech issues in social media. Missouri Lawyers Media named Lidsky its 2020 Woman of the Year based on her scholarship, passion for law, mentorship of students, and engagement of constituencies supporting the school of law.
Before becoming dean at Missouri, Lidsky served in a variety of leadership roles at UF Law, including as associate dean for graduate and international programs and associate dean for faculty development. She also held the Stephen C. O’Connell Chair in Law and received a number of teaching awards during her 23-year tenure at UF, including student-selected awards such as Teacher of the Year (twice) and Faculty Graduation Speaker (three times), as well as Teacher of the Year, which was selected by a faculty committee.
Lidsky is co-reporter on the Restatement of Defamation and Privacy, which is now in progress. She is co-author of a leading Media Law casebook, a First Amendment casebook, and a reference book on press freedom and has published dozens of articles, culminating in a forthcoming article in the Virginia Law Review, co-authored with Professor Christina Koningisor, called First Amendment Disequilibrium. Her work on anonymous speech has been cited by a number of state supreme courts and the highest courts of Canada and Hong Kong.
Before becoming a law professor, Lidsky served as a clerk for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Calif. Lidsky received her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law with high honors. She was initiated into Order of the Coif in recognition of her scholastic achievement and served as articles editor of the Texas Law Review. Before law school, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University in England, studying medieval legal history and early development of the Common Law. She received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in English and political science from Texas A&M University.
Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Research Fellow for the Study of Objectivism
An accomplished scholar on Objectivism and privacy law, Professor Amy Peikoff has served as a faculty member at universities around the country over the past decade, teaching and writing in the areas of Contemporary Moral Problems, Contracts, Ethics, Information Privacy Law, Morality and Business, Philosophy of Law, Political Philosophy and Professional Responsibility. She served as a visiting lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003, a visiting assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004, an assistant and associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy from 2005 to 2008, and as a visiting fellow at Chapman University School of Law from 2008 to 2012.
She joined Southwestern’s adjunct faculty in January 2013, also serving as a research fellow, and was appointed as Visiting Associate Professor and Research Fellow for the Study of Objectivism at Southwestern in July 2014. She is teaching courses in Law and Literature, Education Law and Jurisprudence Seminar. In her role as a Research Fellow, Professor Peikoff will engage in scholarly work related to the philosophy and writings of Ayn Rand. The Fellowship is funded by the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship.
In trying to convey to her students some effective ways to approach their studies, Professor Peikoff shares what she found to be true in her own law school career. “If you care about what the law says about a particular issue, you will remember it and do better on exams,” she says. “Always try to connect what you're learning in school to things and people you value.”
Professor Peikoff’s articles have been published in a variety of scholarly journals such as Brandeis Law Journal, NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, St. John’s Law Review and Virginia Journal of Social Policy & The Law, among others. She has lectured and served as a panelist on privacy issues and individual rights at dozens of Objectivist conferences and scholarly forums around the country, including DePaul College of Law, Keck Graduate Institute, Stanford, UCLA and University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Liberty Conference in Brazil.
Professor Peikoff finds the most exciting aspect of her area of interest to be “seeing a problem and coming up with a solution that can affect something you care about.” For example, after writing about privacy issues for many years, she found her interest waning, until the 2012 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones inspired her to solve the problem of the "third-party doctrine" and, one year later, “Edward Snowden's revelations made that solution more relevant than ever.”
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Panel One: Big Tech: Government Regulation of Social Media Content Moderation by Big Tech: Good or Bad?
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The 2022 Missouri Chapters Conference took place on January 24, 2022, at the Missouri State...
Panel One: Big Tech: Government Regulation of Social Media Content Moderation by Big Tech: Good or Bad?
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Panel One: Big Tech: Government Regulation of Social Media Content Moderation by Big Tech: Good or Bad?
2022 Missouri Chapters Conference
Jefferson City, MO