Reporter, SCOTUSblog
Amy Howe is the co-founder of SCOTUSblog, a news site devoted to coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court, and its primary reporter. She was part of the blog team that won a Peabody Award in 2013, as well as a National Press Club Journalism Award for Breaking News. Since the spring of 2025, she has also served as the Supreme Court analyst for the PBS NewsHour. In the fall of 2025, she is a fellow in Georgetown University's Institute of Politics.
Before turning to full-time journalism, Amy was a practicing lawyer and served as a lawyer in over two dozen cases at the Supreme Court, on issues ranging from international child custody to the death penalty, and argued two cases there. She has taught or co-taught courses on Supreme Court litigation at Vanderbilt Law School, Stanford Law School, and Harvard Law School. Amy is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds a master's in Arab Studies and a law degree from Georgetown University.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Symposium Chair, Arizona State Student Chapter
Dean, Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
Douglas Sylvester is the 8th dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Under his leadership, ASU Law reached historic heights ranked 27th in the nation (up from 40th in 2012, and 58th in 2008) and 9th among public law schools. From 2012-2017, the law school placed in the top 20 for employment (rising as high as #11 in 2014), hired more than 30 faculty members, and raised more than $70 million— twice the amount raised in the prior 45 years combined.
Professor Sylvester was also a driving force for the conceptualization and creation of the Beus Center for Law and Society in downtown Phoenix, which is now home to ASU Law and a number of other legal-related organizations including the innovative ASU Law Group and the Arizona Legal Center.
Before becoming dean, he served as associate dean for faculty research and development, responsible for building an environment that fosters faculty scholarship, organizing speaker series, mentoring junior faculty, and seeking innovative ways to increase the faculty's visibility.
In 2007, Professor Sylvester was appointed special consultant to a National Academy of Sciences panel charged with reforming the U.S. Census. He was the founding faculty director of the innovative Technology Ventures Clinic which introduces students to transactional legal practice in high-technology sectors. He also has been an expert witness in cases involving licensing, intellectual property and technology, and has advised numerous entrepreneurs in building their businesses.
Professor Sylvester has published, taught and lectured on issues of intellectual property law and commercialization, international law, emerging technologies and privacy. In 2006, he taught nanotechnology and the law, the first time such a course was offered in the country by full-time law faculty.
Prior to joining the ASU, Professor Sylvester was a Bigelow Fellow and lecturer-in-law at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, an attorney in the Global e-Commerce Practice Group at Baker & McKenzie in Chicago, and a law clerk for U.S. District Judge C. Clyde Atkins in Florida.
Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP
John P. Carlin, former Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Security Division (NSD), chairs Morrison & Foerster’s global risk and crisis management team and advises industry-leading organizations in sensitive cyber and other national security matters, white collar investigations, and government enforcement actions.
Mr. Carlin has served as a top-level official in both Republican and Democratic administrations, most recently as Assistant Attorney General for National Security, the DOJ’s highest-ranking national security lawyer. In this capacity, for which Mr. Carlin was nominated by the President and overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate on a bipartisan basis, he oversaw nearly 400 employees responsible for protecting the nation against terrorism, espionage, and cyber and other national security threats.
Prior to assuming his role in the NSD, Mr. Carlin served as Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel to Robert S. Mueller, III, former director of the FBI, where he helped lead the FBI’s evolution to meet growing and changing national security threats, including cyber threats. Mr. Carlin also held positions as National Coordinator of the DOJ’s Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Program and Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted cyber, fraud, and public corruption matters, among others, trying more than 40 cases to verdict.
Mr. Carlin is an inaugural Fellow of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs’ Homeland Security Project, focused on the unique challenges and choices around protecting the American homeland. He also chairs the Aspen Institute’s Cybersecurity and Technology policy program, which provides a cross-disciplinary forum for industry, government, and media to address the rapidly developing landscape of digital threats and craft appropriate policy solutions. Mr. Carlin was recently invited to address the governors of every U.S. state and territory on cybersecurity issues at the National Governors Association’s Winter 2017 meeting, and has been featured or cited as a leading authority on cyber and economic espionage matters by numerous major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, CBS’s 60 Minutes, NBC’s Meet the Press, PBS’s Charlie Rose and Newshour, ABC’s Nightline and Good Morning America, NPR, CNN, and Vanity Fair, among others.
Mr. Carlin, who joined DOJ through the Attorney General’s Honors Program, is a five-time recipient of the Department of Justice Award for Special Achievement, was awarded the National Intelligence Superior Public Service Medal by the Director of National Intelligence, and drew bipartisan praise, with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch calling him “a trusted and tireless leader” and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling him “a superb civil servant.” He earned his Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School, where he received the Samuel J. Heyman Fellowship for Federal Government Service and served as Articles editor for the Harvard Journal on Legislation, and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Williams College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
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.
Partner, Hunton Andrews Kurth
A co-leader of Hunton Andrews Kurth’s environmental practice, Deidre is lauded in Chambers USA, 2016 as “extremely capable,” “very familiar with the regulations and agencies,” and excels at giving clients “good insight into getting an expeditious outcome.” Her practice focuses exclusively on environmental, energy and administrative law.
Deidre represents clients on permitting, compliance and litigation relating to the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other environmental statutes. She frequently counsels clients on administrative rulemaking and policy, providing regulatory clarifications when necessary, and drafting federal and state legislation on myriad intricate issues. She is also well known for negotiating and obtaining permits for complicated energy and development projects. Her clients include development companies, oil and natural gas pipelines, electric utilities, agricultural interests, state and local agencies, and various trade associations.
Prior to entering private practice, Deidre served as assistant general counsel of the Army at the Pentagon, advising the secretary of the Army on environmental and land use issues involving the Corps of Engineers’ Civil Works and section 404 Regulatory program, as well as the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program. Deidre has extensive experience with federal regulatory agencies, military departments and the US Department of Justice.
Partner, Briscoe Prows Kao Ivester & Bazel LLP
Tony Francois is experienced in Water and Real Property Law, Land Use and Zoning, Environmental Regulation, Natural Resources Development, Agricultural Law, and Constitutional Law. He has represented homeowners, builders, farmers and ranchers, trade associations, and water districts in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies and state and federal trial and appellate courts. He is a member of the California State Bar and the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California and the Districts of New Mexico and North Dakota, and has litigated cases in federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, as well as the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has appeared before the Supreme Courts of California, Idaho, Nevada, and the United States.
Prior to attending law school, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in the former West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tony was an Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation from 2012 to 2021. He was a lobbyist for 10 years, first with California Farm Bureau Federation from 2003 to 2007, and then with KP Public Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was an attorney at McQuaid, Bedford & Van Zandt in San Francisco from 1999 – 2003.
Senior Editor, National Review
Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and the author of several books, including Founders’ Son, Right Time, Right Place, George Washington on Leadership, What Would the Founders Do?, Gentleman Revolutionary, Rules of Civility, America’s First Dynasty, Alexander Hamilton, American, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, Way of the WASP, and The Outside Story.
Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP
John P. Carlin, former Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Security Division (NSD), chairs Morrison & Foerster’s global risk and crisis management team and advises industry-leading organizations in sensitive cyber and other national security matters, white collar investigations, and government enforcement actions.
Mr. Carlin has served as a top-level official in both Republican and Democratic administrations, most recently as Assistant Attorney General for National Security, the DOJ’s highest-ranking national security lawyer. In this capacity, for which Mr. Carlin was nominated by the President and overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate on a bipartisan basis, he oversaw nearly 400 employees responsible for protecting the nation against terrorism, espionage, and cyber and other national security threats.
Prior to assuming his role in the NSD, Mr. Carlin served as Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel to Robert S. Mueller, III, former director of the FBI, where he helped lead the FBI’s evolution to meet growing and changing national security threats, including cyber threats. Mr. Carlin also held positions as National Coordinator of the DOJ’s Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Program and Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted cyber, fraud, and public corruption matters, among others, trying more than 40 cases to verdict.
Mr. Carlin is an inaugural Fellow of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs’ Homeland Security Project, focused on the unique challenges and choices around protecting the American homeland. He also chairs the Aspen Institute’s Cybersecurity and Technology policy program, which provides a cross-disciplinary forum for industry, government, and media to address the rapidly developing landscape of digital threats and craft appropriate policy solutions. Mr. Carlin was recently invited to address the governors of every U.S. state and territory on cybersecurity issues at the National Governors Association’s Winter 2017 meeting, and has been featured or cited as a leading authority on cyber and economic espionage matters by numerous major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, CBS’s 60 Minutes, NBC’s Meet the Press, PBS’s Charlie Rose and Newshour, ABC’s Nightline and Good Morning America, NPR, CNN, and Vanity Fair, among others.
Mr. Carlin, who joined DOJ through the Attorney General’s Honors Program, is a five-time recipient of the Department of Justice Award for Special Achievement, was awarded the National Intelligence Superior Public Service Medal by the Director of National Intelligence, and drew bipartisan praise, with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch calling him “a trusted and tireless leader” and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling him “a superb civil servant.” He earned his Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School, where he received the Samuel J. Heyman Fellowship for Federal Government Service and served as Articles editor for the Harvard Journal on Legislation, and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Williams College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Executive Vice President and Dean of the Law Center; Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair; Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
William M. Treanor is the Executive Vice President of Georgetown University, Dean of the Law Center, and Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair. Treanor joined Georgetown in 2010 and was reappointed to serve a third term as Dean and Executive Vice President on July 1, 2020.
Under Treanor’s leadership, Georgetown Law has hired 75 new faculty members; tripled the number of experiential offerings for students in its clinical, externship, and practicum programs; transformed its law and technology offerings into a world class program with 19 full-time faculty experts and over 80 courses in this area; and experienced its most successful era of fundraising, culminating in nearly $67 million in giving in the last fiscal year.
Treanor has also advanced Georgetown Law’s commitment to affordability and access. During his tenure, Georgetown has more than doubled financial aid; raised nearly $25 million dollars for the Law Center’s scholarship program for exceptional students with significant financial need; and launched the RISE program, which provides academic support for students from historically underrepresented groups. The Law Center also created the Early Outreach Initiative, which brings the Law Center’s dean of admissions, current law students, and alumni together to encourage students in underserved high schools to consider pursuing careers as lawyers.
In keeping with Georgetown Law’s motto, “Law is but the means; justice is the end,” Treanor has focused on increasing opportunities for students to pursue careers in public interest law. He is proud that nearly 1 in 4 graduates move straight into public service jobs – a ratio higher than any other top law school in America. The Law Center supports post-graduate fellowships that have enabled more than 400 graduates to work in public interest jobs, and, in combination with the law firms ArentFox Schiff and DLA Piper, it has launched the D.C. Affordable Law Firm, a “low bono” law firm where recent Georgetown Law graduates provide legal representation to people of limited means.
The National Jurist magazine has named Treanor one of the most influential people in legal education five times. He is a member of the Morristown (N.J.) High School Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for law and education. Most recently, he was selected for the inaugural Honorable Robert A. Katzmann Award for Academic Excellence by the Burton Awards.
Treanor’s areas of academic expertise include constitutional law, property law, criminal law, intellectual property, and legal history. At Georgetown Law, he has taught a first-year legal justice seminar, an upper-level course on the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and leadership courses. His writings have principally been in the area of constitutional history, and he has been recognized as one of the 10 most-cited legal history scholars in the United States by the University of Chicago Law School’s Brian Leiter. His early work largely focused on the history of constitutional protections of private property. His article “The Original Understanding of the Takings Clause and the Political Process,” 95 Colum. L. Rev. 782 (1995), was recognized by the Land Use Professors Blog as the most cited land use article of the past 30 years. Treanor’s article, “Judicial Review before Marbury” was cited in the Moore v. Harper (2023) majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. His recent article, “The Case of the Dishonest Scrivener: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of the Federalist Constitution,” examined the changes that Gouverneur Morris and the Committee of Style made in preparing the Constitution’s final draft. W.W. Norton will publish his upcoming book, Fathers of the Constitution: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Creation of the American Republic.
Before coming to Georgetown, Treanor was Dean and Paul Fuller Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He also served in a variety of positions in the government, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice; Associate Counsel, Office of Independent Counsel during the Iran/Contra investigation. He was law clerk to the Honorable James L. Oakes, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Treanor has a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale College.
Topics
Defining the "Waters of the United States"
For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps)...
Topics
Questioning Citizenship vs. Questioning the Question
It will be interesting to see how much of the upcoming Supreme Court argument in Department...
Department of Commerce v. New York [SCOTUSbrief]
Amy Howe
While the Constitution grants Congress the authority to conduct the census, they have delegated that...
Topics
DOL Issues Proposed Rule on Joint Employment
On April 1, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on...
Opening Remarks and Welcome to Arizona
Richard A. Epstein, Grant H. Frazier, Douglas Sylvester
On March 15-16, 2019, the Federalist Society's student chapter at the ASU Sandra Day O'Connor...
Book Review: Dawn of the Code War
John P. Carlin
In Dawn of the Code War, authors John P. Carlin and Garrett M. Graff describe...
Book Review: Dawn of the Code War
TeleforumAnalyzing the New Proposed Rule Defining “Waters of the United States"
Daren Bakst, Deidre G. Duncan, Tony Francois
On February 14, 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers...
2019 Thomas M. Cooley Judicial Lecture
Washington, DCJohn Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court [POLICYbrief]
Richard Brookhiser
What impact did Chief Justice John Marshall have on the burgeoning Supreme Court in the...