Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law & Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Institute, University of Chicago Law School
William Baude is a Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Institute at the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches federal courts, constitutional law, and conflict of laws. His current research interests include different aspects of the Fourteenth Amendment (particularly both Section One and Section Three) and the nature of judicial discretion.
Among his other activities Baude is: the co-editor of two textbooks, The Constitution of the United States and Hart & Wechsler's Federal Courts in the Federal System; an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism; a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance; a member of the American Law Institute; an occasional blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy; and a podcaster on Divided Argument. He also recently served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor Baude received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and his JD from Yale Law School. He then clerked for then-Judge Michael McConnell on the United States Court of Appeals, and Chief Justice John Roberts on the United States Supreme Court. Before joining the Chicago faculty, he was a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, and a lawyer in Washington, DC.
Associate, Covington & Burling LLP
Kathryn Bi is an Associate at Covington & Burling LLP. She graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 2015 and from Dartmouth College in 2009 where she earned Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts degrees. Prior to law school Kathryn worked for three years as a chemical engineer at DuPont Corporation in Palo Alto and Genzyme Corporation in Boston.
Senior Associate to the President and Secretary of the University of Arizona
Jon Dudas has served as the Senior Associate to the President and Secretary of the University of Arizona since July 2014.
Mr. Dudas spent fourteen years in service to the U.S. Government, and as head of the USPTO, he led a performance-based government agency with 9,000 employees and a nearly $2 billion annual budget. During his tenure, the USPTO achieved record-level performance in meeting key annual objectives, and led key patent cooperation and development missions with China, India, Europe, Brazil and several other countries.
In addition to holding his post as Director of the USPTO from 2004 – 2009, Mr. Dudas’s public sector experience includes serving as Counsel for Legal Policy and Senior Floor Assistant for The Speaker of the House for the U.S. House of Representatives and Staff Director and Deputy General Counsel for the Committee on the Judiciary. After his appointment as Director of the USPTO, Mr. Dudas was a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP in Washington D.C. and then President of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a national nonprofit that works to educate and inspire children to pursue careers in technology, science and innovation. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors for Conversant Intellectual Property Management, Inc., of Ottowa, Ontario. Mr. Dudas holds a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Illinois.
Chief Counsel, U.S. Chamber Litigation Center
Steven P. Lehotsky has significant experience developing and executing litigation strategies to help businesses and trade associations address their most important regulatory and public-policy challenges.
Before founding Lehotsky Keller LLP, Mr. Lehotsky directed the litigation strategy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world's leading business federation, where he worked from 2013-2021. While at the U.S. Chamber’s Litigation Center, he served as chief litigation counsel. Mr. Lehotsky led the Chamber's efforts to bring successful challenges to federal, state, and local regulations of business. He also directed the U.S. Chamber's efforts to defend pro-growth regulatory reforms. Mr. Lehotsky also led and implemented the U.S. Chamber’s strategies for filing hundreds of amicus curiae briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate and district courts, and state supreme and appellate courts. He is a frequent speaker at events and conferences on litigation and regulatory trends.
Mr. Lehotsky previously was an attorney at WilmerHale LLP in both the Washington D.C. and Boston offices, where he practiced government and regulatory litigation, appellate litigation, and counseling on constitutional, statutory, and regulatory issues for clients across a wide variety of industry sectors. He also previously practiced as a commercial litigator at Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston.
In addition, Mr. Lehotsky was an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2006-2009, advising the White House and executive departments and agencies on constitutional and statutory issues relating to national security, immigration, international sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and other programs, the response to the 2008 financial crisis, pandemic influenza and infectious-disease mitigation, cybersecurity, and congressional investigations, among many other subjects.
Mr. Lehotsky was a law clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States and Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
Stephen Markman was appointed Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court on October 1, 1999. He served as the Chief Justice from 2017-2019. Before his appointment, he served as Judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals from 1995-1999. Prior to this, he practiced law with the firm of Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone in Detroit.
From 1989-1993, Justice Markman served as United States Attorney, or federal prosecutor, in Michigan, after having been nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate. From 1985-1989, he served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States, after having been nominated by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the United States Senate. In that position, he headed the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, which served as the principal policy development office within the Department, and which coordinated the federal judicial selection process. Prior to this, he served for seven years as Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, and as Deputy Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Justice Markman has authored articles for such publications as the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, the Detroit College of Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the American Criminal Justice Law Review, the Barrister’s Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the American University Law Review. He has also served as a contributing editor of National Review magazine, and has authored chapters in such books as “In the Name of Justice: The Aims of the Criminal Law,” “Still the Law of the Land,” and “Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate.”
Justice Markman has taught constitutional law at Hillsdale College since 1993. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He traveled to Ukraine on two occasions on behalf of the State Department, to provide assistance in the development of that nation’s post-Soviet constitution. He is a Fellow of the Michigan Bar Foundation, a Master of the Bench of the Inns of Court, and a member of the One Hundred Club. He has spoken before hundreds of youth, civic, charitable, and legal groups throughout Michigan and nationally, and has coached Little League baseball and basketball. He lives with his wife Mary Kathleen in Mason, and has two sons, James and Charles.
Justice Markman was re-elected to the Supreme Court in 2000, 2004, and 2012. His present term expires January 1, 2021.
Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Jennifer Nou is Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Nou’s main research interests are in administrative law, executive branch dynamics, regulatory policy, and constitutional separation-of-powers. Prior to joining the faculty, she was a Public Law Fellow at the Law School and also worked as a policy analyst and special assistant at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Nou is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and received an MPhil in Politics from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. After law school, she was a law clerk to Judge Richard Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then to Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court. She is currently a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
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.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
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.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
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.
Lecturer in Law and Director of The Institute for Justice Clinic, University of Chicago Law School
Elizabeth Kregor received her BA magna cum laude in comparative literature from Yale University. She attended law school at the University of Michigan, where she served as managing editor of the Michigan Law Review. After graduating magna cum laude, Ms. Kregor clerked for the Hon. Bruce M. Selya on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Ms. Kregor practiced law with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood for several years, with a focus on intellectual property litigation. In the fall of 2003, she joined the IJ Clinic on Entrepreneurship. As director, she supervises students in the representation of lower- to middle-income entrepreneurs in the inner city. She is expanding the clinic's practice in the field of intellectual property law.
The University of Michigan Law School
JD, magna cum laude, May 1999
Yale University
BA, magna cum laude in comparative literature, May 1996
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Wilson-Dickinson Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
After obtaining a BA in economics from the University of Chicago in 1986 and a JD from Harvard Law School in 1990, Bernstein served as a clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and was a visiting research fellow in law and economics at Harvard Law School. She began teaching at Boston University in 1991, and after visiting at the University of Pennsylvania and the Georgetown Law Center, joined the Georgetown faculty in 1995. After visiting the Law School in the fall of 1997 and Columbia Law School in the spring of 1998, Bernstein joined the Law School faculty. She has also been a visiting professor of law at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, The College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan, and the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. Bernstein was recently appointed as an international research fellow at theOxford University Center for Corporate Reputation.
Bernstein's research interests are in the area of contracts and commercial law with a special emphasis on industry-specific dispute resolution and modern supply chain relationships. She is also interested in the design of commercial courts in emerging and transitioning economies and the relationship between social structures and economic development.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Joshua Kleinfeld teaches and writes about political, legal, and moral philosophy, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He also practices law in Northwestern's Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinic. He is a full professor with tenure at the Northwestern Pritzker School of the Law and (by courtesy) in Northwestern’s philosophy department. In 2017-18, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. He is the recipient of the Bator Award, given annually to one American law professor under the age of 40 who has demonstrated "excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact."
In philosophy, Kleinfeld's research focuses on the idea of "embodied ethical life," as developed in the socio-theoretic tradition of Hegel, Weber, and Durkheim. This tradition aims to understand and critique social life by bringing to light the normative ideas implicit in social practices and institutions. In law, this means that the most interesting philosophical concepts are often those reflected or actualized in legal practice – in the law as judges and lawyers think of it and wield it.
In criminal law and procedure, Kleinfeld has developed a theory known as "reconstructivism," which holds that the chief office of criminal law is not to dole out retributive justice, nor to optimize crime and cost control, but to reconstruct a violated normative order in the wake of a crime. This work, which draws on the thought of Hegel, Durkheim, Jean Hampton, and Antony Duff, develops an alternative to retributive and utilitarian theories of criminal law by focusing on the distinctive social function and sense of justice at work in the criminal system.
Kleinfeld is also involved in practical criminal justice reform. In this vein, he defends children accused of homicide in the Northwestern Juvenile Criminal Defense clinic and assists in litigation efforts meant to reform American criminal law through the courts. He has also developed a view of criminal justice reform known as "democratization," which holds that the root of the American criminal justice crisis is a set of bureaucratic attitudes, structures, and incentives divorced from the American public’s concerns and sense of justice, and that the primary solution is to make criminal justice more community-focused and responsive to lay influences. Working with others, he has developed a number of policy proposals meant to reform American criminal justice in a democratic direction.
Kleinfeld holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt (supervised by Axel Honneth, Klaus Günther, and Rainer Forst), and a BA in philosophy from Yale College. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and President (chief justice) Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He worked as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, in the area of corporate criminal law. Before law school, he worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the White House’s Council on Bioethics.
Lecturer in Law and Director of The Institute for Justice Clinic, University of Chicago Law School
Elizabeth Kregor received her BA magna cum laude in comparative literature from Yale University. She attended law school at the University of Michigan, where she served as managing editor of the Michigan Law Review. After graduating magna cum laude, Ms. Kregor clerked for the Hon. Bruce M. Selya on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Ms. Kregor practiced law with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood for several years, with a focus on intellectual property litigation. In the fall of 2003, she joined the IJ Clinic on Entrepreneurship. As director, she supervises students in the representation of lower- to middle-income entrepreneurs in the inner city. She is expanding the clinic's practice in the field of intellectual property law.
The University of Michigan Law School
JD, magna cum laude, May 1999
Yale University
BA, magna cum laude in comparative literature, May 1996
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
B.A., Yale; J.D., University of Chicago. Lee Liberman Otis is the Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President at the Federalist Society. She also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference (ACUS), and as the co-chair of the National Constitution Center's Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board. She previously was a special assistant and an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Department of Energy, an associate in the appellate section of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, an associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and a law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She also served as an assistant professor of law at George Mason, where she taught legislation, federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, civil procedure, and appellate advocacy. Ms. Otis has been an important member of the Federalist Society team since the organization’s beginnings. Together with David McIntosh, she led the effort to start what became the Chicago chapter of the Society. She also helped organize the Society’s first conference at Yale, its second conference at Chicago, and its first Lawyers Division chapter in Washington DC, as well as the effort to incorporate the Society, recruit its permanent staff, and obtain its early funding. She was a Founding Director of the Federalist Society.
Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law & Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Institute, University of Chicago Law School
William Baude is a Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Institute at the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches federal courts, constitutional law, and conflict of laws. His current research interests include different aspects of the Fourteenth Amendment (particularly both Section One and Section Three) and the nature of judicial discretion.
Among his other activities Baude is: the co-editor of two textbooks, The Constitution of the United States and Hart & Wechsler's Federal Courts in the Federal System; an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism; a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance; a member of the American Law Institute; an occasional blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy; and a podcaster on Divided Argument. He also recently served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor Baude received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and his JD from Yale Law School. He then clerked for then-Judge Michael McConnell on the United States Court of Appeals, and Chief Justice John Roberts on the United States Supreme Court. Before joining the Chicago faculty, he was a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, and a lawyer in Washington, DC.
Associate, Covington & Burling LLP
Kathryn Bi is an Associate at Covington & Burling LLP. She graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 2015 and from Dartmouth College in 2009 where she earned Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts degrees. Prior to law school Kathryn worked for three years as a chemical engineer at DuPont Corporation in Palo Alto and Genzyme Corporation in Boston.
Senior Associate to the President and Secretary of the University of Arizona
Jon Dudas has served as the Senior Associate to the President and Secretary of the University of Arizona since July 2014.
Mr. Dudas spent fourteen years in service to the U.S. Government, and as head of the USPTO, he led a performance-based government agency with 9,000 employees and a nearly $2 billion annual budget. During his tenure, the USPTO achieved record-level performance in meeting key annual objectives, and led key patent cooperation and development missions with China, India, Europe, Brazil and several other countries.
In addition to holding his post as Director of the USPTO from 2004 – 2009, Mr. Dudas’s public sector experience includes serving as Counsel for Legal Policy and Senior Floor Assistant for The Speaker of the House for the U.S. House of Representatives and Staff Director and Deputy General Counsel for the Committee on the Judiciary. After his appointment as Director of the USPTO, Mr. Dudas was a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP in Washington D.C. and then President of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a national nonprofit that works to educate and inspire children to pursue careers in technology, science and innovation. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors for Conversant Intellectual Property Management, Inc., of Ottowa, Ontario. Mr. Dudas holds a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Illinois.
Chief Counsel, U.S. Chamber Litigation Center
Steven P. Lehotsky has significant experience developing and executing litigation strategies to help businesses and trade associations address their most important regulatory and public-policy challenges.
Before founding Lehotsky Keller LLP, Mr. Lehotsky directed the litigation strategy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world's leading business federation, where he worked from 2013-2021. While at the U.S. Chamber’s Litigation Center, he served as chief litigation counsel. Mr. Lehotsky led the Chamber's efforts to bring successful challenges to federal, state, and local regulations of business. He also directed the U.S. Chamber's efforts to defend pro-growth regulatory reforms. Mr. Lehotsky also led and implemented the U.S. Chamber’s strategies for filing hundreds of amicus curiae briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate and district courts, and state supreme and appellate courts. He is a frequent speaker at events and conferences on litigation and regulatory trends.
Mr. Lehotsky previously was an attorney at WilmerHale LLP in both the Washington D.C. and Boston offices, where he practiced government and regulatory litigation, appellate litigation, and counseling on constitutional, statutory, and regulatory issues for clients across a wide variety of industry sectors. He also previously practiced as a commercial litigator at Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston.
In addition, Mr. Lehotsky was an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2006-2009, advising the White House and executive departments and agencies on constitutional and statutory issues relating to national security, immigration, international sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and other programs, the response to the 2008 financial crisis, pandemic influenza and infectious-disease mitigation, cybersecurity, and congressional investigations, among many other subjects.
Mr. Lehotsky was a law clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States and Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
Stephen Markman was appointed Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court on October 1, 1999. He served as the Chief Justice from 2017-2019. Before his appointment, he served as Judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals from 1995-1999. Prior to this, he practiced law with the firm of Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone in Detroit.
From 1989-1993, Justice Markman served as United States Attorney, or federal prosecutor, in Michigan, after having been nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate. From 1985-1989, he served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States, after having been nominated by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the United States Senate. In that position, he headed the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, which served as the principal policy development office within the Department, and which coordinated the federal judicial selection process. Prior to this, he served for seven years as Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, and as Deputy Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Justice Markman has authored articles for such publications as the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, the Detroit College of Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the American Criminal Justice Law Review, the Barrister’s Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the American University Law Review. He has also served as a contributing editor of National Review magazine, and has authored chapters in such books as “In the Name of Justice: The Aims of the Criminal Law,” “Still the Law of the Land,” and “Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate.”
Justice Markman has taught constitutional law at Hillsdale College since 1993. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He traveled to Ukraine on two occasions on behalf of the State Department, to provide assistance in the development of that nation’s post-Soviet constitution. He is a Fellow of the Michigan Bar Foundation, a Master of the Bench of the Inns of Court, and a member of the One Hundred Club. He has spoken before hundreds of youth, civic, charitable, and legal groups throughout Michigan and nationally, and has coached Little League baseball and basketball. He lives with his wife Mary Kathleen in Mason, and has two sons, James and Charles.
Justice Markman was re-elected to the Supreme Court in 2000, 2004, and 2012. His present term expires January 1, 2021.
Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Jennifer Nou is Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Nou’s main research interests are in administrative law, executive branch dynamics, regulatory policy, and constitutional separation-of-powers. Prior to joining the faculty, she was a Public Law Fellow at the Law School and also worked as a policy analyst and special assistant at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Nou is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and received an MPhil in Politics from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. After law school, she was a law clerk to Judge Richard Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then to Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court. She is currently a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Panel I: Innovation and the Administrative State
William Baude, Kathryn Bi, Jon Dudas, Steven Lehotsky, Steve J. Markman, Jennifer Nou
Regulation can be a significant barrier to innovation, protecting incumbents and making it harder to...
The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws
Denver, ColoradoHigh on Federalism: Marijuana's Challenge to State-Federal Relations
Irvine, CaliforniaRichard Epstein: Linguistic Relativism & Decline Of The Rule Of Law
Phoenix, ArizonaFree Market Environmentalism
Cleveland, OhioTopics
Federalist Society Presents 2015 Paul M. Bator Award
The Federalist Society presented the Paul M. Bator Award on Saturday, February 21 to Prof....
2015 Paul M. Bator Award: Prof. Joshua Kleinfeld
Joshua Kleinfeld
The Federalist Society presented the Paul M. Bator Award on Saturday, February 21 to Prof....
Panel IV: Innovation and Inequality: Conservative and Libertarian Perspectives
2015 National Student Symposium
Chicago, ILBecoming a Law Professor
2015 National Student Symposium
Chicago, ILPanel I: Innovation and the Administrative State
2015 National Student Symposium
Chicago, IL