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.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Suja A. Thomas's research interests include the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendment jury provisions, civil procedure, employment law, theories of constitutional interpretation, and consumer issues. She is currently working on two books, one entitled The Missing American Jury: Restoring Its Fundamental Constitutional Role, which Cambridge University Press will publish, and the other, co-authored with Sandra Sperino, entitled Unequal Justice: Why Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Lose, which Oxford University Press will publish. Her article "Why Summary Judgment is Unconstitutional," published by the Virginia Law Review, has been the basis of arguments in the federal courts and was featured in a piece in The New York Times where her argument was referred to as "perfectly plausible." A panel of the 6th Circuit referred to her historical analysis in that article as "interesting," and her article was the impetus for a symposium of the Iowa Law Review. Professor Thomas's other work has also been influential. Her article on remittitur was the basis of a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, and a federal judge has commented that "her caution [regarding the effective elimination of the jury trial right through remittitur] merits evaluation by the federal courts." Also, recently, theWall Street Journal ran an article based on her co-authored article "Employer Costs and Conflicts Under the Affordable Care Act," published by the Cornell Law Review Online.
Professor Thomas earned her bachelor of arts from Northwestern University in mathematics and received her law degree from New York University School of Law. At N.Y.U., she served as an articles editor on the N.Y.U. Law Review, and she received several awards including the Leonard M. Henkin Prize for her note on equal rights under the 14th Amendment, the Mendes Hershman Prize for excellence in writing in the field of property law and the William Miller Memorial Award for outstanding scholarship in the field of municipal law. After graduating from law school and a federal clerkship in Chicago, Professor Thomas practiced law in New York City with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C. and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP.
Professor Thomas began her academic career as a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 2000 and was a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in the spring of 2008. She joined the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in the fall of 2008.
Back in the day, Professor Thomas ran several marathons, including Boston, with a personal best of 3:02. She lives in Urbana with her husband Scott and dog Javi.
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.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Suja A. Thomas's research interests include the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendment jury provisions, civil procedure, employment law, theories of constitutional interpretation, and consumer issues. She is currently working on two books, one entitled The Missing American Jury: Restoring Its Fundamental Constitutional Role, which Cambridge University Press will publish, and the other, co-authored with Sandra Sperino, entitled Unequal Justice: Why Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Lose, which Oxford University Press will publish. Her article "Why Summary Judgment is Unconstitutional," published by the Virginia Law Review, has been the basis of arguments in the federal courts and was featured in a piece in The New York Times where her argument was referred to as "perfectly plausible." A panel of the 6th Circuit referred to her historical analysis in that article as "interesting," and her article was the impetus for a symposium of the Iowa Law Review. Professor Thomas's other work has also been influential. Her article on remittitur was the basis of a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, and a federal judge has commented that "her caution [regarding the effective elimination of the jury trial right through remittitur] merits evaluation by the federal courts." Also, recently, theWall Street Journal ran an article based on her co-authored article "Employer Costs and Conflicts Under the Affordable Care Act," published by the Cornell Law Review Online.
Professor Thomas earned her bachelor of arts from Northwestern University in mathematics and received her law degree from New York University School of Law. At N.Y.U., she served as an articles editor on the N.Y.U. Law Review, and she received several awards including the Leonard M. Henkin Prize for her note on equal rights under the 14th Amendment, the Mendes Hershman Prize for excellence in writing in the field of property law and the William Miller Memorial Award for outstanding scholarship in the field of municipal law. After graduating from law school and a federal clerkship in Chicago, Professor Thomas practiced law in New York City with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C. and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP.
Professor Thomas began her academic career as a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 2000 and was a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in the spring of 2008. She joined the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in the fall of 2008.
Back in the day, Professor Thomas ran several marathons, including Boston, with a personal best of 3:02. She lives in Urbana with her husband Scott and dog Javi.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in Law, University of Richmond School of Law
Professor Kurt Lash teaches and writes about constitutional law. Founder and director of the Richmond Program on the American Constitution, Professor Lash has published widely on the subjects of constitutional law and constitutional history, including The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges or Immunities of American Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Lost History of the Ninth Amendment (Oxford University Press, 2009), and The American First Amendment in the Twenty-first Century: Cases and Materials(with William W. Van Alstyne) (5th ed., Foundation Press, 2014). An elected member of the American Law Institute, Professor Lash’s work has appeared in numerous legal journals including the Stanford Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, andNotre Dame Law Review. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University School of Law and is the former director of the University of Illinois College of Law Program in Constitutional Theory, History, and Law.
Associate Chief Justice, Utah Supreme Court
Thomas R. Lee was appointed to the Utah Supreme Court by Governor Gary Herbert in July 2010. He currently serves as Associate Chief Justice and as a member of the Utah Judicial Council. He also chaired the Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professionalism and Civility during a time in which the court promulgated Standards of Professionalism and Civility for judges in Utah. Justice Lee is a graduate, with high honors, of the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, he served as a law clerk for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court. Justice Lee then joined the law firm now known as Parr, Brown, Gee & Loveless, where he became a shareholder. Prior to his appointment to the bench, Justice Lee was a full-time professor at the law school at Brigham Young University, where he continues to serve as Distinguished Lecturer. During his years as a full-time law professor, he maintained a part-time intellectual property litigation practice with Howard, Phillips, & Andersen. He also developed a part-time appellate practice, arguing numerous cases in federal courts throughout the country and in the United States Supreme Court. In 2004 - 05, Justice Lee served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Shareholder, Parr Brown Gee & Loveless
Stephen Mouritsen is a member of Parr Brown’s commercial litigation group. Prior to joining Parr Brown, Mr. Mouritsen was an associate with the law firms of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York. Mr. Mouritsen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Associate Chief Justice Thomas R. Lee of the Utah Supreme Court. Prior to law school, Mr. Mouritsen worked as a registered financial representative for Fidelity Investments.
Mr. Mouritsen has experience with a wide variety of securities-related matters, including securities fraud, mortgage fraud, trading violations, market manipulation schemes, as well as SEC and PCAOB investigations. Mr. Mouritsen also has significant experience with internal investigations, environmental litigation, and corporate restructuring litigation.
With a background in linguistics, Mr. Mouritsen has written and lectured extensively on the intersection between law and language. His writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Washington Law Review, the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, and at the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog. His work has been cited by judges in the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits, as well as the Idaho, Michigan, Montana, and Utah Supreme Court. His work has also been cited in leading casebooks on legislation and contracts, and in the Congressional Research Service’s report on Statutory Interpretation.
Mr. Mouritsen currently serves as an adjunct professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he teaches courses on the theory and practice of legal interpretation and law and corpus linguistics. From 2016 through 2018, Mr. Mouritsen served as an associate (non-resident research fellow) at the University of Chicago Law School.
Mr. Mouritsen received his B.A. in English, from the Brigham Young University, in 2002. In 2007 he received his M.A. in linguistics from Brigham Young University. He attended Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he was the Lead Articles Editor of the BYU Law Review, a First Prize, John S. Welch Award for Outstanding Legal Writing, and graduated magna cum laude in 2010.
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.
Don Forchelli Professor of Law and Director of Graduate Education, Brooklyn Law School
Lawrence Solan holds both a law degree and a Ph.D. in linguistics. His scholarly works are largely devoted to exploring interdisciplinary issues related to law, language and psychology, especially in the areas of statutory and contractual interpretation, the attribution of liability and blame, and linguistic evidence. He is director of the Law School's Center for the Study of Law, Language and Cognition, and his acclaimed book, The Language of Judges, is widely recognized as a seminal work on linguistic theory and legal argumentation. His most recent books are The Language of Statutes: Laws and their Interpretation, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010, and The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, co-edited with Peter Tiersma and published in 2012. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters, and regularly lectures in the United States and abroad.
Professor Solan has been a visiting professor in the Council of Humanities and the Psychology Department at Princeton University. He has also been and a visiting professor at Yale Law School. He has served as president of the International Association of Forensic Linguistics, is on the board of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, and the editorial board of the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.
Prior to joining the faculty in 1996, Professor Solan was a partner in the firm of Orans, Elsen and Lupert, where he specialized in complex civil litigation, before which he was a law clerk to Justice Stewart Pollock of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
Chief Executive Officer, Association of American Law Schools
Kellye Y. Testy is the executive director and chief executive officer of the Association of American Law Schools which serves as the institutional membership organization for its 175 member law schools and as the learned society for the legal academy.
Prior to joining AALS, Testy served as the president and chief executive officer of the Law School Admission Council, where she led the organization in its committed efforts to advance law and justice by encouraging diverse, talented individuals to study law and by supporting their enrollment and learning journeys from prelaw through practice.
Testy served as dean and professor of law at University of Washington School of Law from 2009 to 2017 and at Seattle University School of Law from 2005 to 2009. She began her career as a law professor at the University of Puget Sound in 1992, which then became Seattle University. As a professor, Testy was an award-winning teacher and an insightful scholar who brought an equity lens to her focus on business and corporate law. Her areas of expertise include leadership, business and corporate law, gender and the law, and legal education. Testy earned her undergraduate degree in journalism from Indiana University in Bloomington, and her law degree from Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington.
In addition to her role at AALS, she serves on the boards of the Washington Law Institute and LSSSE and teaches law and leadership at a number of law schools across the country.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in Law, University of Richmond School of Law
Professor Kurt Lash teaches and writes about constitutional law. Founder and director of the Richmond Program on the American Constitution, Professor Lash has published widely on the subjects of constitutional law and constitutional history, including The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges or Immunities of American Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Lost History of the Ninth Amendment (Oxford University Press, 2009), and The American First Amendment in the Twenty-first Century: Cases and Materials(with William W. Van Alstyne) (5th ed., Foundation Press, 2014). An elected member of the American Law Institute, Professor Lash’s work has appeared in numerous legal journals including the Stanford Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, andNotre Dame Law Review. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University School of Law and is the former director of the University of Illinois College of Law Program in Constitutional Theory, History, and Law.
Associate Chief Justice, Utah Supreme Court
Thomas R. Lee was appointed to the Utah Supreme Court by Governor Gary Herbert in July 2010. He currently serves as Associate Chief Justice and as a member of the Utah Judicial Council. He also chaired the Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professionalism and Civility during a time in which the court promulgated Standards of Professionalism and Civility for judges in Utah. Justice Lee is a graduate, with high honors, of the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, he served as a law clerk for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court. Justice Lee then joined the law firm now known as Parr, Brown, Gee & Loveless, where he became a shareholder. Prior to his appointment to the bench, Justice Lee was a full-time professor at the law school at Brigham Young University, where he continues to serve as Distinguished Lecturer. During his years as a full-time law professor, he maintained a part-time intellectual property litigation practice with Howard, Phillips, & Andersen. He also developed a part-time appellate practice, arguing numerous cases in federal courts throughout the country and in the United States Supreme Court. In 2004 - 05, Justice Lee served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Shareholder, Parr Brown Gee & Loveless
Stephen Mouritsen is a member of Parr Brown’s commercial litigation group. Prior to joining Parr Brown, Mr. Mouritsen was an associate with the law firms of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York. Mr. Mouritsen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Associate Chief Justice Thomas R. Lee of the Utah Supreme Court. Prior to law school, Mr. Mouritsen worked as a registered financial representative for Fidelity Investments.
Mr. Mouritsen has experience with a wide variety of securities-related matters, including securities fraud, mortgage fraud, trading violations, market manipulation schemes, as well as SEC and PCAOB investigations. Mr. Mouritsen also has significant experience with internal investigations, environmental litigation, and corporate restructuring litigation.
With a background in linguistics, Mr. Mouritsen has written and lectured extensively on the intersection between law and language. His writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Washington Law Review, the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, and at the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog. His work has been cited by judges in the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits, as well as the Idaho, Michigan, Montana, and Utah Supreme Court. His work has also been cited in leading casebooks on legislation and contracts, and in the Congressional Research Service’s report on Statutory Interpretation.
Mr. Mouritsen currently serves as an adjunct professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he teaches courses on the theory and practice of legal interpretation and law and corpus linguistics. From 2016 through 2018, Mr. Mouritsen served as an associate (non-resident research fellow) at the University of Chicago Law School.
Mr. Mouritsen received his B.A. in English, from the Brigham Young University, in 2002. In 2007 he received his M.A. in linguistics from Brigham Young University. He attended Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he was the Lead Articles Editor of the BYU Law Review, a First Prize, John S. Welch Award for Outstanding Legal Writing, and graduated magna cum laude in 2010.
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.
Don Forchelli Professor of Law and Director of Graduate Education, Brooklyn Law School
Lawrence Solan holds both a law degree and a Ph.D. in linguistics. His scholarly works are largely devoted to exploring interdisciplinary issues related to law, language and psychology, especially in the areas of statutory and contractual interpretation, the attribution of liability and blame, and linguistic evidence. He is director of the Law School's Center for the Study of Law, Language and Cognition, and his acclaimed book, The Language of Judges, is widely recognized as a seminal work on linguistic theory and legal argumentation. His most recent books are The Language of Statutes: Laws and their Interpretation, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010, and The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, co-edited with Peter Tiersma and published in 2012. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters, and regularly lectures in the United States and abroad.
Professor Solan has been a visiting professor in the Council of Humanities and the Psychology Department at Princeton University. He has also been and a visiting professor at Yale Law School. He has served as president of the International Association of Forensic Linguistics, is on the board of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, and the editorial board of the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.
Prior to joining the faculty in 1996, Professor Solan was a partner in the firm of Orans, Elsen and Lupert, where he specialized in complex civil litigation, before which he was a law clerk to Justice Stewart Pollock of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
Chief Executive Officer, Association of American Law Schools
Kellye Y. Testy is the executive director and chief executive officer of the Association of American Law Schools which serves as the institutional membership organization for its 175 member law schools and as the learned society for the legal academy.
Prior to joining AALS, Testy served as the president and chief executive officer of the Law School Admission Council, where she led the organization in its committed efforts to advance law and justice by encouraging diverse, talented individuals to study law and by supporting their enrollment and learning journeys from prelaw through practice.
Testy served as dean and professor of law at University of Washington School of Law from 2009 to 2017 and at Seattle University School of Law from 2005 to 2009. She began her career as a law professor at the University of Puget Sound in 1992, which then became Seattle University. As a professor, Testy was an award-winning teacher and an insightful scholar who brought an equity lens to her focus on business and corporate law. Her areas of expertise include leadership, business and corporate law, gender and the law, and legal education. Testy earned her undergraduate degree in journalism from Indiana University in Bloomington, and her law degree from Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington.
In addition to her role at AALS, she serves on the boards of the Washington Law Institute and LSSSE and teaches law and leadership at a number of law schools across the country.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Robin Fretwell Wilson is the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
A scholar in family law, bioethics and law and religion, Professor Wilson has worked extensively on behalf of state and federal law reform efforts in each realm.
Across two decades, she has worked to secure laws protecting the autonomy of patients to decide when they will be used to teach intimate exams to medical students, laws now in place in 22 states—sixteen of which have been enacted since 2019.
Professor Wilson is known for bridging differences in the culture war. In 2015, she spent a month in residence with the Utah legislature, helping Utah state lawmakers to pass anti-discrimination legislation that balances religious liberty and LGBT rights. In 2019, Professor Wilson assisted the governor of Utah to craft regulations banning gay conversion therapy. In 2019, she also aided U.S. Representative Chris Stewart with portions of the “Fairness for All” he introduced in Congress. A member of the American Law Institute and a Fulbright Specialist, Professor Wilson has served as a consultant to the United Arab Emirates’ Judicial Department as they sought to create a parallel court system for the adjudication by expatriates of family law matters using the laws of their home country or of their faith traditions.
Professor Wilson is the author of 20 books, including her 2018 book, Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground, with Yale University Professor William Eskridge, Jr., which is now in paperback at Cambridge University Press. Her other books include: The Contested Place of Religion in Family Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018, ed.), Reconceiving the Family: Critical Reflections on the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (Cambridge University Press, 2006, ed.); The Handbook of Children, Culture & Violence (Sage Publications, 2006, with Nancy Dowd and Dorothy Singer, eds.); Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, with Douglas Laycock and Anthony Picarello, eds.); Health Law and Bioethics: Cases in Context (Aspen, 2008, with Joan Krause, Sandra Johnson, and Richard Saver, eds.); Domestic Relations: Cases and Materials, 8th edition (Foundation Press, 2017, with Walter Wadlington and Raymond C. O’Brien); and Understanding Family Law, 4th edition (LexisNexis, 2013, with John DeWitt Gregory and Peter N. Swisher). Her articles have appeared in the Boston College Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Illinois Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, San Diego Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, and Washington and Lee Law Review, as well as in numerous peer-reviewed journals.
In 2010 and again in 2016, Professor Wilson was ranked among the Top Ten Family Law Scholars in the United States for scholarly impact. She ranks among the Top 10% of Authors in all time downloads on the Social Science Research Network. Professor Wilson’s scholarship has been cited by the Fifth, Seventh and Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Minnesota Court of Appeals, lower federal courts, and the Supreme Courts of Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, and Washington.
Professor Wilson’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News and World Report, ABA Journal, Chronicle of Higher Education, Chicago Tribune, CNN Headline News, Good Morning America, ABC News, CBS News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Essence Magazine, The American Prospect, People Magazine, The American Conservative, The Australian, and Al Jazeera, among others. She has presented her research across the world, including the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, China, Israel, Qatar, the Netherlands, Italy, England, Wales, Poland, Spain, Serbia, Japan, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, and France.
Professor Wilson has seven times been honored for her work on innovative laws that respect all persons. In 2007, she received the Citizen’s Legislative Award for her work on changing Virginia’s informed consent law. In 2018, Professor Wilson received the Thomas L. Kane Religious Freedom Award from the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, which is presented annually to an individual who exemplifies the spirit of religious liberty for all and who has contributed in significant ways to the defense of religious freedom in the public square.
In 2018, Professor Wilson was honored as one of the 150 for 150: Celebrating the Accomplishments of Women at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for its sesquicentennial celebration. In 2020, Professor Wilson received the 2020 Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for Advocacy for LGBTQ Affairs, a university-wide honor given by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Robin Fretwell Wilson is the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
A scholar in family law, bioethics and law and religion, Professor Wilson has worked extensively on behalf of state and federal law reform efforts in each realm.
Across two decades, she has worked to secure laws protecting the autonomy of patients to decide when they will be used to teach intimate exams to medical students, laws now in place in 22 states—sixteen of which have been enacted since 2019.
Professor Wilson is known for bridging differences in the culture war. In 2015, she spent a month in residence with the Utah legislature, helping Utah state lawmakers to pass anti-discrimination legislation that balances religious liberty and LGBT rights. In 2019, Professor Wilson assisted the governor of Utah to craft regulations banning gay conversion therapy. In 2019, she also aided U.S. Representative Chris Stewart with portions of the “Fairness for All” he introduced in Congress. A member of the American Law Institute and a Fulbright Specialist, Professor Wilson has served as a consultant to the United Arab Emirates’ Judicial Department as they sought to create a parallel court system for the adjudication by expatriates of family law matters using the laws of their home country or of their faith traditions.
Professor Wilson is the author of 20 books, including her 2018 book, Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground, with Yale University Professor William Eskridge, Jr., which is now in paperback at Cambridge University Press. Her other books include: The Contested Place of Religion in Family Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018, ed.), Reconceiving the Family: Critical Reflections on the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (Cambridge University Press, 2006, ed.); The Handbook of Children, Culture & Violence (Sage Publications, 2006, with Nancy Dowd and Dorothy Singer, eds.); Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, with Douglas Laycock and Anthony Picarello, eds.); Health Law and Bioethics: Cases in Context (Aspen, 2008, with Joan Krause, Sandra Johnson, and Richard Saver, eds.); Domestic Relations: Cases and Materials, 8th edition (Foundation Press, 2017, with Walter Wadlington and Raymond C. O’Brien); and Understanding Family Law, 4th edition (LexisNexis, 2013, with John DeWitt Gregory and Peter N. Swisher). Her articles have appeared in the Boston College Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Illinois Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, San Diego Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, and Washington and Lee Law Review, as well as in numerous peer-reviewed journals.
In 2010 and again in 2016, Professor Wilson was ranked among the Top Ten Family Law Scholars in the United States for scholarly impact. She ranks among the Top 10% of Authors in all time downloads on the Social Science Research Network. Professor Wilson’s scholarship has been cited by the Fifth, Seventh and Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Minnesota Court of Appeals, lower federal courts, and the Supreme Courts of Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, and Washington.
Professor Wilson’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News and World Report, ABA Journal, Chronicle of Higher Education, Chicago Tribune, CNN Headline News, Good Morning America, ABC News, CBS News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Essence Magazine, The American Prospect, People Magazine, The American Conservative, The Australian, and Al Jazeera, among others. She has presented her research across the world, including the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, China, Israel, Qatar, the Netherlands, Italy, England, Wales, Poland, Spain, Serbia, Japan, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, and France.
Professor Wilson has seven times been honored for her work on innovative laws that respect all persons. In 2007, she received the Citizen’s Legislative Award for her work on changing Virginia’s informed consent law. In 2018, Professor Wilson received the Thomas L. Kane Religious Freedom Award from the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, which is presented annually to an individual who exemplifies the spirit of religious liberty for all and who has contributed in significant ways to the defense of religious freedom in the public square.
In 2018, Professor Wilson was honored as one of the 150 for 150: Celebrating the Accomplishments of Women at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for its sesquicentennial celebration. In 2020, Professor Wilson received the 2020 Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for Advocacy for LGBTQ Affairs, a university-wide honor given by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Professor and Director, Prolife Center, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Teresa Collett, J.D., is professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, where she serves as director of the school's Prolife Center. Collett received her doctorate at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. As a well-known advocate for the protection of human life and the family, Collett specializes in the subjects of marriage, religion and bioethics in her research.
Collett has published numerous legal articles and is the co-author of a law casebook on professional responsibility and co-editor of a collection of essays exploring “catholic” and “Catholic” perspectives on American law. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and has testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as before legislative committees in several states.
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collett to a five-year term on the Pontifical Council for the Family. Her appointment was renewed by His Holiness Pope Francis until 2016 when the responsibilities of the Council were assumed by the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. In 2013, she served as a delegate to the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) for the Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.
She represented Congressman Ron Paul and various medical groups in the defense of the U.S. federal ban of partial-birth abortion, and the governors of Minnesota and North Dakota defending the N.H. requirement of state parental involvement prior to performance of an abortion on a minor before the U.S. Supreme Court. Collett is often asked to represent the interests of government officials before federal appellate courts. She has served as special attorney general for the states of Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as assisting other state attorneys general in defending laws protecting human life and marriage. Prior to joining St. Thomas in 2003, Collett taught at the South Texas College of Law, where she established the nation's first annual symposium on legal ethics.
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.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Suja A. Thomas's research interests include the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendment jury provisions, civil procedure, employment law, theories of constitutional interpretation, and consumer issues. She is currently working on two books, one entitled The Missing American Jury: Restoring Its Fundamental Constitutional Role, which Cambridge University Press will publish, and the other, co-authored with Sandra Sperino, entitled Unequal Justice: Why Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Lose, which Oxford University Press will publish. Her article "Why Summary Judgment is Unconstitutional," published by the Virginia Law Review, has been the basis of arguments in the federal courts and was featured in a piece in The New York Times where her argument was referred to as "perfectly plausible." A panel of the 6th Circuit referred to her historical analysis in that article as "interesting," and her article was the impetus for a symposium of the Iowa Law Review. Professor Thomas's other work has also been influential. Her article on remittitur was the basis of a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, and a federal judge has commented that "her caution [regarding the effective elimination of the jury trial right through remittitur] merits evaluation by the federal courts." Also, recently, theWall Street Journal ran an article based on her co-authored article "Employer Costs and Conflicts Under the Affordable Care Act," published by the Cornell Law Review Online.
Professor Thomas earned her bachelor of arts from Northwestern University in mathematics and received her law degree from New York University School of Law. At N.Y.U., she served as an articles editor on the N.Y.U. Law Review, and she received several awards including the Leonard M. Henkin Prize for her note on equal rights under the 14th Amendment, the Mendes Hershman Prize for excellence in writing in the field of property law and the William Miller Memorial Award for outstanding scholarship in the field of municipal law. After graduating from law school and a federal clerkship in Chicago, Professor Thomas practiced law in New York City with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C. and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP.
Professor Thomas began her academic career as a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 2000 and was a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in the spring of 2008. She joined the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in the fall of 2008.
Back in the day, Professor Thomas ran several marathons, including Boston, with a personal best of 3:02. She lives in Urbana with her husband Scott and dog Javi.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in Law, University of Richmond School of Law
Professor Kurt Lash teaches and writes about constitutional law. Founder and director of the Richmond Program on the American Constitution, Professor Lash has published widely on the subjects of constitutional law and constitutional history, including The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges or Immunities of American Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Lost History of the Ninth Amendment (Oxford University Press, 2009), and The American First Amendment in the Twenty-first Century: Cases and Materials(with William W. Van Alstyne) (5th ed., Foundation Press, 2014). An elected member of the American Law Institute, Professor Lash’s work has appeared in numerous legal journals including the Stanford Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, andNotre Dame Law Review. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University School of Law and is the former director of the University of Illinois College of Law Program in Constitutional Theory, History, and Law.
Associate Chief Justice, Utah Supreme Court
Thomas R. Lee was appointed to the Utah Supreme Court by Governor Gary Herbert in July 2010. He currently serves as Associate Chief Justice and as a member of the Utah Judicial Council. He also chaired the Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professionalism and Civility during a time in which the court promulgated Standards of Professionalism and Civility for judges in Utah. Justice Lee is a graduate, with high honors, of the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, he served as a law clerk for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court. Justice Lee then joined the law firm now known as Parr, Brown, Gee & Loveless, where he became a shareholder. Prior to his appointment to the bench, Justice Lee was a full-time professor at the law school at Brigham Young University, where he continues to serve as Distinguished Lecturer. During his years as a full-time law professor, he maintained a part-time intellectual property litigation practice with Howard, Phillips, & Andersen. He also developed a part-time appellate practice, arguing numerous cases in federal courts throughout the country and in the United States Supreme Court. In 2004 - 05, Justice Lee served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Shareholder, Parr Brown Gee & Loveless
Stephen Mouritsen is a member of Parr Brown’s commercial litigation group. Prior to joining Parr Brown, Mr. Mouritsen was an associate with the law firms of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York. Mr. Mouritsen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Associate Chief Justice Thomas R. Lee of the Utah Supreme Court. Prior to law school, Mr. Mouritsen worked as a registered financial representative for Fidelity Investments.
Mr. Mouritsen has experience with a wide variety of securities-related matters, including securities fraud, mortgage fraud, trading violations, market manipulation schemes, as well as SEC and PCAOB investigations. Mr. Mouritsen also has significant experience with internal investigations, environmental litigation, and corporate restructuring litigation.
With a background in linguistics, Mr. Mouritsen has written and lectured extensively on the intersection between law and language. His writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Washington Law Review, the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, and at the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog. His work has been cited by judges in the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits, as well as the Idaho, Michigan, Montana, and Utah Supreme Court. His work has also been cited in leading casebooks on legislation and contracts, and in the Congressional Research Service’s report on Statutory Interpretation.
Mr. Mouritsen currently serves as an adjunct professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he teaches courses on the theory and practice of legal interpretation and law and corpus linguistics. From 2016 through 2018, Mr. Mouritsen served as an associate (non-resident research fellow) at the University of Chicago Law School.
Mr. Mouritsen received his B.A. in English, from the Brigham Young University, in 2002. In 2007 he received his M.A. in linguistics from Brigham Young University. He attended Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he was the Lead Articles Editor of the BYU Law Review, a First Prize, John S. Welch Award for Outstanding Legal Writing, and graduated magna cum laude in 2010.
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.
Don Forchelli Professor of Law and Director of Graduate Education, Brooklyn Law School
Lawrence Solan holds both a law degree and a Ph.D. in linguistics. His scholarly works are largely devoted to exploring interdisciplinary issues related to law, language and psychology, especially in the areas of statutory and contractual interpretation, the attribution of liability and blame, and linguistic evidence. He is director of the Law School's Center for the Study of Law, Language and Cognition, and his acclaimed book, The Language of Judges, is widely recognized as a seminal work on linguistic theory and legal argumentation. His most recent books are The Language of Statutes: Laws and their Interpretation, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010, and The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, co-edited with Peter Tiersma and published in 2012. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters, and regularly lectures in the United States and abroad.
Professor Solan has been a visiting professor in the Council of Humanities and the Psychology Department at Princeton University. He has also been and a visiting professor at Yale Law School. He has served as president of the International Association of Forensic Linguistics, is on the board of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, and the editorial board of the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.
Prior to joining the faculty in 1996, Professor Solan was a partner in the firm of Orans, Elsen and Lupert, where he specialized in complex civil litigation, before which he was a law clerk to Justice Stewart Pollock of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
Chief Executive Officer, Association of American Law Schools
Kellye Y. Testy is the executive director and chief executive officer of the Association of American Law Schools which serves as the institutional membership organization for its 175 member law schools and as the learned society for the legal academy.
Prior to joining AALS, Testy served as the president and chief executive officer of the Law School Admission Council, where she led the organization in its committed efforts to advance law and justice by encouraging diverse, talented individuals to study law and by supporting their enrollment and learning journeys from prelaw through practice.
Testy served as dean and professor of law at University of Washington School of Law from 2009 to 2017 and at Seattle University School of Law from 2005 to 2009. She began her career as a law professor at the University of Puget Sound in 1992, which then became Seattle University. As a professor, Testy was an award-winning teacher and an insightful scholar who brought an equity lens to her focus on business and corporate law. Her areas of expertise include leadership, business and corporate law, gender and the law, and legal education. Testy earned her undergraduate degree in journalism from Indiana University in Bloomington, and her law degree from Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington.
In addition to her role at AALS, she serves on the boards of the Washington Law Institute and LSSSE and teaches law and leadership at a number of law schools across the country.
Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor, George Washington University Law School
Renée Lettow Lerner is Donald Phillip Rothschild Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.
Professor Lerner works in the fields of U.S. and English legal history, civil and criminal procedure, and comparative law. She advises judges, lawyers, and government officials from the United States and countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia about the differences between adversarial and nonadversarial legal systems.
She writes extensively about the history of American juries. Her work includes not only scholarly articles, but also online publications intended for a broader audience of legal professionals and the public. In many different settings, she has debated the role of juries with other academics and with lawyers. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the Very Short Introduction Series entitled “The Jury.” She is also working on a book about the American civil jury, from the colonial period to the present.
She is the author, with John Langbein and Bruce Smith, of the book History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009).
Her recent writings include a book review of Amalia D. Kessler’s Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877, 67 J. Legal Ed. 888 (2018); “How the Creation of Appellate Courts in England and the United States Limited Judicial Comment on Evidence to the Jury,” 40 Journal of the Legal Profession 215 (2016); “The Troublesome Inheritance of Americans in Magna Carta and Trial by Jury,” in Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy 77-98 (Robert Hazell and James Melton eds., Cambridge University Press 2015); and “The Failure of Originalism in Preserving Constitutional Rights to Civil Jury Trial,” 22 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 811 (2014).
Professor Lerner received an A.B. summa cum laude in history from Princeton University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she studied English legal history. At Yale Law School, she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 2003 to 2005, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Suja A. Thomas's research interests include the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendment jury provisions, civil procedure, employment law, theories of constitutional interpretation, and consumer issues. She is currently working on two books, one entitled The Missing American Jury: Restoring Its Fundamental Constitutional Role, which Cambridge University Press will publish, and the other, co-authored with Sandra Sperino, entitled Unequal Justice: Why Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Lose, which Oxford University Press will publish. Her article "Why Summary Judgment is Unconstitutional," published by the Virginia Law Review, has been the basis of arguments in the federal courts and was featured in a piece in The New York Times where her argument was referred to as "perfectly plausible." A panel of the 6th Circuit referred to her historical analysis in that article as "interesting," and her article was the impetus for a symposium of the Iowa Law Review. Professor Thomas's other work has also been influential. Her article on remittitur was the basis of a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, and a federal judge has commented that "her caution [regarding the effective elimination of the jury trial right through remittitur] merits evaluation by the federal courts." Also, recently, theWall Street Journal ran an article based on her co-authored article "Employer Costs and Conflicts Under the Affordable Care Act," published by the Cornell Law Review Online.
Professor Thomas earned her bachelor of arts from Northwestern University in mathematics and received her law degree from New York University School of Law. At N.Y.U., she served as an articles editor on the N.Y.U. Law Review, and she received several awards including the Leonard M. Henkin Prize for her note on equal rights under the 14th Amendment, the Mendes Hershman Prize for excellence in writing in the field of property law and the William Miller Memorial Award for outstanding scholarship in the field of municipal law. After graduating from law school and a federal clerkship in Chicago, Professor Thomas practiced law in New York City with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C. and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP.
Professor Thomas began her academic career as a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 2000 and was a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in the spring of 2008. She joined the University of Illinois College of Law faculty in the fall of 2008.
Back in the day, Professor Thomas ran several marathons, including Boston, with a personal best of 3:02. She lives in Urbana with her husband Scott and dog Javi.
2017 James Kent Summer Academy
The Federalist Society’s James Kent Summer Academy is a program for students and recent graduates...
The Past and Future of the Criminal and Civil Jury
Joshua Kleinfeld, Renée Lettow Lerner, Suja Thomas
This debate will discuss the proper role of the criminal and civil jury in modern...
The Past and Future of the Criminal and Civil Jury
Joshua Kleinfeld, Renée Lettow Lerner, Suja Thomas
This debate will discuss the proper role of the criminal and civil jury in modern...
Corpus Linguistics and Legal Interpretation
Steven G. Calabresi, Kurt T. Lash, Thomas Rex Lee, Stephen Mouritsen, Lee Liberman Otis, Lawrence Solan, Kellye Y. Testy
This panel is about “corpus linguistics,” a technique that involves the use of computer searches...
Corpus Linguistics and Legal Interpretation
Steven G. Calabresi, Kurt T. Lash, Thomas Rex Lee, Stephen Mouritsen, Lee Liberman Otis, Lawrence Solan, Kellye Y. Testy
This panel is about “corpus linguistics,” a technique that involves the use of computer searches...
The Past and Future of the Criminal and Civil Jury
19th Annual Faculty Conference
San Francisco, CACorpus Linguistics and Legal Interpretation
19th Annual Faculty Conference
San Francisco, CAV.L. v. E.L. - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Robin Fretwell Wilson
On March 7, 2016, the Supreme Court decided V.L. v. E.L., a case involving an...
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
Robin Fretwell Wilson, Teresa Stanton Collett
Teresa Collett, Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and...
Downsides of Civil Juries
Teleforum