Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Professor Nicholas Bagley teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law, regulatory theory, and health law. Prior to joining the Law School faculty, he was an attorney with the appellate staff in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he argued a dozen cases before the U.S. Courts of Appeals and acted as lead counsel in many more. Professor Bagley also served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and to the Hon. David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. Professor Bagley holds a BA in English from Yale University and received his JD, summa cum laude, from New York University School of Law. Before entering law school, he joined Teach For America and taught eighth-grade English at a public school in South Bronx. Professor Bagley's work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Law School's L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is a frequent contributor to The Incidental Economist, a prominent health policy blog.
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Legal Fellow, Center for the Separation of Powers, Pacific Legal Foundation
Alison Somin joined Pacific Legal Foundation in May 2020 as a legal fellow in the Center for the Separation of Powers and part of the equality before the law practice group.
Before joining the Pacific Legal Foundation team, Alison was a special assistant and counsel for over a decade to Gail Heriot, a member of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights. She also has deep roots in the liberty movement. Alison was a Koch Associate at the National Federation for Independent Business Legal Foundation and, during law school, completed summer clerkships at the Institute for Justice and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. She holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in history from Dartmouth College.
Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Journal, Texas Journal of Law and Politics, and The Federalist Society’s Engage magazine and blog.
She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Ilya; two children; and golden retriever Willow. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking and cooking, children’s art projects, and training and exercising Willow.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Leon Meltzer Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Mitchell Berman is the Richard Dale Endowed Chair in Law, and Professor of Philosophy, at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches and writes in a variety of fields of legal theory, specializing in American constitutional theory, the philosophy of criminal law, and the jurisprudence of sport. A Co-Director of the Law School's Law and Philosophy Program, he is also a past recipient of the Texas Exes Teaching Excellence Award.
Professor Berman grew up in New York City, and earned his A.B. from Harvard and a J.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of Michigan. Before joining the Texas faculty in 1998, he clerked for the Hon. J. Dickson Phillips, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. He has been Visiting Professor at the law schools of the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
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.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Prof. Richard Primus teaches the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution. In 2008, he won the first-ever Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for his work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation. His scholarship has been cited in opinions of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Prof. Primus works with constitutional law on the state level as well as the federal. He has helped state governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses solve practical problems involving state-level constitutional law, both in Michigan and in other states.
The students of Michigan Law School have given Prof. Primus the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching on four separate occasions: in 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2011.
Prof. Primus graduated from Harvard College in 1992 with an AB, summa cum laude, in social studies. He then earned a DPhil in politics at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and the Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. After studying law at Yale, Prof. Primus clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the Second Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He then practiced law at the Washington, D.C., office of Jenner & Block before joining the Michigan faculty in 2001.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Leon Meltzer Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Mitchell Berman is the Richard Dale Endowed Chair in Law, and Professor of Philosophy, at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches and writes in a variety of fields of legal theory, specializing in American constitutional theory, the philosophy of criminal law, and the jurisprudence of sport. A Co-Director of the Law School's Law and Philosophy Program, he is also a past recipient of the Texas Exes Teaching Excellence Award.
Professor Berman grew up in New York City, and earned his A.B. from Harvard and a J.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of Michigan. Before joining the Texas faculty in 1998, he clerked for the Hon. J. Dickson Phillips, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. He has been Visiting Professor at the law schools of the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
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.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Prof. Richard Primus teaches the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution. In 2008, he won the first-ever Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for his work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation. His scholarship has been cited in opinions of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Prof. Primus works with constitutional law on the state level as well as the federal. He has helped state governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses solve practical problems involving state-level constitutional law, both in Michigan and in other states.
The students of Michigan Law School have given Prof. Primus the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching on four separate occasions: in 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2011.
Prof. Primus graduated from Harvard College in 1992 with an AB, summa cum laude, in social studies. He then earned a DPhil in politics at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and the Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. After studying law at Yale, Prof. Primus clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the Second Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He then practiced law at the Washington, D.C., office of Jenner & Block before joining the Michigan faculty in 2001.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Chief Counsel for Communications and Technology, Cmte. on Energy, U.S. House of Reps.
When Fried was in college, studying journalism at Northwestern University, he was working as a reporter at The Albuquerque Tribune. Mr. Fried went to law school at Washington University in St. Louis. Shortly after getting his J.D., he joined the Federal Communications Commission, where he helped implement the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He left after four years to work at Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, succeeding an associate at the law firm who left to work. Mr. Fried moved to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2003. Mr. Fried, 42, is primarily responsible for advising members of Congress on internet, television, broadband, and spectrum policy, as well as oversight of the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Professor, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; and Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
Professor Damien Geradin is a competition law and regulatory partner in the Brussels office of Covington & Brussels, a Washington, DC-based international law firm comprising 850 lawyers spread in nine locations. His practice focuses on complex competition and regulatory cases in the field of network industries (telecommunications, energy, postal services and transport), as well as in the high-tech sector. Damien also performs advocacy and public policy work for his clients.
Prior to joining Covington & Burling, Damien was a law professor at the University of Liège and the College of Europe, Bruges where he taught EU competition law and the law of network industries. He also held visiting Professorships at Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, and at the Faculty of Law of Peking University. As an academic, Damien was involved as an expert witness in many regulatory and court proceedings, and international arbitration. Before becoming a law professor in 1998, Damien was an associate in the Brussels office of a large US law firm. In 1990-91, Damien also worked for a year as a legal adviser in the cabinet of the Belgian deputy-Prime Minister and Minister of Justice.
Since joining Covington, Damien has continued to teach on a part-time basis at Tilburg University and at the College of Europe in Bruges. In January 2010, he was appointed William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School where he will teach an EU competition law class every year. Damien is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Competition Law & Economics published by Oxford University Press. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books, including recently Global Antitrust Law & Economics (with Prof. E. Elhauge of Harvard Law School) and author or co-author of more than 80 law review articles. Over the past ten years, Damien has delivered over 200 public presentations in more than 15 countries on various issues of EU competition law and economics, and regulatory issues.
Damien is listed as a competition, regulatory law expert in Legal 500, Who’s Who Legal, GCR, Chambers and other legal guides. Damien is a non-governmental adviser (selected by the European Commission) and contributor to the ICN’s committee on single-firm conduct.
Damien graduated obtained a law degree (magna cum laude) from the University of Liège in 1989, a LLM from King’s College London in 1990 and a PhD in law from Cambridge University in 1995. In 1997-98, Damien was a Fulbright scholar and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School.
President and Co-Founder, Public Knowledge
Gigi Sohn is an internationally known communications attorney. In September 2001, she founded Public Knowledge with Laurie Racine (then President of the Center for the Public Domain) and activist/author David Bollier.
Gigi serves as PK's chief strategist, fundraiser and public face. She is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as well as in trade and local press. Gigi has been published in the Washington Post, Variety, CNET and Legal Times. In addition, she has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the Today Show, The McNeil-Lehrer Report, C-SPAN's Washington Journal and National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Morning Edition.
Gigi is a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law, Graduate Studies Program in Australia. She has been a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center, and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.
Gigi served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation's Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens' rights before the FCC and the courts. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Gigi to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. In May 2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Gigi its Internet "Pioneer" Award.
Gigi currently serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters' Child Development Center (BCDC). She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition and the Center for Public Integrity's "Well Connected" Telecommunications Project. Gigi served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors from 1997-2000.
Gigi holds a B.S. in Broadcasting and Film, Summa Cum Laude, from the Boston University College of Communication and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Founding Partner, Lodestar Law and Economics PLLC
Josh is the founder of Lodestar Law and Economics, PLLC. On January 1, 2013, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Wright as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He is a leading scholar in antitrust law, economics, intellectual property, regulation, and consumer protection, and has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading antitrust casebook, and edited several book volumes focusing on these issues. Commentators have recognized Wright as “widely considered his generation’s greatest mind on antitrust law,” and his academic work ranks him as one of the most cited antitrust academics in the world. Wright was also awarded the Paul M. Bator Award by the Federalist Society in 2014 to “an academic who demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact.” Wright also served as the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute, the world’s premiere academic institute focused upon antitrust education for judges and regulators and has taught hundreds of judges and thousands of regulators from dozens of countries.
Wright’s practice focuses upon helping clients solve complex competition, consumer protection, and regulatory problems by providing legal and economic analysis, strategic advice and counseling, and economic expert testimony.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Chief Counsel for Communications and Technology, Cmte. on Energy, U.S. House of Reps.
When Fried was in college, studying journalism at Northwestern University, he was working as a reporter at The Albuquerque Tribune. Mr. Fried went to law school at Washington University in St. Louis. Shortly after getting his J.D., he joined the Federal Communications Commission, where he helped implement the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He left after four years to work at Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, succeeding an associate at the law firm who left to work. Mr. Fried moved to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2003. Mr. Fried, 42, is primarily responsible for advising members of Congress on internet, television, broadband, and spectrum policy, as well as oversight of the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Professor, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; and Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
Professor Damien Geradin is a competition law and regulatory partner in the Brussels office of Covington & Brussels, a Washington, DC-based international law firm comprising 850 lawyers spread in nine locations. His practice focuses on complex competition and regulatory cases in the field of network industries (telecommunications, energy, postal services and transport), as well as in the high-tech sector. Damien also performs advocacy and public policy work for his clients.
Prior to joining Covington & Burling, Damien was a law professor at the University of Liège and the College of Europe, Bruges where he taught EU competition law and the law of network industries. He also held visiting Professorships at Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, and at the Faculty of Law of Peking University. As an academic, Damien was involved as an expert witness in many regulatory and court proceedings, and international arbitration. Before becoming a law professor in 1998, Damien was an associate in the Brussels office of a large US law firm. In 1990-91, Damien also worked for a year as a legal adviser in the cabinet of the Belgian deputy-Prime Minister and Minister of Justice.
Since joining Covington, Damien has continued to teach on a part-time basis at Tilburg University and at the College of Europe in Bruges. In January 2010, he was appointed William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School where he will teach an EU competition law class every year. Damien is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Competition Law & Economics published by Oxford University Press. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books, including recently Global Antitrust Law & Economics (with Prof. E. Elhauge of Harvard Law School) and author or co-author of more than 80 law review articles. Over the past ten years, Damien has delivered over 200 public presentations in more than 15 countries on various issues of EU competition law and economics, and regulatory issues.
Damien is listed as a competition, regulatory law expert in Legal 500, Who’s Who Legal, GCR, Chambers and other legal guides. Damien is a non-governmental adviser (selected by the European Commission) and contributor to the ICN’s committee on single-firm conduct.
Damien graduated obtained a law degree (magna cum laude) from the University of Liège in 1989, a LLM from King’s College London in 1990 and a PhD in law from Cambridge University in 1995. In 1997-98, Damien was a Fulbright scholar and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School.
President and Co-Founder, Public Knowledge
Gigi Sohn is an internationally known communications attorney. In September 2001, she founded Public Knowledge with Laurie Racine (then President of the Center for the Public Domain) and activist/author David Bollier.
Gigi serves as PK's chief strategist, fundraiser and public face. She is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as well as in trade and local press. Gigi has been published in the Washington Post, Variety, CNET and Legal Times. In addition, she has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the Today Show, The McNeil-Lehrer Report, C-SPAN's Washington Journal and National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Morning Edition.
Gigi is a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law, Graduate Studies Program in Australia. She has been a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center, and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.
Gigi served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation's Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens' rights before the FCC and the courts. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Gigi to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. In May 2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Gigi its Internet "Pioneer" Award.
Gigi currently serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters' Child Development Center (BCDC). She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition and the Center for Public Integrity's "Well Connected" Telecommunications Project. Gigi served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors from 1997-2000.
Gigi holds a B.S. in Broadcasting and Film, Summa Cum Laude, from the Boston University College of Communication and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Founding Partner, Lodestar Law and Economics PLLC
Josh is the founder of Lodestar Law and Economics, PLLC. On January 1, 2013, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Wright as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He is a leading scholar in antitrust law, economics, intellectual property, regulation, and consumer protection, and has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading antitrust casebook, and edited several book volumes focusing on these issues. Commentators have recognized Wright as “widely considered his generation’s greatest mind on antitrust law,” and his academic work ranks him as one of the most cited antitrust academics in the world. Wright was also awarded the Paul M. Bator Award by the Federalist Society in 2014 to “an academic who demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact.” Wright also served as the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute, the world’s premiere academic institute focused upon antitrust education for judges and regulators and has taught hundreds of judges and thousands of regulators from dozens of countries.
Wright’s practice focuses upon helping clients solve complex competition, consumer protection, and regulatory problems by providing legal and economic analysis, strategic advice and counseling, and economic expert testimony.
Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor, William & Mary Law School
Jonathan H. Adler joined the William & Mary law faculty as the Tazwell Taylor Professor of Law and William H. Cabell Research Professor in 2025. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011).
His articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Adler is a contributing editor to Civitas Outlook and a regular contributor to the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. A regular commentator on constitutional and regulatory issues, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, ranging from the PBS Newshour and National Public Radio to the Fox News Channel and Entertainment Tonight.
Professor Adler is a senior fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, Professor Adler was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and helped co-found the organization Checks and Balances. In 2024, Professor Adler was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Adler clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Professor Nicholas Bagley teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law, regulatory theory, and health law. Prior to joining the Law School faculty, he was an attorney with the appellate staff in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he argued a dozen cases before the U.S. Courts of Appeals and acted as lead counsel in many more. Professor Bagley also served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and to the Hon. David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. Professor Bagley holds a BA in English from Yale University and received his JD, summa cum laude, from New York University School of Law. Before entering law school, he joined Teach For America and taught eighth-grade English at a public school in South Bronx. Professor Bagley's work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Law School's L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is a frequent contributor to The Incidental Economist, a prominent health policy blog.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Leon Meltzer Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Mitchell Berman is the Richard Dale Endowed Chair in Law, and Professor of Philosophy, at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches and writes in a variety of fields of legal theory, specializing in American constitutional theory, the philosophy of criminal law, and the jurisprudence of sport. A Co-Director of the Law School's Law and Philosophy Program, he is also a past recipient of the Texas Exes Teaching Excellence Award.
Professor Berman grew up in New York City, and earned his A.B. from Harvard and a J.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of Michigan. Before joining the Texas faculty in 1998, he clerked for the Hon. J. Dickson Phillips, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. He has been Visiting Professor at the law schools of the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
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.
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Prof. Richard Primus teaches the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution. In 2008, he won the first-ever Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for his work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation. His scholarship has been cited in opinions of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Prof. Primus works with constitutional law on the state level as well as the federal. He has helped state governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses solve practical problems involving state-level constitutional law, both in Michigan and in other states.
The students of Michigan Law School have given Prof. Primus the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching on four separate occasions: in 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2011.
Prof. Primus graduated from Harvard College in 1992 with an AB, summa cum laude, in social studies. He then earned a DPhil in politics at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and the Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. After studying law at Yale, Prof. Primus clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the Second Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He then practiced law at the Washington, D.C., office of Jenner & Block before joining the Michigan faculty in 2001.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Chief Counsel for Communications and Technology, Cmte. on Energy, U.S. House of Reps.
When Fried was in college, studying journalism at Northwestern University, he was working as a reporter at The Albuquerque Tribune. Mr. Fried went to law school at Washington University in St. Louis. Shortly after getting his J.D., he joined the Federal Communications Commission, where he helped implement the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He left after four years to work at Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, succeeding an associate at the law firm who left to work. Mr. Fried moved to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2003. Mr. Fried, 42, is primarily responsible for advising members of Congress on internet, television, broadband, and spectrum policy, as well as oversight of the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Professor, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; and Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
Professor Damien Geradin is a competition law and regulatory partner in the Brussels office of Covington & Brussels, a Washington, DC-based international law firm comprising 850 lawyers spread in nine locations. His practice focuses on complex competition and regulatory cases in the field of network industries (telecommunications, energy, postal services and transport), as well as in the high-tech sector. Damien also performs advocacy and public policy work for his clients.
Prior to joining Covington & Burling, Damien was a law professor at the University of Liège and the College of Europe, Bruges where he taught EU competition law and the law of network industries. He also held visiting Professorships at Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, and at the Faculty of Law of Peking University. As an academic, Damien was involved as an expert witness in many regulatory and court proceedings, and international arbitration. Before becoming a law professor in 1998, Damien was an associate in the Brussels office of a large US law firm. In 1990-91, Damien also worked for a year as a legal adviser in the cabinet of the Belgian deputy-Prime Minister and Minister of Justice.
Since joining Covington, Damien has continued to teach on a part-time basis at Tilburg University and at the College of Europe in Bruges. In January 2010, he was appointed William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School where he will teach an EU competition law class every year. Damien is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Competition Law & Economics published by Oxford University Press. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books, including recently Global Antitrust Law & Economics (with Prof. E. Elhauge of Harvard Law School) and author or co-author of more than 80 law review articles. Over the past ten years, Damien has delivered over 200 public presentations in more than 15 countries on various issues of EU competition law and economics, and regulatory issues.
Damien is listed as a competition, regulatory law expert in Legal 500, Who’s Who Legal, GCR, Chambers and other legal guides. Damien is a non-governmental adviser (selected by the European Commission) and contributor to the ICN’s committee on single-firm conduct.
Damien graduated obtained a law degree (magna cum laude) from the University of Liège in 1989, a LLM from King’s College London in 1990 and a PhD in law from Cambridge University in 1995. In 1997-98, Damien was a Fulbright scholar and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School.
President and Co-Founder, Public Knowledge
Gigi Sohn is an internationally known communications attorney. In September 2001, she founded Public Knowledge with Laurie Racine (then President of the Center for the Public Domain) and activist/author David Bollier.
Gigi serves as PK's chief strategist, fundraiser and public face. She is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as well as in trade and local press. Gigi has been published in the Washington Post, Variety, CNET and Legal Times. In addition, she has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the Today Show, The McNeil-Lehrer Report, C-SPAN's Washington Journal and National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Morning Edition.
Gigi is a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law, Graduate Studies Program in Australia. She has been a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center, and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.
Gigi served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation's Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens' rights before the FCC and the courts. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Gigi to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. In May 2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Gigi its Internet "Pioneer" Award.
Gigi currently serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters' Child Development Center (BCDC). She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition and the Center for Public Integrity's "Well Connected" Telecommunications Project. Gigi served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors from 1997-2000.
Gigi holds a B.S. in Broadcasting and Film, Summa Cum Laude, from the Boston University College of Communication and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Founding Partner, Lodestar Law and Economics PLLC
Josh is the founder of Lodestar Law and Economics, PLLC. On January 1, 2013, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Wright as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He is a leading scholar in antitrust law, economics, intellectual property, regulation, and consumer protection, and has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading antitrust casebook, and edited several book volumes focusing on these issues. Commentators have recognized Wright as “widely considered his generation’s greatest mind on antitrust law,” and his academic work ranks him as one of the most cited antitrust academics in the world. Wright was also awarded the Paul M. Bator Award by the Federalist Society in 2014 to “an academic who demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact.” Wright also served as the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute, the world’s premiere academic institute focused upon antitrust education for judges and regulators and has taught hundreds of judges and thousands of regulators from dozens of countries.
Wright’s practice focuses upon helping clients solve complex competition, consumer protection, and regulatory problems by providing legal and economic analysis, strategic advice and counseling, and economic expert testimony.
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Showcase Panel II: Textualism and Constitutional Interpretation
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This panel will examine the growth of interest in recent years in original public meaning...
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2013 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCIs Government a Friend or Foe of Innovation?
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On June 11, 2013, the Federalist Society's Executive Branch Review Project held its First Annual...
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First Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
Washington, DC