Partner-in-Charge Washington, Jones Day
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Raymond M. Kethledge is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, to which he was appointed on July 8, 2008. He received his BA in history from the University of Michigan in 1989, and his JD from the University of Michigan Law School in 1993. He clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Ralph B. Guy, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He also worked in the United States Senate and later, with two partners, founded a boutique litigation firm, now known as Bush Seyferth PLLC, in Troy, Michigan. His practice there included a broad mix of trial-court, appellate, and class-action litigation.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
Professor of Law, Oklahoma City University School of Law
Professor O’Shea is a nationally recognized expert on firearms law and the Second Amendment. He is a co-author of the first law school casebook on the subject, Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy, published in 2012. He serves as the Associate Director of OCU Law’s Center for State Constitutional Law and Government.
Professor O’Shea is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He also holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. Before coming to Oklahoma City University School of Law in 2006, he practiced commercial litigation in Chicago and in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. He also served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Danny J. Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Judge John R. Gibson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Associate Dean of Students; William R. Jacques Constitutional La, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
Allen Rostron, who joined the faculty in 2003, teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, tort law, products liability, and conflict of laws.
Before becoming a teacher, Rostron worked in Washington, D.C. as a Senior Staff Attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, where he was part of a nationwide litigation effort that included lawsuits brought against gun manufacturers by several dozen major cities and counties. Rostron began his career working as a law clerk for Judge Thomas S. Ellis III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, and then as a litigation associate at the Cravath Swaine & Moore law firm in New York City.
Professor Rostron’s research and writing has had a significant impact on several areas of law. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin relied on one of his articles in a decision in which it became the first court in the nation to impose proportional or “market share” liability on manufacturers of lead paint. In another article, Professor Rostron suggested a new approach to regulation of high-powered sniper rifles, and that approach was subsequently enacted into law in the District of Columbia and incorporated into proposed federal legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate.
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.
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.
Of Counsel, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
John focuses his practice on labor and employment litigation and counseling employers on mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, downsizing, plant relocations, union representation elections, labor negotiations, strikes and lockouts, NLRB unfair labor practices, arbitration, wage and hour, wrongful discharge and equal employment. John, a former NLRB General Counsel and Labor Department official, was selected as a global leader in the field of employment & labor law in The International Who's Who of Labor and Employment Lawyers by Law Business Research, The Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers.
John earned his B.A. from Brown University and both his J.D. and LL.M. from Georgetown.
Attorney at Law
James P. Scanlan is an attorney specializing in the use of statistics in litigation. He has published about 60 articles on legal or public policy issues. About half have pertained to the use of statistics in the law and the social and medical sciences, especially regarding the patterns by which standard measures of differences between outcome rates tend to be systematically affected by the prevalence of an outcome. Most notably, the rarer an outcome the greater tends to be the relative difference in experiencing and the smaller tends to be the relative difference in avoiding it, a pattern termed “Scanlan’s Rule” by scholars in the UK. Thus, for example, improvements in health or healthcare tend to decrease relative differences in favorable health outcomes, while increasing relative differences in the corresponding adverse outcomes; increasing loan approval rates tends to decrease relative differences in approval rates while increasing relative differences in rejection rates. Without recognizing this and related patterns it is not possible to soundly interpret data on group differences in outcome rates.
CEO, Sharf & Associates
As EEOC's Chief Psychologist in the mid-1970s, Jim drafted the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures He subsequently returned to government to serve as Special Assistant to EEOC's Chairman for whom he drafted the "race norming" prohibition in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
Jim has successfully defended the validity generalization (VG) of measures of cognitive ability (Taylor v. James River Corp., 1989 WL 165953 (S.D. Ala. 1989; McCoy v. Willamette Industries, Inc. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Dicision, Civil Action No. CV401-075 (2001)) - his VG reasoning having been affirmed by the Fifth Circuit (Bernard v. Gulf Oil Corp., 890 F.2d. 735, 744 (5th Cir. 1989). Jim has also successfully defended validity generalization challenged by OFCCP (TIMKEN) and EEOC (SMECO).
For four years, Jim was industrial psychology's expert writing the licensing exam required of all psychologists in the U.S. and Canada. Jim was awarded the M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace by the Society for Industrial/ Organizational Psychology for developing the valid, legally defensible employment tests used by TSA to hire fifty-thousand airport security screeners.
With Metrics Reporting, Inc., Jim and the Competency Validation Center team are now partnering with the Hope Street Group nonprofit network both to document and to assess legally defensible, job-related competencies in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors. GOALS: Employers will be able to communicate Talent Supply Chain competencies; Individuals will accumulate stackable credentials documenting their competencies; and Talent Suppliers will align competency-based education with employer requirements.
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.
Of Counsel, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
John focuses his practice on labor and employment litigation and counseling employers on mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, downsizing, plant relocations, union representation elections, labor negotiations, strikes and lockouts, NLRB unfair labor practices, arbitration, wage and hour, wrongful discharge and equal employment. John, a former NLRB General Counsel and Labor Department official, was selected as a global leader in the field of employment & labor law in The International Who's Who of Labor and Employment Lawyers by Law Business Research, The Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers.
John earned his B.A. from Brown University and both his J.D. and LL.M. from Georgetown.
Attorney at Law
James P. Scanlan is an attorney specializing in the use of statistics in litigation. He has published about 60 articles on legal or public policy issues. About half have pertained to the use of statistics in the law and the social and medical sciences, especially regarding the patterns by which standard measures of differences between outcome rates tend to be systematically affected by the prevalence of an outcome. Most notably, the rarer an outcome the greater tends to be the relative difference in experiencing and the smaller tends to be the relative difference in avoiding it, a pattern termed “Scanlan’s Rule” by scholars in the UK. Thus, for example, improvements in health or healthcare tend to decrease relative differences in favorable health outcomes, while increasing relative differences in the corresponding adverse outcomes; increasing loan approval rates tends to decrease relative differences in approval rates while increasing relative differences in rejection rates. Without recognizing this and related patterns it is not possible to soundly interpret data on group differences in outcome rates.
CEO, Sharf & Associates
As EEOC's Chief Psychologist in the mid-1970s, Jim drafted the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures He subsequently returned to government to serve as Special Assistant to EEOC's Chairman for whom he drafted the "race norming" prohibition in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
Jim has successfully defended the validity generalization (VG) of measures of cognitive ability (Taylor v. James River Corp., 1989 WL 165953 (S.D. Ala. 1989; McCoy v. Willamette Industries, Inc. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Dicision, Civil Action No. CV401-075 (2001)) - his VG reasoning having been affirmed by the Fifth Circuit (Bernard v. Gulf Oil Corp., 890 F.2d. 735, 744 (5th Cir. 1989). Jim has also successfully defended validity generalization challenged by OFCCP (TIMKEN) and EEOC (SMECO).
For four years, Jim was industrial psychology's expert writing the licensing exam required of all psychologists in the U.S. and Canada. Jim was awarded the M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace by the Society for Industrial/ Organizational Psychology for developing the valid, legally defensible employment tests used by TSA to hire fifty-thousand airport security screeners.
With Metrics Reporting, Inc., Jim and the Competency Validation Center team are now partnering with the Hope Street Group nonprofit network both to document and to assess legally defensible, job-related competencies in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors. GOALS: Employers will be able to communicate Talent Supply Chain competencies; Individuals will accumulate stackable credentials documenting their competencies; and Talent Suppliers will align competency-based education with employer requirements.
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.
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.
Partner, Loevy & Loevy
Arthur Loevy graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1963, and has been a member of the Illinois bar continuously for more than forty years. He began his legal career practicing labor law until 1970 when he became an elected officer of a trade union, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (“ACTWU”). Arthur proceeded to serve in various elected capacities for trade unions, including International Executive Vice President of ACTWU, International Secretary-Treasurer of ACTWU, and, most recently International Secretary-Treasurer of the Union of Needle-Trades Industrial and Textile Employees (U.N.I.T.E.).
Arthur Loevy has also served as a Director and Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Amalgamated Bank of New York (1990-98), the President, Chief Executive Officer, and Trustee of various Taft-Hartley insurance and trust funds for almost twenty years, the President of the Amalgamated Housing Foundation (1974-98), and the President of the Sidney Hillman Health Center in Chicago (1980-98).
Since January 1, 1997, Arthur Loevy has resumed the practice of law on a full-time basis. In 1998, he joined the law firm started by his son, Jon Loevy, and has practiced here ever since.
Adjunct Scholar and Former Director, Project On Criminal Justice, Cato Institute
Tim Lynch is an attorney specializing in criminal law, constitutional law, and civil liberties. He is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the former director of Cato’s Project on Criminal Justice. His research interests include all aspects of constitutional criminal procedure, overcriminalization, the drug war, and police and prosecutorial misconduct. In 2000, he served on the National Committee to Prevent Wrongful Executions. Lynch also prepares amicus briefs before appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving constitutional rights. He is the editor of In the Name of Justice: Leading Experts Reexamine the Classic Article “The Aims of the Criminal Law” and After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century.
Lynch has published a variety of articles in both the law journals and in opinion pieces for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers. He has appeared on The PBS NewsHour, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. Lynch is a member of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and Supreme Court bars. He earned both a BS and a JD from Marquette University.
Mr. Lynch can be reached via his personal website.
Research Fellow in Empirical Policy Analysis, Center for Data A, The Heritage Foundation
David B. Muhlhausen is a leading expert on the need for evaluating the effectiveness of federal social programs in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. A Research Fellow in Empirical Policy Analysis at the think tank, Muhlhausen has testified frequently before Congress on the efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs, including testimonies before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget and the House Committee on Ways and Means.
In 2013, Praeger published his book, Do Federal Social Programs Work? The book presents an extensive review of scientifically rigorous national studies that almost unanimously find that the federal government fails to solve social problems.
Muhlhausen rose to national prominence in 2001 with publication of his analysis showing the highly touted Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program to be a waste of taxpayer dollars. His research illustrated that COPS neither had put 100,000 new police officers on the street nor reduced violent crime.
His work prompted Vice President Joseph Biden, at the time a U.S. senator from Delaware and chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, to call a hearing specifically to investigate Muhlhausen’s findings. “I want to have a hearing on what has been, from The Heritage Foundation and other places, criticism that the COPS program does not work,” Biden said in opening the hearing.
Muhlhausen joined Heritage in 1999 after serving on the staff for the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he specialized in crime and juvenile justice policies. Prior to that, he was a manager at a juvenile correctional facility in Baltimore.
He holds a doctorate in public policy from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and a bachelor’s degree in political science and justice studies from Frostburg State University.
In addition to his work at Heritage, Muhlhausen is an adjunct professor at George Mason University, teaching program evaluation and statistical methods to graduate students.
A native of Colorado, Muhlhausen grew up in Maryland. He currently resides in Falls Church, Va.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Former Philadelphia Police Officer
Michael P. Tremoglie is a former Philadelphia police officer, corporate executive, and now a journalist and writer. He was an editor and an investigative journalist for the Philadelphia Bulletin. He has also written for the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Insight magazine, and the Washington Times.
He has appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows such as Bill Bennett’s Morning in America and the Larry Elder show. His work has been featured on Rush Limbaugh and other radio programs.
Many of his articles were reprinted in law reviews and referenced in congressional testimony. He is the author of a critically acclaimed novel, A Sense of Duty, derived from his experiences on the police force.
Active in the community, he started, in 2008, a wrestling club to help Philadelphia’s minority and inner city youth be competitive with suburban athletes. He also helped coach a high school wrestling team.
That same year he joined the Philadelphia chapter of the Federalist Society. Two years later his cousin, a judge in Sicily, also joined. Together, in 2011, they co-founded the Italian affiliate of the Federalist Society, Academia Res Publica.
They have done much comparative study of the two criminal justice systems.
Mike holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and a Master of Science degree in Criminal Justice from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
Founder and President, Center for Neighborhood Enterprise
Robert (Bob) Woodson is Founder and President of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise and one of America’s most influential leaders on issues of poverty and upward mobility. He chose the word “enterprise” in naming the organization because he believes strongly that market-based principles should also operate in the social economy.
Woodson was instrumental in paving the way for resident management and ownership of public housing, brought together task forces of grassroots groups to advise the 104th Congress, the Pennsylvania Legislature, and the Wisconsin Assembly on welfare reform, and helped create Violence-Free Zones that operate in many of the nation’s most troubled schools and communities.
More recently, he has taken Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan on a “listening and learning” tour of some of America’s most impoverished neighborhoods in an effort to move beyond the traditional conservative and liberal understanding of how to address the needs of the poor.
Woodson is frequently featured as a social commentator in print and on-air media, including The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O’Reilly Factor, the Garrison Show and other national and local broadcasts. He is the only person ever to receive both the liberal and conservative world’s most prestigious awards – the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Prize, as well as the Presidential Citizens Medal.
He has written several books, including The Triumphs of Joseph: How Today’s Community Healers are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhood.
Partner-in-Charge Washington, Jones Day
Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States in the Trump Administration, from 2017 to 2020. He has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues.
For example, as Solicitor General, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the "Auer deference doctrine" should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple's App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He also spearheaded the government's general strategy to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Noel's service as Solicitor General built on his previous tenure at Jones Day, during which he argued McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president's constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
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.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Raymond M. Kethledge is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, to which he was appointed on July 8, 2008. He received his BA in history from the University of Michigan in 1989, and his JD from the University of Michigan Law School in 1993. He clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Ralph B. Guy, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He also worked in the United States Senate and later, with two partners, founded a boutique litigation firm, now known as Bush Seyferth PLLC, in Troy, Michigan. His practice there included a broad mix of trial-court, appellate, and class-action litigation.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
Professor of Law, Oklahoma City University School of Law
Professor O’Shea is a nationally recognized expert on firearms law and the Second Amendment. He is a co-author of the first law school casebook on the subject, Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy, published in 2012. He serves as the Associate Director of OCU Law’s Center for State Constitutional Law and Government.
Professor O’Shea is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He also holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. Before coming to Oklahoma City University School of Law in 2006, he practiced commercial litigation in Chicago and in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. He also served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Danny J. Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Judge John R. Gibson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Associate Dean of Students; William R. Jacques Constitutional La, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
Allen Rostron, who joined the faculty in 2003, teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, tort law, products liability, and conflict of laws.
Before becoming a teacher, Rostron worked in Washington, D.C. as a Senior Staff Attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, where he was part of a nationwide litigation effort that included lawsuits brought against gun manufacturers by several dozen major cities and counties. Rostron began his career working as a law clerk for Judge Thomas S. Ellis III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, and then as a litigation associate at the Cravath Swaine & Moore law firm in New York City.
Professor Rostron’s research and writing has had a significant impact on several areas of law. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin relied on one of his articles in a decision in which it became the first court in the nation to impose proportional or “market share” liability on manufacturers of lead paint. In another article, Professor Rostron suggested a new approach to regulation of high-powered sniper rifles, and that approach was subsequently enacted into law in the District of Columbia and incorporated into proposed federal legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate.
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.
Of Counsel, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
John focuses his practice on labor and employment litigation and counseling employers on mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, downsizing, plant relocations, union representation elections, labor negotiations, strikes and lockouts, NLRB unfair labor practices, arbitration, wage and hour, wrongful discharge and equal employment. John, a former NLRB General Counsel and Labor Department official, was selected as a global leader in the field of employment & labor law in The International Who's Who of Labor and Employment Lawyers by Law Business Research, The Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers.
John earned his B.A. from Brown University and both his J.D. and LL.M. from Georgetown.
Attorney at Law
James P. Scanlan is an attorney specializing in the use of statistics in litigation. He has published about 60 articles on legal or public policy issues. About half have pertained to the use of statistics in the law and the social and medical sciences, especially regarding the patterns by which standard measures of differences between outcome rates tend to be systematically affected by the prevalence of an outcome. Most notably, the rarer an outcome the greater tends to be the relative difference in experiencing and the smaller tends to be the relative difference in avoiding it, a pattern termed “Scanlan’s Rule” by scholars in the UK. Thus, for example, improvements in health or healthcare tend to decrease relative differences in favorable health outcomes, while increasing relative differences in the corresponding adverse outcomes; increasing loan approval rates tends to decrease relative differences in approval rates while increasing relative differences in rejection rates. Without recognizing this and related patterns it is not possible to soundly interpret data on group differences in outcome rates.
CEO, Sharf & Associates
As EEOC's Chief Psychologist in the mid-1970s, Jim drafted the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures He subsequently returned to government to serve as Special Assistant to EEOC's Chairman for whom he drafted the "race norming" prohibition in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
Jim has successfully defended the validity generalization (VG) of measures of cognitive ability (Taylor v. James River Corp., 1989 WL 165953 (S.D. Ala. 1989; McCoy v. Willamette Industries, Inc. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Dicision, Civil Action No. CV401-075 (2001)) - his VG reasoning having been affirmed by the Fifth Circuit (Bernard v. Gulf Oil Corp., 890 F.2d. 735, 744 (5th Cir. 1989). Jim has also successfully defended validity generalization challenged by OFCCP (TIMKEN) and EEOC (SMECO).
For four years, Jim was industrial psychology's expert writing the licensing exam required of all psychologists in the U.S. and Canada. Jim was awarded the M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace by the Society for Industrial/ Organizational Psychology for developing the valid, legally defensible employment tests used by TSA to hire fifty-thousand airport security screeners.
With Metrics Reporting, Inc., Jim and the Competency Validation Center team are now partnering with the Hope Street Group nonprofit network both to document and to assess legally defensible, job-related competencies in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors. GOALS: Employers will be able to communicate Talent Supply Chain competencies; Individuals will accumulate stackable credentials documenting their competencies; and Talent Suppliers will align competency-based education with employer requirements.
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.
Civil Rights: The Second Amendment: Enforcing the Heller Decision
Noel J. Francisco, Raymond Kethledge, Nelson Lund, Michael O'Shea, Allan Rostron, Gail L. Heriot
The Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller recognized for the first time...
Civil Rights: The Second Amendment: Enforcing the Heller Decision
2016 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCDisparate Impact: Reducing Innovation in the Workplace?
Gail L. Heriot, John S. Irving, James Scanlan, James Sharf
The slogan "Personnel is policy" reflects the principle that hiring the right people is one...
Disparate Impact: Reducing Innovation in the Workplace?
Gail L. Heriot, John S. Irving, James Scanlan, James Sharf
The slogan "Personnel is policy" reflects the principle that hiring the right people is one...
Disparate Impact: Reducing Innovation in the Workplace?
Fourth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
Washington, DCTopics
Executive Branch Review Conference Live Streams
The Fourth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference was live streamed on May 17. The theme...
Does the University of Texas's Use of Racial Preferences Violate the Constitution?
Dallas, TexasCity Attorney Candidates Debate
San Diego, CaliforniaCan college admissions consider race?
Gail L. Heriot
Gail Heriot, Professor of Law at the University of San Diego school of law, discusses...
Civil Rights: Ferguson, Baltimore, and Criminal Justice Reform
Gail L. Heriot, Arthur Loevy, Tim Lynch, David B. Muhlhausen, David R. Stras, Michael P. Tremoglie, Robert L. Woodson
Criminal justice and policing reform are much in the news lately, sparked by events that...