Leitner Family Professor, Fordham University School of Law
Martin S. Flaherty is Leitner Family Professor of Law and Co-Founding Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he was Fellow in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and a Visiting Professor at the New School in New York.. Professor Flaherty has taught at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, and has recently founded the Rule of Law in Asia Program at the Leitner Center as well as co-founded the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers. He has also taught at Sungkyunkwan Univeristy in Seoul, Queen’s University Belfast, Cardozo School of Law, and the New School. Previously Professor Flaherty served as a law clerk for Justice Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge John Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Flaherty holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Princeton, an M.A. and M.Phil. from Yale (in history) and a J.D. from the Columbia Law School, where he was Book Reviews and Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review. Formerly chair of the New York City Bar Association’s International Human Rights Committee, he has led or participated in human rights missions to Northern Ireland, Turkey, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia, Kenya, and Romania. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Flaherty's publications focus upon constitutional law and history, foreign affairs, and international human rights and appear in such journals as the Columbia Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review. His publications include: “Executive Power Essentialism and Foreign Affairs” [with Curtis Bradley], Michigan Law Review; “The Most Dangerous Branch,” Yale Law Journal; and “History ‘Lite’ in Modern American Constitutionalism,” Columbia Law Review. He has appeared or been quoted in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Daily News, Newsday, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox.
Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, Columbia Law School
A leading administrative and constitutional law scholar, Gillian Metzger ’96 writes and teaches in the areas of administrative law, constitutional law, and federal courts, with an emphasis on federalism and privatization. In 2023-2024, she served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.
Metzger's recent work covers topics ranging from constitutional attacks on the administrative state to appropriations, administrative law under the Roberts Court, and the role of administrative agencies in a polarized world. In 2015, Metzger won the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section Annual Scholarship Award for “The Constitutional Duty to Supervise,” which examined presidential control and oversight of the modern administrative state. She is a co-editor of Gellhorn & Byse’s Administrative Law: Cases and Comments, 13th ed. (Foundation Press, 2023), a seminal administrative law casebook.
Professor Metzger was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States. In 2020, she was awarded Columbia University's Faculty Mentorship Award and in 2014, the Law School’s graduating class awarded Metzger the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching, recognizing, among many other accomplishments, her commitment to mentoring new generations of law students.
In 2012, Metzger helped launch Columbia Law School’s Center for Constitutional Governance (CCG)—where she now serves as faculty director—a nonpartisan legal and policy organization devoted to the study of constitutional structure and authority. CCG brings together a diverse group of constitutional scholars to explore policy areas such as health care, civil rights, immigration, financial regulation, and national security.
Metzger also has co-authored and filed numerous amicus briefs in major constitutional and administrative law challenges before the Supreme Court and other courts. Most recently, Metzger filed a brief in Seila Law Center v. CFPB, a separation of powers challenge, and in Kisor v. Wilkie, a case involving judicial deference to agencies. She has also filed briefs in cases involving reproductive rights and the Affordable Care Act, among others.
Previously, Metzger served as vice dean of intellectual life at Columbia Law School. Before joining the Law School, she worked as an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice. Metzger also clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 and Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In 2018, Metzger moderated a panel discussion with Justice Ginsburg on impact litigation at Columbia Law School.
C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Professor Nagy joined the law school faculty in 2006 as the C. Ben Dutton Professor of Business Law. She began her teaching career in 1994 at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, where she served as Interim Dean from 2004-05 and as Associate Dean for Faculty Development from 2002-04. In Spring 2001, she was a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, and was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Canterbury School of Law in Christchurch, New Zealand in Spring 2002.
Professor Nagy teaches and writes in the areas of securities litigation, securities regulation, and corporations. Her scholarship includes articles in the Cornell Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Ohio State Law Journal as well as two co-authored books, one on the law of insider trading and a casebook on Securities Litigation and Enforcement. She is a frequent speaker on securities regulation and litigation topics at law schools and professional conferences. She also served as Chair of the AALS Section on Securities Regulation in 2004-05; as Chair of the AALS Standing Committee on Sections and the Annual Meeting in 2007-08; and as a Vice President and Member of the Board of Trustees of the SEC Historical Society from 2008-11.
Prior to teaching, Professor Nagy was an associate with Debevoise & Plimpton in Washington, D.C., specializing in securities enforcement and litigation. She was named interim executive associate dean for academic affairs in August 2013 and executive associate dean in January 2014.
Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law, Moritz Colleg, The Ohio State University
Professor Shane came to Ohio State in 2003 from Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. He is an internationally recognized scholar in administrative law, with a specialty in separation of powers law, and has co-authored leading casebooks on each subject. He has served on the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law and was dean at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
In addition to his outstanding law teaching and scholarship, Professor Shane has received a National Science Foundation grant for interdisciplinary study related to cyberspace and democracy. At Ohio State, he provides strong leadership in interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching.
Senior Counsel, YetterColeman LLP
Chris’s practice focuses on complex appeals. He has represented major corporations in a variety of industries—including energy, insurance, and financial services—as well as governmental entities and private parties in litigation against governmental entities in federal and state courts throughout the country and in the U.S. Supreme Court. He has briefed numerous successful appeals and orally argued in federal and state appellate courts. Chris is admitted to practice in Texas, the United States Supreme Court, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fifth, Ninth, and District of Columbia Circuits, and the United States District Courts of Texas. Chris was a law clerk for the Honorable Will Garwood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before attending law school, he worked as a Latin teacher, for the Republican Party of Texas, and for Texas State Senator Jane Nelson.
Professor of Law, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Tuan Samahon teaches and writes in the areas of federal courts and constitutional law. His articles have been published in the Stanford Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Hastings Law Journal, William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, University of Chicago Legal Forum, Denver Law Review, and Villanova Law Review, among others.
Beyond his scholarship, Tuan is engaged in interpreting and fashioning federal constitutional law. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, and has served as counsel in separation-of-powers and Freedom of Information Act litigation in federal trial and appellate courts. Recently, Tuan prevailed against the CIA in a civil action for the release of the draft fifth volume of its secret history of the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. In addition to representing others, for a book he is researching, Tuan successfully sued the FBI for the release of agency records detailing high-ranking executive and judicial officers' abuses of power.
Tuan received his B.A. from Brigham Young University and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an Olin Law and Economics Research Fellow and was co-awarded the Olin Prize in Law and Economics. Prior to entering teaching, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson on the Eastern District of Virginia and for U.S. Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee on the Ninth Circuit. He also practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling. Professor Samahon was named "Professor of the Year" by his students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He teaches civil procedure, federal courts, and constitutional law subjects.
During spring 2017, Tuan served as a Fulbright scholar with the law faculty at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.
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.
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