Brian Callanan is an associate in the national appellate practice at King & Spalding. He has participated in cases before the Supreme Court, federal courts of appeals, and state and federal trial courts.

Mr. Callanan has drafted appellate briefs and critical motions in matters involving a broad range of complex legal issues. He has considerable experience litigating against federal agencies and advising clients on administrative law matters. He has represented clients before, or in litigation against, agencies including the Department of Transportation, National Labor Relations Board, Securities & Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Federal Reserve, Department of Health & Human Services, and Food & Drug Administration. Among other successes, he participated in an Administrative Procedure Act challenge that prompted a federal agency to withdraw the costliest regulatory mandate in the history of the U.S. railroad industry. He co-chairs the Rulemaking Committee of the American Bar Association’s administrative law section and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s administrative law section.

Before joining King & Spalding, Mr. Callanan was general counsel to U.S. Senator Rob Portman. In that position, he served as principal adviser on tax policy, regulatory policy, and legal issues cutting across all substantive areas. He developed and drafted bipartisan legislation on a range of issues, including bipartisan bills to reform the rulemaking process, to strengthen economic analysis by independent regulatory agencies, to reform the federal permitting process for major infrastructure projects, and to expedite the sale of excess federal property. He advised Senator Portman in connection with his work on the Finance Committee and the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. During the same period, he served as staff director of a Senate oversight subcommittee with jurisdiction over all aspects of federal contracting.

Previously, Mr. Callanan was a litigation associate at another major law firm in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Callanan served as a law clerk to Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He received his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2008. At Harvard, Mr. Callanan served as Articles Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Before law school, he served as a speechwriter in the U.S. Senate. Mr. Callanan earned his undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Claremont McKenna College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

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Peter H. Schuck

Simeon E. Baldwin Professor Emeritus of Law, Yale Law School

Biography

Peter H. Schuck is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor Emeritus of Law and Professor (Adjunct) of Law at Yale Law School where he has held the chair since 1984. He has also served as Deputy Dean. His major fields of teaching and research are tort law; immigration, citizenship, and refugee law; groups, diversity, and law; and administrative law. His most recent books include Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples; Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics; Immigration Stories; Foundations of Administrative Law; Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance; and The Limits of Law: Essays on Democratic Governance. He is also co-editor, with James Q. Wilson, of Understanding America. He is a member of the American Law Institute's advisory committee for the Restatement of Torts (Third), Basic Principles, and a contributing editor to The American Lawyer. Prior to joining Yale, he was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Professor Schuck holds a B.A. from Cornell, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LL.M. in International Law from N.Y.U., and an M.A. in Government from Harvard.

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Charles J. Cooper

Founding Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC

Biography

Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and the chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, “one of the Nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above The Law 2017). The National Law Journal recently wrote that Mr. Cooper’s “brilliant legal career has so far spanned five decades and thrust Cooper into the spotlight in some of the most historic moments of the country’s modern history.” He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. He has been lead trial counsel in numerous complex, weeks-long trials in federal courts throughout the country. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the 10 best litigators in Washington D.C., Mr. Cooper’s work has been reported in numerous press accounts, and he has been called a “powerhouse attorney” (Fortune 2015), “a hard-nosed litigator” (Washington Post 2017), and “one of the country’s most in-demand civil litigators and a Washington legal institution unto himself” (The American Spectator 2014).

After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978–79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of, among other things, appellate matters. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office responsible for providing legal opinions and advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues covering the full spectrum of federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.

In 1988 he returned to private practice as a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.

Mr. Cooper has represented a wide range of public and private clients in highly complex constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, healthcare, banking, intellectual property, elections, campaign finance, administrative, commercial, and government contract cases. He has led trial teams in cases that have won judgments and settlements valued in the billions of dollars and that have established ground-breaking constitutional precedents.

Much of Mr. Cooper’s practice has involved representing high-profile clients in nationally prominent matters, including: the State of Florida in a First Amendment suit brought by the Disney Company concerning its autonomous regulatory authority over its Disney World property; the Commonwealth of Virginia in a suit seeking to enjoin the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls; 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team falsely accused of rape by officials of Duke University and the City of Durham; Harper Lee in a copyright dispute with the heirs of Gregory Peck; high-ranking former government officials such as former Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr, and Ambassador John Bolton; several Governors and United States Senators; over 100 Members of Congress; and many state, territorial, and local government bodies and officials. He has also represented and advised government officials and public figures in connection with sensitive private issues that needed to be, and were, resolved discreetly without becoming matters of public record.

In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he served for three terms. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the American Law Institute (since 1993) and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (since 1996). He is also an active member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, which in 2010 named him Republican Lawyer of the Year and in 2016 honored him with its Edwin Meese III Award.

Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 26 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues, including the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to administrative agencies, the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of federal courts, statehood bills for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the impeachment of President Clinton.

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William N. Eskridge

Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale Law School

Biography

Degrees from Davidson College, B.A. summa cum laude, 1973; Harvard University, M.A., 1974; Yale Law School, J.D, 1978. Clerked for Edward Weinfeld, 1978-79; Attorney at Shea & Gardner, 1979-82; Law Professor since 1982, tenured at Georgetown and Yale, visiting professor at Stanford, NYU, Toronto, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Fordham, Vanderbilt. Author of casebooks on legislation and sexuality, gender and law, as well as monographs on statutory interpretation and the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Author of dozens of articles, by one empirical count a top ten most cited law professors.

Speaker Information

David M. McIntosh

Biography

David McIntosh is a leader for the principles of limited constitutional government and individual freedom. He is president of the Club for Growth, the leading advocate for economic liberty.

Former Congressman David McIntosh represented Indiana's 2nd Congressional District in the United States Congress from 1995-2001. As a Freshman, David chaired the Subcommittee on Regulatory Relief. He passed the Congressional Review Act and held extensive oversight and field hearings to build a record of public support for regulatory relief initiatives in energy, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, healthcare, transportation and technology sectors. Another issue that he championed was the elimination of the marriage penalty in the Federal Tax Code.

David served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and as special assistant to President Reagan for Domestic Affairs. During the first Bush administration, he served as executive director of the President's Council on Competitiveness and assistant to the Vice President. The Competitiveness Council coordinated the cost/benefit review of major regulations and promoted legal reform measures.

David is a co-founder of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and serves on the Board of Directors. He remains active with several free market and conservative think tanks and grassroots organizations. David has also had stints at the Hudson Institute and as a Professor of Economics at Ball State School of Business.

Prior to the Club for Growth, David was a partner at Mayer Brown, LLP in Washington, DC.

David graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, and Yale University, BA, cum laude, in 1980. He and his wife, Ruthie, are the proud parents of Ellie age 17 and Davey age 13.

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Neomi Rao

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit

Biography

Judge Rao was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in March 2019. She graduated from Yale College in 1995 and the University of Chicago Law School in 1999. Following graduation, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and, in the 2001 October Term, as law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Between her clerkships, Judge Rao served as counsel for nominations and constitutional law to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In 2002, she joined the international arbitration group of Clifford Chance LLP in London, England. From 2005-2006, she served as Special Assistant and Associate White House Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2006 to 2017, Judge Rao was a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where she taught constitutional law, legislation and statutory interpretation, and the history and foundations of the administrative state. In 2014, she founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, a non-profit Center that promotes academic scholarship and public policy debates about administrative law. In July 2017, she was appointed to serve as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management Budget. She served in this position until her appointment to the D.C. Circuit.

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