Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego
Julian Betts is a Professor in (and former Chair of) the Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also the Executive Director of the San Diego Education Research Alliance at UCSD (sandera.ucsd.edu), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Bren Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
His research focuses on the economics of education. He has written extensively on the link between student outcomes and measures of public school spending including class size, teachers' salaries, and teachers' level of education. He has also examined the role that standards and expectations play in student achievement. Examples of his work include a theoretical analysis of the impact of educational standards published in the American Economic Review (1998), the book “Taking Measure of Charter Schools: Better Assessments, Better Policymaking, Better Schools,” co-edited with Paul Hill, the book “Getting Choice Right: Ensuring Equity and Efficiency in Education Policy” (Brookings Institution Press 2005) co-edited with Tom Loveless, and the co-authored books “Predicting Success, Preventing Failure: An Investigation of the California High School Exit Exam” (PPIC 2008), “Does School Choice Work?” (PPIC 2006), “From Blueprint to Reality: San Diego’s Education Reforms” (PPIC 2005), “Determinants of Student Achievement: New Evidence from San Diego” (PPIC 2003) and “Equal Resources, Equal Outcomes? The Distribution of School Resources and Student Achievement in California” (PPIC, 2000). Current research includes studies of school choice, California’s Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project, and San Diego’s controversial Blueprint for Student Success.
His other main areas of research include higher education; immigration; technology, skills, and the labor market; and the economics of unions.
Betts is Principal Investigator on a multi-year study of magnet elementary schools funded by the U.S. Department of Education. This project, which is examining the impact of magnet schools on the achievement of both local and non-local enrollees, is joint with the American Institutes of Research (AIR) and Berkeley Policy Associates (BPA). He was also Principal Investigator of a three-year study for the U.S. Department of Education of the effects of career and technical education on students’ academic trajectories. Betts has served on two National Academy of Sciences panels, including (from 2005-2008) the congressionally mandated “Committee on Evaluation of Teacher Certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)”. Betts became a council member of the California Council on Science and Technology in 2007. Betts has also served on several technical review panels for the U.S. Department of Education, and the national advisory committees for the National Charter School Research Center at the University of Washington. In 2001-2003 Betts served on the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education. He is a member of the editorial board of Education Finance and Policy, published by MIT Press.
At UCSD Betts is a professor in the Department of Economics, where he served as Department Chair from 2008 through 2011. Within the Department of Economics Betts has also served as Computing Director and more recently as Vice Chair, Graduate Studies, for the Department between 2004 and 2007. Betts was a member of the UCSD Admissions Committee from 1999 to 2003, serving as both Chair and Vice Chair in various years. In 2001 he served on the University’s Gender Equity Taskforce. Between 1999 and 2008 he also served on the Board of Directors of the Preuss School at UCSD, a
charter school on the UCSD campus that admits disadvantaged students from the local area. Betts also serves as UCSD campus director of the UC Educational Evaluation Center.
Betts obtained a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from McGill University, the M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, Oxford, England, and a Ph.D. in economics from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Professor of Education and Public Policy, University of Californ, Berkeley
Working inside policy organizations and the academy over the past three decades, Bruce Fuller has asked how public action best strengthens families and schools. He helped to design policy reforms for a free-thinking California governor, and advised opposition leaders on education reform as democracy emerged in southern Africa. Professor Fuller has studied child care programs arising at the grassroots or state run in Latin America. A fundamental question continues to motivate this array of research and writings: How can central governments enrich families and schools when situated in colorfully pluralistic societies? In short, what happens when government confronts culture?
Trained in political sociology, Professor Fuller's recent projects center on small-scale organizations that sprout across diverse communities, such as charter schools and preschools, which often spread in response to the clumsy or gray character of central states. Yet, decentralized institutions can disempower central governments, a worrisome scenario for those concerned with equity. Professor Fuller's current research delves into how young children are socialized in diverse Mexican-American homes, and what neighborhood organizations effectively advance their development. His recent book, Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle over Early Education, examines how elite reformers often push for state incorporation of community programs, even eroding the authority and resources spread across diverse ethnic leaders.
Professor Fuller also looks into fields that have become hyper-centralized, exemplified by his critical work on No Child Left Behind. A college dropout, he eventually received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. Before coming to Berkeley, Professor Fuller was a research sociologist at the World Bank and taught at Harvard's School of Education.
Co-Chairman, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Leonard is Co-Chairman and former Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, joining the organization over 25 years ago. Since that time he has been instrumental in helping the organization top 70,000, focusing on the growth of lawyers membership, operations and activities advancing limited, constitutional government. In addition to his work at the Society, Leonard has advised President Trump on judicial selection, assisted with the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh Supreme Court selection and confirmation process, and served as a member of the transition team. He also organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito U.S. Supreme Court confirmations. Leonard was appointed by President George W. Bush to three terms to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom as chairman. He was also a U.S. Delegate to the UN Council and UN Commission on Human Rights during the Bush Administration. Leonard was the recipient of the 2009 Bradley Prize, along with the other founders and directors of the Federalist Society, for his work in advancing freedom and the rule of law. He is the coeditor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, as well as the author of opinion editorials in the New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Leonard holds degrees from Cornell University and Cornell Law School. He presently resides in Northern Virginia, where he and his wife Sally have raised their seven children.
Managing Attorney of the Washington Office, Institute for Justice
William R. Maurer is the Managing Attorney of the Washington state office of the Institute for Justice, which engages in litigation in the areas of economic liberty, private property rights, educational choice, & freedom of speech.
Maurer is an advocate against the criminalization of poverty and the governmental use of the criminal and civil enforcement systems to raise revenue. He was lead counsel in a class action challenging the use of tickets to raise revenue in the city of Pagedale, Missouri. The suit resulted in a federal consent decree that reformed the city’s ticketing and municipal court system. He regularly speaks, teaches, and writes about the abuse of fines and fees in the criminal justice system. He was a participant in summits on taxation by citation put on by the White House and Department of Justice during the Obama Administration. His work on the issue includes serving as an advisory board member of the Fines and Fees Justice Center.
In addition to his work on criminal and civil justice reform, Maurer is a First Amendment litigator. In 2011, he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Arizona’s punitive campaign financing regime was unconstitutional. Before the Washington Supreme Court, he successfully argued against efforts to classify radio commentary as a contribution under the state’s campaign finance law.
His cases and advocacy have been covered in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and other major media outlets.
Maurer was named a “Washington Superlawyer” by Washington Law & Politics Magazine for several years. He is a chapter author in numerous legal reference works and has written several articles for law reviews and legal publications across the country.
Prior to joining IJ-WA, Maurer clerked for Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders and then practiced law at Perkins Coie LLP. Maurer received his law degree in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he was an editor of the Wisconsin Law Review. He received his BA from Bard College in 1989.
State Director, Democrats for Education Reform and former California State Senator
Former California State Senator Gloria Romero is the State Director of Democrats for Education Reform and has been a forceful advocate for education reform and civil rights.
She brings to the post not only a great passion for quality education opportunities for all children, but a keen knowledge of the legislative and political process. She was elected to the 24th Senate District in 2001, representing East Los Angeles and the greater San Gabriel Valley. Upon her election she was recognized as one of the hardest working members of the Legislature and quickly rose in leadership positions. She was elected by her peers to serve as Senate Democratic Caucus Chair and as Senate Majority Leader -- the first woman to ever hold that leadership position in the history of the California State Senate.
Romero served as Chair of both the Education Committee and the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee on Education, making her one of the most influential voices on education policy in California. She believes that education is the civil rights issue of our time. States Romero, "My mother had a sixth grade education; I have a PhD. I understand the transformational power of education and the key it holds to accessing the American Dream".
Vice President of Legal Affairs & Director of Legal Defense & Education Center, EdChoice
Leslie Hiner, Esq. is an advocate of educational freedom, a crusader fighting for the unencumbered opportunity of parents to decide how and where their children will be educated. She believes in the power of individuals to change the world, and believes personal liberty will be enhanced when our method of funding K–12 education is changed to empower parents and students before institutions.
As vice president of legal affairs at EdChoice, the nation’s leading educational choice organization, Leslie leads the EdChoice Legal Defense and Education Center for this nonpartisan, charitable nonprofit and engages with other national organizations to support school choice. She is a proven leader, advancing educational freedom and choice for all as a pathway to successful lives and a stronger society.
Hiner is an attorney with extensive state legislative and executive branch experience. In Indiana, she was the first woman chief of staff to the speaker of the house, counsel to the senate president pro tempore, and general counsel/elections deputy to the Secretary of State. She is also a former small business owner, and former litigator in private practice.
A founding board member of one of Indiana’s first charter schools, Leslie served as chairman of the board for the first several years, guiding the school’s growth from about 150 to over 1000 students. She was also directly involved in developing Indiana’s original charter school law, one of the best in the nation, and Indiana’s voucher law, the largest in the country to date.
Leslie is a member of the American Enterprise Institute Leadership Network, serves on the Schools That Can National Advisory Council, and is a Policy Advisor for The Heartland Institute. Leslie is a long-time member of the Federalist Society and a Lugar Series Excellence in Public Service alumna.
Hiner travels the country speaking on educational issues and testifying at public hearings. Recent engagements include the American Enterprise Institute With all deliberate speed: Brown v. Board of Education II 60 years later; Center for Urban Renewal and Education National Policy Summit, “Changing Policy to Change Lives”; National Conference of State Legislatures Summit debate, School Vouchers and Education Savings Accounts: Are They Constitutional; Network of Enlightened Women National Conference, Three Things You Need To Know About Education Policy; International Conference on School Choice and Reform, The Constitutionality of Educational Choice; 100 Black Men of Greater Dallas/Fort Worth, Project Soar’s Mobilizing the Village; Louisville Federalist Society Lawyers’ Chapter, Is School Choice Good Public Policy; American Conservative Union CPAC 2017.
She’s been cited in several publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, Forbes, US News & World Report, The Hill, Real Clear Policy, Federalist Society DocketWatch, National Review, The Federalist, Zman Magazine, Watchdog, and has appeared on EWTN News Nightly, Wall Street Journal Video Opinion Journal podcasts, David Webb Show on Sirius/XM, ChoiceMediaTV, The Heartland Institute podcasts and school choice events, The Morning Blaze, Issues in Education and many state level broadcasts.
A native of Ohio, she earned her Juris Doctorate from the University of Akron School of Law, her Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of Wooster, and attended Rostad Teachers College as an exchange student in Sweden where she was a student teacher in grades 2 and 3. She and her husband reside in Indianapolis, and have two grown children.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego
Julian Betts is a Professor in (and former Chair of) the Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also the Executive Director of the San Diego Education Research Alliance at UCSD (sandera.ucsd.edu), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Bren Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
His research focuses on the economics of education. He has written extensively on the link between student outcomes and measures of public school spending including class size, teachers' salaries, and teachers' level of education. He has also examined the role that standards and expectations play in student achievement. Examples of his work include a theoretical analysis of the impact of educational standards published in the American Economic Review (1998), the book “Taking Measure of Charter Schools: Better Assessments, Better Policymaking, Better Schools,” co-edited with Paul Hill, the book “Getting Choice Right: Ensuring Equity and Efficiency in Education Policy” (Brookings Institution Press 2005) co-edited with Tom Loveless, and the co-authored books “Predicting Success, Preventing Failure: An Investigation of the California High School Exit Exam” (PPIC 2008), “Does School Choice Work?” (PPIC 2006), “From Blueprint to Reality: San Diego’s Education Reforms” (PPIC 2005), “Determinants of Student Achievement: New Evidence from San Diego” (PPIC 2003) and “Equal Resources, Equal Outcomes? The Distribution of School Resources and Student Achievement in California” (PPIC, 2000). Current research includes studies of school choice, California’s Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project, and San Diego’s controversial Blueprint for Student Success.
His other main areas of research include higher education; immigration; technology, skills, and the labor market; and the economics of unions.
Betts is Principal Investigator on a multi-year study of magnet elementary schools funded by the U.S. Department of Education. This project, which is examining the impact of magnet schools on the achievement of both local and non-local enrollees, is joint with the American Institutes of Research (AIR) and Berkeley Policy Associates (BPA). He was also Principal Investigator of a three-year study for the U.S. Department of Education of the effects of career and technical education on students’ academic trajectories. Betts has served on two National Academy of Sciences panels, including (from 2005-2008) the congressionally mandated “Committee on Evaluation of Teacher Certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)”. Betts became a council member of the California Council on Science and Technology in 2007. Betts has also served on several technical review panels for the U.S. Department of Education, and the national advisory committees for the National Charter School Research Center at the University of Washington. In 2001-2003 Betts served on the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education. He is a member of the editorial board of Education Finance and Policy, published by MIT Press.
At UCSD Betts is a professor in the Department of Economics, where he served as Department Chair from 2008 through 2011. Within the Department of Economics Betts has also served as Computing Director and more recently as Vice Chair, Graduate Studies, for the Department between 2004 and 2007. Betts was a member of the UCSD Admissions Committee from 1999 to 2003, serving as both Chair and Vice Chair in various years. In 2001 he served on the University’s Gender Equity Taskforce. Between 1999 and 2008 he also served on the Board of Directors of the Preuss School at UCSD, a
charter school on the UCSD campus that admits disadvantaged students from the local area. Betts also serves as UCSD campus director of the UC Educational Evaluation Center.
Betts obtained a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from McGill University, the M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, Oxford, England, and a Ph.D. in economics from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Professor of Education and Public Policy, University of Californ, Berkeley
Working inside policy organizations and the academy over the past three decades, Bruce Fuller has asked how public action best strengthens families and schools. He helped to design policy reforms for a free-thinking California governor, and advised opposition leaders on education reform as democracy emerged in southern Africa. Professor Fuller has studied child care programs arising at the grassroots or state run in Latin America. A fundamental question continues to motivate this array of research and writings: How can central governments enrich families and schools when situated in colorfully pluralistic societies? In short, what happens when government confronts culture?
Trained in political sociology, Professor Fuller's recent projects center on small-scale organizations that sprout across diverse communities, such as charter schools and preschools, which often spread in response to the clumsy or gray character of central states. Yet, decentralized institutions can disempower central governments, a worrisome scenario for those concerned with equity. Professor Fuller's current research delves into how young children are socialized in diverse Mexican-American homes, and what neighborhood organizations effectively advance their development. His recent book, Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle over Early Education, examines how elite reformers often push for state incorporation of community programs, even eroding the authority and resources spread across diverse ethnic leaders.
Professor Fuller also looks into fields that have become hyper-centralized, exemplified by his critical work on No Child Left Behind. A college dropout, he eventually received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. Before coming to Berkeley, Professor Fuller was a research sociologist at the World Bank and taught at Harvard's School of Education.
Co-Chairman, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Leonard is Co-Chairman and former Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, joining the organization over 25 years ago. Since that time he has been instrumental in helping the organization top 70,000, focusing on the growth of lawyers membership, operations and activities advancing limited, constitutional government. In addition to his work at the Society, Leonard has advised President Trump on judicial selection, assisted with the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh Supreme Court selection and confirmation process, and served as a member of the transition team. He also organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito U.S. Supreme Court confirmations. Leonard was appointed by President George W. Bush to three terms to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom as chairman. He was also a U.S. Delegate to the UN Council and UN Commission on Human Rights during the Bush Administration. Leonard was the recipient of the 2009 Bradley Prize, along with the other founders and directors of the Federalist Society, for his work in advancing freedom and the rule of law. He is the coeditor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, as well as the author of opinion editorials in the New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Leonard holds degrees from Cornell University and Cornell Law School. He presently resides in Northern Virginia, where he and his wife Sally have raised their seven children.
Managing Attorney of the Washington Office, Institute for Justice
William R. Maurer is the Managing Attorney of the Washington state office of the Institute for Justice, which engages in litigation in the areas of economic liberty, private property rights, educational choice, & freedom of speech.
Maurer is an advocate against the criminalization of poverty and the governmental use of the criminal and civil enforcement systems to raise revenue. He was lead counsel in a class action challenging the use of tickets to raise revenue in the city of Pagedale, Missouri. The suit resulted in a federal consent decree that reformed the city’s ticketing and municipal court system. He regularly speaks, teaches, and writes about the abuse of fines and fees in the criminal justice system. He was a participant in summits on taxation by citation put on by the White House and Department of Justice during the Obama Administration. His work on the issue includes serving as an advisory board member of the Fines and Fees Justice Center.
In addition to his work on criminal and civil justice reform, Maurer is a First Amendment litigator. In 2011, he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Arizona’s punitive campaign financing regime was unconstitutional. Before the Washington Supreme Court, he successfully argued against efforts to classify radio commentary as a contribution under the state’s campaign finance law.
His cases and advocacy have been covered in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and other major media outlets.
Maurer was named a “Washington Superlawyer” by Washington Law & Politics Magazine for several years. He is a chapter author in numerous legal reference works and has written several articles for law reviews and legal publications across the country.
Prior to joining IJ-WA, Maurer clerked for Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders and then practiced law at Perkins Coie LLP. Maurer received his law degree in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he was an editor of the Wisconsin Law Review. He received his BA from Bard College in 1989.
State Director, Democrats for Education Reform and former California State Senator
Former California State Senator Gloria Romero is the State Director of Democrats for Education Reform and has been a forceful advocate for education reform and civil rights.
She brings to the post not only a great passion for quality education opportunities for all children, but a keen knowledge of the legislative and political process. She was elected to the 24th Senate District in 2001, representing East Los Angeles and the greater San Gabriel Valley. Upon her election she was recognized as one of the hardest working members of the Legislature and quickly rose in leadership positions. She was elected by her peers to serve as Senate Democratic Caucus Chair and as Senate Majority Leader -- the first woman to ever hold that leadership position in the history of the California State Senate.
Romero served as Chair of both the Education Committee and the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee on Education, making her one of the most influential voices on education policy in California. She believes that education is the civil rights issue of our time. States Romero, "My mother had a sixth grade education; I have a PhD. I understand the transformational power of education and the key it holds to accessing the American Dream".
Partner, Holme Roberts & Owen LLP
Stuart Lark is a partner in the firm's Colorado Springs office. He concentrates on corporate, tax, constitutional and transactional matters for nonprofit organizations. His experience includes joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, tax exempt financing, corporate structure, IRS rulings, private foundations, unrelated trade or business income tax, property and sales tax, international structure and transactions, planned giving, government funding for religious organizations, faith-based employment rights, immigration, church property disputes and other religious liberty issues. He has published articles and given presentations on many of these issues. In 2002, Mr. Lark took a one-year leave of absence during which he served as Legal Counsel for Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C.
Prior to entering law school, Mr. Lark worked for AT&T as an engineer and international product manager. He also spent one year in the former Soviet Russia working on a missions project.
M.S., Stanford University, 1985
B.S., Purdue University, with distinction, 1984
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Reli, Willamette University College of Law
Steven K. Green is the Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History at Willamette University where he teaches courses in Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Legal History, Jurisprudence, and Criminal Law in the College of Law, and Legal History and American Religious History in the College of Liberal Arts. In addition, Professor Green directs the interdisciplinary Center for Religion, Law and Democracy, one of Willamette’s Centers of Excellence.
Professor Green joined the Willamette faculty in August 2001, after serving for 10 years as legal director and special counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, DC, public interest organization that concentrates on First Amendment issues. Professor Green has extensive litigation and appellate experience in First Amendment law involving issues such as school prayer, public funding of religious institutions, public religious displays, religious discrimination, religious free exercise and freedom of speech. He has participated in several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the Cleveland school vouchers case; Mitchell v. Helms (2000), authorizing state-paid computers and educational equipment to religious schools; and Santa Fe Ind. Sch. Dist. v. Doe (2000), striking prayer at public school football games. He regularly submits amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) briefs at the U.S. Supreme Court, most recently co-authoring two amicus briefs in the 2013-14 term.
In addition, Professor Green has significant legislative experience, having testified before Congress and several state legislatures. He helped draft federal and state laws affecting religious liberty interests, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993), the Religious Land-Use and Institutionalized Persons Protection Act (2000), and the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act (2009).
Professor Green is a widely sought speaker at national conferences and a prolific author whose writings have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts. He is the author of Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding (Oxford University Press, 2015), The Bible, the School, and the Constitution: The Clash that Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine (Oxford, 2012); The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth Century America (Oxford, 2010), co-author of Religious Freedom and the Supreme Court (Baylor, 2008), and a contributor to the Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties and the Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law, among others. He is currently writing a new book on church and state in the middle of the twentieth century. Professor Green holds a PhD in American constitutional history and an MA in American religious history from the University of North Carolina, a JD from the University of Texas, and a BA in history and political science, Phi Beta Kappa, from Texas Christian University. He also took post-graduate study at Duke Law and Divinity Schools.
Professor Green serves on the public policy board of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. He also serves on the editorial council of the Journal of Church and State and the legal advisory committee of the National Center for Science Education. He previously served on the religious liberty committee of the National Council of Churches and as recorder for the Oregon Law Commission's study of the faith-based initiative in Oregon.
In 2014 and 2006, Professor Green received the Robert L. Misner Award for Excellence in Scholarship, which was established in memory of former College of Law Dean and Professor Robert L. Misner. Professor Green also received the 2003 Professor of the Year Award for Teaching.
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. Professor Paulsen was previously the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law & Public Policy and Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught from 1991-2007. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
Paulsen has taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University, Pepperdine University, Georgetown University, Bethel University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Daystar University (Kenya), and University of the Andes (Chile). He has been a guest lecturer at universities around the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, University of Chicago, and Northwestern.
Professor Paulsen is the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters on a wide variety of constitutional law topics, published in law journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review. He is the author or co-author of three books, including The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Luke Paulsen) and the casebook The Constitution of the United States, now in its fifth edition with Foundation Press, co-authored with Michael McConnell, Samuel Bray, and Will Baude.
Chief Legal Officer, American Jewish Committee
Marc Stern is an expert in legal advocacy on issues of concern to the Jewish community, including the new field of "lawfare"—pursuing war through the use of international legal procedures. He came to AJC after 33 years at the American Jewish Congress, where he was General Counsel since 1999 and acting Co-Executive Director since 2008. Stern has authored numerous legal briefs, published many scholarly articles, and has argued four cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He earned a B.A. at Yeshiva University and a J.D. at the Columbia University School of Law.
The Battle Over School Choice: National and Local Perspectives
Charlotte, North CarolinaIndiana Supreme Court Upholds Constitutionality of Vouchers for K-12 Education
Leslie Davis Hiner
In a landmark 5-0 decision, Chief Justice Brent Dickson of the Indiana Supreme Court delivered...
Panel One: Are Vouchers and Charter Schools Viable Alternatives to Public Schools?
Carlos T. Bea, Julian R. Betts, Clint Bolick, Bruce Fuller, Leonard A. Leo, William R. Maurer, Gloria Romero
Parental and community support for school choice has increased dramatically in recent years, with vouchers,...
Panel One: Are Vouchers and Charter Schools Viable Alternatives to Public Schools?
2013 Annual Western Conference
Simi Valley, CADoes the Establishment Clause Require Broad Restrictions on Religious Expression As Recommended By President Obama’s Faith-Based Advisory Council?
Stuart J. Lark
Brought to you by the Religious Liberties Practice GroupThe Federalist Society takes no position on particular...
New York and Maine High Courts Review State Financing of Schools
Amber Taylor
In the last year, the highest courts in New York and Maine issued important rulings...
Cleveland Program
Cleveland, OhioThe Conservative Case for an Activist Judiciary
HartfordThe Establishment Clause, Federalism and the States
John C. Eastman
At the conclusion of its 2001-2002 term, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Zelman...
School Vouchers: Past Lessons and Future Prospects - A Case Study on Constitutionality: Zelman v. Simmons-Harris
Richard Komer, Steven Green, James Ammeen, Michael Stokes Paulsen, Marc Stern
MR. AMMEEN: The fortunate timing of this conference is not a coincidence. Knowing that the...