Alicia Bannon, Director, Judiciary Program, Brennan Center for Justice; Editor in Chief, State Court Report
Alicia Bannon is the director of the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program. An experienced constitutional lawyer and expert on the courts and access to justice, Bannon leads a team of lawyers and researchers engaged in policy advocacy, litigation, legislative campaigns, research and analysis, and public education. She also serves as the editor in chief of State Court Report, a Brennan Center publication focused on state courts and state constitutional law.
Before joining the Brennan Center, Bannon was a John J. Gibbons Fellow in public interest and constitutional law at Gibbons P.C. in Newark, New Jersey, where she litigated a wide range of civil rights cases.
Bannon is the author of numerous nationally recognized reports and pieces of legal scholarship, and she regularly writes and comments for media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, Slate, MSNBC, and NPR. She has provided testimony, briefings, and policy advice to lawmakers across the country and taught as an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law and Seton Hall Law School.
Bannon graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude with a degree in social studies and received her JD from Yale Law School. She clerked for Hon. Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Hon. Kimba M. Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Justice Clint Bolick, Arizona Supreme Court
Clint Bolick was appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and in 2018 was retained by voters for a six-year term.
Prior to joining the court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as cofounder 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.
He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers of 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 the American Lawyer in 2002.
Justice Bolick holds a BA magna cum laude from Drew University and received his JD from the University of California, Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus.
Sharon Brett, Legal Director, ACLU of Kansas
Sharon Brett is the legal director of the ACLU of Kansas, where she develops and implements the affiliate’s litigation strategy and litigates a wide array of civil rights and liberties cases in Kansas’s state and federal courts. She also manages the affiliate’s legal intake program and contributes to legal policy analysis, working collaboratively with other departments at the affiliate to carry out the ACLU’s integrated advocacy approach.
Additionally, Brett teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, and in the summer of 2024, she will join the faculty full time as a tenure-track associate professor of law.
Prior to joining the ACLU, Brett was a senior staff attorney at the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School, where she conducted policy research and advocacy related to the criminal legal system. Before that, she joined the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in the Special Litigation Section as a trial attorney through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. She focused on complex investigations and impact litigation regarding police misconduct and unconstitutional conditions in prisons and jails.
Brett received her undergraduate degree in psychology and criminal justice and her law degree magna cum laude from the University of Michigan. She was a law clerk for Hon. John M. Facciola on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Betts Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Jessica Bulman-Pozen is the Betts Professor of Law and a director of the Center for Constitutional Governance at Columbia Law School. She is an expert on federal and state constitutional and administrative law and a prize-winning teacher. Before joining the Columbia faculty, she was an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and Hon. Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Meryl J. Chertoff, Executive Director, Georgetown Project on State and Local Government Policy and Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Meryl Chertoff is visiting adjunct professor of law at the University of Miami Law School, adjunct instructor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, executive director of the Georgetown Project on State and Local Government Policy and Law, and managing editor of the State and Local Government Law Blog. She is an O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law Scholar and serves on the National Task Force on Election Crises. From 2009 to 2019, she served as executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Justice and Society Program.
Chertoff has held a variety of positions in and around state government. She was director of the New Jersey Washington Office, served on the legislative staff of a New Jersey General Assembly leader, and worked as a lobbyist in Trenton, New Jersey. Chertoff worked in the Office of Legislative Affairs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, participating in the agency’s transition into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.
From 2006 to 2009, she directed the Sandra Day O’Connor Project at Georgetown Law, on judicial independence and civic education. Earlier in her career, she practiced law in New York and New Jersey.
She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and served as a law clerk to Hon. Myron H. Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
Wilfred U. Codrington III, Associate Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Wilfred U. Codrington III is a Dean’s Research Scholar and associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, and presently a visiting associate professor law at Texas A&M School of Law. Professor Codrington teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional theory, and election law, which correspond to his research focus areas of constitutional theory, reform, and the rule of law; voting, elections, and the law of democracy; and race and antidiscrimination.
Professor Codrington is also a fellow at the Brennan Center, where he worked full time as counsel and the inaugural Bernard and Anne Spitzer Fellow prior to joining the Brooklyn Law School faculty. He is coauthor of The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union and a contributor to The Oxford Handbook of American Election Law.
Professor Codrington’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the NYU Law Review, Columbia Law Journal Forum, NYU Review of Law & Social Change, and Kentucky Law Journal. He is a frequent commentator on legal matters for national and international press and has written op-eds for outlets including the Atlantic, American Prospect, and Slate. He was previously a litigation associate at DLA Piper, a law clerk for Hon. Deborah Anne Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and a congressional staffer for Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC).
Kareem Crayton, Senior Director, Voting Rights and Representation, Brennan Center
Kareem Crayton is the Brennan Center’s senior director for voting and representation, where he manages the organization’s efforts to implement pro-voter reforms, combat suppression and intimidation, and push back against redistricting abuses.
An expert on the intersection of law, politics, and race, Crayton has served on law and political science faculties across the country and written more than two dozen publications that explore the connections between race and politics in representative institutions. The substantive architect of a first-generation video game about redistricting, Crayton is also a digital content creator whose work integrates the scholarly and practical aspects of voting and other civic participation to engage the broader public.
Crayton has served as a consultant to many advocacy groups and public officials, including by representing the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific Islander Caucuses before the U.S. Supreme Court as amicus counsel. Previously, he was executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, where he hired and trained a litigation team to argue in two key gerrymandering cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Crayton is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and holds a doctorate in political science and a law degree from Stanford University. He served as a law clerk for Hon. Harry Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and as a foreign law clerk for Hon. Sandile Ngcobo of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Jerry Dickinson, Vice Dean and Associate Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Jerry Dickinson serves as vice dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. His teaching and scholarship specialize in constitutional law and constitutional property. His recent scholarship focuses on constitutional judicial federalism, the relationship between federal and state courts, and the informal means that judicial sovereigns dialogue with each other in our system of judicial federalism.
His scholarship has been featured in numerous respected law reviews and has been cited by U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Sixth Circuits, amicus briefs filed in federal courts by former members of Congress, and by foreign and international courts, such as the High Court of South Africa. His work has also been featured in the Washington Post, Hill, and Atlantic.
Justice Anita Earls, Supreme Court of North Carolina
Anita Earls is an associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Before taking office on January 1, 2019, she was a civil rights attorney litigating voting rights, police misconduct, and other civil rights cases for 30 years.
Earls was the founder and executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization in Durham, North Carolina. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, she was a deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 1998 to 2000. She has served on the North Carolina State Board of Elections and the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission, and she currently co-chairs the Governor’s Task Force on Racial Equity in Criminal Justice.
Earls has taught as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina and University of Maryland Law Schools and in the African and African American Studies Department at Duke University. She holds a BA from Williams College and a JD from Yale Law School.
Marcus Gadson, Assistant Professor, Campbell University School of Law
Marcus Gadson joined Campbell University’s faculty on July 1, 2019. As a scholar, he focuses on state constitutions and civil procedure. His scholarship has appeared, or is forthcoming, in top-ranked journals such as the Michigan Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and Georgetown Law Journal.
In addition, Professor Gadson has repeatedly been recognized for his teaching. His students have voted him 1L Professor of the Year three times, and he received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching for the 2021–22 school year. Professor Gadson offers courses in civil procedure; constitutional law; state constitutional law; and race, justice, and the law.
Michele Goodwin, Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy, Georgetown Law
Michele Bratcher Goodwin is the Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. She is the co-faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Professor Goodwin previously was a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy. She was the Abraham Pinanski Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and is a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School.
Professor Goodwin is the 2023 recipient of the California Women’s Law Center Pursuit of Justice Award. In 2022, the American Bar Association recognized her with the Margaret Brent Award. In 2020–21, she was bestowed the Distinguished Senior Faculty Award for Research, the highest honor awarded by the University of California. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute as well as an elected fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Hastings Center (the organization central to the founding of bioethics).
Judge Caitlin J. Halligan, New York Court of Appeals
Caitlin J. Halligan was appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul as an associate judge of the New York Court of Appeals in April 2023.
Before attending law school, Judge Halligan served as a Princeton in Asia Teaching Fellow in Central China and as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill. From 1999 to 2006, she served in various roles in the New York Attorney General’s Office, including more than five years as solicitor general of New York. She also served as general counsel to the Manhattan district attorney from 2010 to 2013 and was in private practice at several law firms in New York City. Most recently, she was a partner at Selendy Gay Elsberg, where she headed the firm’s appellate and pro bono practices. Judge Halligan has taught various courses on public law issues at Harvard and Columbia law schools.
Judge Halligan received her BA from Princeton University and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center. She clerked for Hon. Patricia Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1995 to 1996 and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer from 1997 to 1998.
Helen Hershkoff, Herbert M. and Svetlana Wachtell Professor of Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties and Codirector, Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, NYU School of Law
Helen Hershkoff is the Herbert M. and Svetlana Wachtell Professor of Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties and codirector of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program at NYU School of Law. A member of the NYU faculty since 1995, Professor Hershkoff practiced law for almost two decades as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York; and as an associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Professor Hershkoff’s teaching focuses on civil procedure and federal courts. She also is a nationally recognized scholar on state constitutions. Her writing has concerned such topics as social and economic rights, state constitutional interpretive method, and the relation between state constitutional norms and common law decision-making. She has published widely about state constitutions in journals including the Harvard, Stanford, Fordham, and Rutgers law reviews and chapters in books published by Oxford and Cambridge University presses.
Professor Hershkoff is a 1973 graduate of Radcliffe-Harvard College and earned her JD from Harvard Law School. She holds a BA and an MA in modern history from St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar and received her degree with first-class honors. Professor Hershkoff currently serves on the boards of the Brennan Center and the Urban Justice Center, and she helped establish the nonprofit Party for Humanity.
Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson (ret.), Supreme Court of Texas
Wallace B. Jefferson is a partner at Alexander Dubose & Jefferson. Prior to joining the firm in October 2013, he served as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas. Appointed to the court in 2001 and named chief justice in 2004, Jefferson made Texas judicial history as the court’s first African American justice and chief justice. He led the court’s efforts to fund access-to-justice programs, helped reform juvenile justice, and inaugurated a statewide electronic filing system for Texas courts.
During his time on the bench, Jefferson was elected president of the Conference of Chief Justices, an association of chief justices from the 50 states and U.S. territories. Currently, Jefferson is chair of the Texas Commission to Expand Civil Legal Services, a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and a council member of the American Law Institute. He serves on the board of Lexitas and the Project on Government Oversight. Jefferson has been certified in civil appellate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since 1993 and has twice won cases he argued in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jefferson is a graduate of the James Madison College at Michigan State University and the University of Texas School of Law. He is licensed to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Michael Kang, Class of 1940 Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Michael S. Kang is a nationally recognized expert on campaign finance, voting rights, redistricting, judicial elections, and corporate governance. He is coauthor of Free to Judge: The Power of Campaign Money in Judicial Elections. His research has been published widely in leading law journals and featured in outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Forbes.
His recent work focuses on partisan gerrymandering, the influence of party and campaign finance on elected judges, the deregulation of campaign finance after Citizens United, and so-called “sore loser laws” that restrict losing primary candidates from running in the general election. The American Constitution Society profiled Professor Kang’s empirical work on judicial campaign ads and judges’ criminal law decisions in Skewed Justice. Their findings were published in the Michigan Law Review and cited by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Williams-Yulee v. Fla. Bar. Professor Kang also was appointed by President Joe Biden to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor Kang received his BA and JD from the University of Chicago, where he served as technical editor of the law review and graduated Order of the Coif. He received a PhD in government from Harvard University and an MA from the University of Illinois. After law school, he clerked for Hon. Michael Kanne of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and worked in private practice at Ropes & Gray in Boston.
Diana Kasdan, Director for Judicial Strategy, U.S. Program, Center for Reproductive Rights
Diana Kasdan is the director of judicial strategy for U.S. Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights. Kasdan leads a team producing original legal research, analysis, and reports; authoring and organizing amicus briefs and campaigns; engaging legal, academic, and progressive allies; and developing strategies to build constitutional protection for reproductive rights over the long term.
Kasdan began her career as a reproductive rights advocate and public interest attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. While there, she worked on a range of litigation and amici curiae efforts in federal and state courts and developed advocacy campaigns to improve the conditions and care of pregnant people who are incarcerated.
Prior to joining the Center for Reproductive Rights, Kasdan served as senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, where she focused on litigation and advocacy to prevent voter disenfranchisement and authored several publications examining the laws and policies impacting voter participation. In her role as director of foundation relations, Kasdan led all aspects of foundation fundraising strategy and partnerships.
Kasdan clerked for Hon. Nicholas G. Garaufis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She received her BA from Washington University, and she graduated magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from NYU School of Law, where she served as a notes editor for the NYU Law Review and was a Hays Civil Liberties Fellow.
Justice Goodwin Liu, Supreme Court of California
Goodwin Liu is an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Nominated by Gov. Jerry Brown, Justice Liu was sworn into office in 2011 and retained by the electorate in 2014 and 2022. Before joining the court, he was a professor of law and associate dean at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
His primary areas of expertise are constitutional law, education law and policy, and diversity in the legal profession. He continues to teach constitutional law as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, and Stanford Law School. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, of which he is also chair of the board. He serves on the council of the American Law Institute, on the board of the James Irvine Foundation, and as president of the Yale University Council.
Justice Liu earned a BA in biology from Stanford, an MA in philosophy and physiology from Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a JD from Yale. He clerked for Hon. David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also worked in the litigation practice of O’Melveny & Myers and served as special assistant to the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.
Julie Murray, Senior Staff Attorney, State Supreme Court Initiative, ACLU
Julie Murray is a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she co-launched in May 2023 the organization’s State Supreme Court Initiative, which is a team of four litigators dedicated to protecting and expanding civil rights and liberties in cases before state high courts.
Before joining the ACLU, Murray was a litigator at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, where she brought challenges to restrictions on sexual and reproductive health and education. Notably, Murray served as Planned Parenthood’s lead lawyer challenging Texas’s Senate Bill 8 — the state’s “bounty hunter” abortion ban — in state and federal court. She also litigated cases in Iowa, South Carolina, Ohio, and Utah state courts, where she represented clients raising state privacy, due process, equal rights, and other constitutional challenges.
Prior to Planned Parenthood, Murray served as a litigator for more than seven years with Public Citizen Litigation Group, where she worked on a range of cases involving free speech and other constitutional law, administrative law, and the rights of consumers and workers. She was also a fellow at the National Women’s Law Center.
Murray is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and Harvard Law School and clerked for Hon. Marsha Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor (ret.), Supreme Court of Ohio
Maureen O’Connor became the first female chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court on January 1, 2011. She joined the court in 2003, becoming its 148th justice and giving the court its first-ever female majority. O’Connor is the tenth chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, the first woman to lead the state judicial branch of government, a Cleveland State College of Law graduate, and a member of the Cleveland-Marshall Hall of Fame. She is the longest-serving statewide elected woman in Ohio history.
Chief Justice O’Connor has led significant reforms and improvements in the Ohio judicial system and is a leader nationally. Since 2015, she has endowed Ohio local courts with more than $35 million to add and enhance technology. This funding has increased access to justice for litigants, defendants, and the public. Chief Justice O’Connor has also worked to improve fairness in the judicial system. She was selected by her peers in the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators to co-chair the National Task Force on Fines, Fees, and Bail Practices in 2016. She is a former president of the Conference of Chief Justices and former chair of the National Center for State Courts Board of Directors.
In retirement, she is spearheading the campaign “Citizens Not Politicians,” a constitutional amendment to reform redistricting in Ohio, slated for the 2024 ballot.
Chief Justice Barbara Pariente (ret.), Supreme Court of Florida
Barbara Pariente’s legal and judicial career has spanned 50 years. She retired from the Florida Supreme Court in 2019, ending a 21-year career as a supreme court justice. She served as chief justice from 2004 to 2006. She graduated from George Washington Law School with highest honors in 1973 and after law school clerked for a federal district court judge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from 1973 to 1975.
Following her clerkship, Justice Pariente practiced civil trial litigation in West Palm Beach. She was also involved with her local Legal Aid Society and was a founding member of the Palm Beach County Chapter of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers.
In 1993, Justice Pariente was appointed to the Fourth District Court of Appeal, where she served until her appointment as the 77th justice of the Florida Supreme Court in 1997. During her time on the supreme court, she worked to improve methods for handling cases involving families and children in the courts.
Justice Pariente was inducted into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame in 2008. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the American College of Trial Lawyers’ Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Award, which recognizes judges for their exemplary judicial independence. She has written on the system of merit retention and selection in Florida and most recently has spoken out on the abortion bans in Florida.
Ryan Park, Solicitor General, North Carolina
Ryan Park is the solicitor general of North Carolina, where he serves as the state’s chief appellate and constitutional lawyer. He has previously practiced at a national law firm, worked as an attorney-adviser at the U.S. Department of State, and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Hon. Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
He graduated with distinction from Amherst College and summa cum laude from Harvard Law School and has worked in South Korea on a Fulbright Fellowship. He teaches North Carolina constitutional law at University of North Carolina Law School and appellate practice at Duke Law School. He has also written on law and society for publications including the Atlantic and the New York Times.
Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Judith Resnik is the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches courses on state and federal courts in the federal system, procedure, rationing access to legal remedies, imprisonment, equality, and citizenship. Her scholarship focuses on the relationship between democratic values and government services; the role of collective redress and class actions; contemporary conflicts over privatization; the relationships of states to citizens and noncitizens; the interaction among federal, state, and tribal courts; practices of punishment; and equality and gender.
Resnik is the founding director of Yale’s Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law, which has supported year-long fellowships for more than 180 graduates of the Yale Law School, teaches seminars, and convenes a colloquium each year. She received a two-year Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to complete research on her forthcoming book, Impermissible Punishments, to explore how, in the wake of the Holocaust and the U.S. civil rights revolution, prisoners gained legal recognition and reframed the limit on punishments that government can, in a polity claiming to be committed to the equal status of its members, impose on individuals convicted of crimes.
Resnik is also an occasional litigator and, in 2018, was awarded an honorary doctorate from University College of London. She has chaired the Association of American Law Schools’ Sections on Federal Courts, Procedure, and Women in Legal Education, and she is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A graduate of NYU Law School, she was a Hays Fellow and also returned as a visiting law professor.
Judge Albert Rosenblatt (ret.), New York Court of Appeals
Chief Justice Loretta Rush, Indiana Supreme Court
Loretta H. Rush was sworn in as Indiana’s 108th supreme court justice in November 2012 after being appointed by Gov. Mitch Daniels. She was retained by voters in 2014. The Judicial Nominating Commission named her Indiana’s first female Chief Justice in August 2014, and she was reappointed in 2019.
Chief Justice Rush is the immediate past president of the Conference of Chief Justices and a member of the National Center for State Courts Board of Directors. She served as co-chair of the National Judicial Opioid Task Force, and as an executive committee member on the National Judicial Task Force to Examine State Courts’ Response to Mental Illness. In 2019, she was appointed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to serve as a member of the Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction. Rush recently was elected as a member of the American Law Institute, and she is a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation, as well as an Academy of Law Alumni Fellow for the Maurer School of Law.
Prior to her appointment, Rush spent 15 years at a Lafayette law firm and was elected three times to serve as Tippecanoe Superior Court III judge. She earned her undergraduate degree from Purdue University and her law degree from Indiana University Maurer School of Law, both with honors.
Robert Schapiro, Dean and C. Hugh Friedman Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law
Robert A. Schapiro is dean and C. Hugh Friedman Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law. His scholarship focuses on federalism and state and federal constitutional law. His most recent works include “The Unconstitutional Conditions Vacuum in Criminal Procedure” (Yale Law Journal, forthcoming 2024) and “Protecting State Constitutional Rights from Unconstitutional Conditions” (UC Davis Law Review, 2022).
Prior to becoming dean at the USD School of Law in 2021, Schapiro was a faculty member at Emory University School of Law, where he served as dean and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law and codirector of the Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance. He previously held positions as associate vice provost for academic affairs, associate dean of faculty for the law school, and associate faculty director for Emory’s Halle Institute for Global Learning. While at Emory, Schapiro received several awards, including the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award for excellence in graduate education and the Ben F. Johnson Faculty Excellence Award.
He obtained a BA from Yale College, an MA from Stanford University, and a JD from Yale Law School, where he served as editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal. Schapiro clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and Hon. Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Miriam Seifter, Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School
Miriam Seifter is a professor of law, codirector of the State Democracy Research Initiative, and Rowe Faculty Fellow in Regulatory Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her research interests include federalism, administrative and constitutional law, and state and local government law, with a focus on challenges affecting democracy at the state level. She also teaches courses in administrative law, property law, and state and local government law.
Professor Seifter’s recent publications appear in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and NYU Law Review. Seifter was named the 2017 winner of the American Constitution Society’s Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law, and she was bestowed the American Bar Association’s 2020 Award for Scholarship in Administrative Law.
Professor Seifter received a BA magna cum laude from Yale University, an MSc with distinction from Oxford University, and a JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was the environmental fellow and an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. After law school, she served as a law clerk for Hon. Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Prior to joining the UW Law faculty, she was a visiting researcher and adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and worked in private practice at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in San Francisco.
Carolyn Shapiro, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Administration and Strategic Initiatives, Chicago-Kent College of Law
Carolyn Shapiro is a professor of law and associate dean for academic administration and strategic initiatives at Chicago-Kent College of Law, where she is also the founder and codirector of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as the faculty director of the Constitutional Democracy Project, a civic education initiative. Professor Shapiro’s scholarship is largely focused on the Supreme Court, its relationship to other courts and institutions, and its role in our constitutional democracy, as well as on other structural constitutional matters. She teaches classes in constitutional law, legislation and statutory interpretation, and public interest law and policy, and she directs the Chicago-Kent Public Interest Certificate Program.
Before joining the faculty at Chicago-Kent in 2003, she held a Skadden Fellowship at the Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and worked in private practice at a plaintiff’s side civil rights firm. From 2014 to mid-2016, she took a leave of absence from Chicago-Kent to serve as Illinois solicitor general in the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Professor Shapiro maintains a small appellate practice and is of counsel to Schnapper-Casteras PLLC.
Professor Shapiro earned her JD from the University of Chicago Law School. After graduating, she served as a law clerk for Hon. Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kate Shaw, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Kate Shaw is a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She has written extensively about the presidency, the law of democracy, the Supreme Court, and reproductive rights and justice.
Before joining the Penn faculty in January 2024, she spent over a decade on the faculty of Cardozo Law School. Earlier in her career, she served as an associate counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Richard Posner.
Her scholarly writing has appeared, among other places, in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, and Northwestern University Law Review, and her popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, Time, and the Atlantic. She is a contributor with ABC News, a contributing opinion writer with the New York Times, and co-host of the Supreme Court podcast Strict Scrutiny.
Sam Spital, Director of Litigation and General Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Sam Spital is the director of litigation and general counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, where he leads LDF’s racial justice litigation docket across the organization’s four pillars: education, economic justice, criminal justice, and political participation. He also supervises LDF’s appellate litigation in the Supreme Court, federal circuit courts, and state supreme courts. He has drafted or contributed to over 50 Supreme Court briefs since joining LDF in 2017.
Spital maintains an active docket of his own cases, including several high-profile criminal justice, voting rights, and education matters, and he is a recognized expert in death penalty litigation. Prior to joining LDF, Spital practiced for over a decade at two national law firms, and between 2012 and 2017, he was a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School.
Outside of the courtroom, Spital has testified before Congress about the need for new voting rights legislation, and he is a frequent participant on panels at conferences for legal academics and practitioners. His commentary on civil rights issues, capital punishment, and Supreme Court litigation has appeared in law reviews and general publications, including the George Washington Law Review, National Law Journal, Northern Illinois Law Review, CNN, and the Hill.
He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He clerked for Hon. Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hernandez Stroud, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center Justice Program
Hernandez D. Stroud is a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. An authority on prisons and jails, correctional oversight, and constitutional law, he researches the scope of the federal government’s power to fashion structural and systemic reforms that prevent and remedy the failure of state and local criminal justice institutions in observing the constitutional rights of the incarcerated. He also drafts and spearheads federal criminal legal and policy reforms. Currently, he holds adjunct professorships at Columbia University and NYU School of Law and is an affiliated fellow at Yale Law School.
Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Stroud was the inaugural recipient of the Robert F. Drinan Visiting Assistant Professorship at Boston College Law School, where he taught and wrote in the areas of constitutional law, civil rights, and statutory interpretation.
Stroud has been featured in media outlets including USA Today, Time, National Public Radio, and C-SPAN. He is the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in teaching, research, and policy, including selection to Forbes’ “30 Under 30.”
Stroud earned his undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, his master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and his law degree with honors from the Washington and Lee University School of Law. He clerked for Hon. O. Rogeriee Thompson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Hon. Madeline Hughes Haikala of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Wendy Weiser, Vice President, Brennan Center Democracy Program
Wendy Weiser directs the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, which focuses on voting rights and elections, money in politics, redistricting and representation, government dysfunction, the rule of law, and fair courts. She founded and directed the program’s Voting Rights and Elections Project, directing litigation, research, and advocacy efforts to enhance political participation and prevent voter disenfranchisement.
She has authored nationally recognized publications and articles on voting rights and election reform, litigated groundbreaking lawsuits on democracy issues, testified before both houses of Congress and in several state legislatures, and provided legislative and policy drafting assistance to federal and state legislators and administrators.
She is a frequent public speaker and media commentator on democracy issues. She has appeared on media outlets including CBS News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, PBS, ABC News, and NPR, and her commentary has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and elsewhere. She has also served as an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law.
Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Weiser was a senior attorney at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, where she worked on issues of access to the courts and domestic violence; a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; and a law clerk to Hon. Eugene H. Nickerson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She received her BA from Yale College and her JD from Yale Law School.
Robert F. Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, Rutgers Law School
Robert F. Williams is the Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at Rutgers University School of Law and the director of the Center for State Constitutional Studies.
He has been the legislative advocacy director and executive director of Florida Legal Services; an International Legal Center Fellow in Kabul, Afghanistan; and a reporter for the Florida Law Revision Council’s Landlord-Tenant Law Project. In addition, he served as a legislative assistant to Florida Sen. D. Robert Graham, a staff attorney with Legal Services of Greater Miami, and a law clerk to Hon. T. Frank Hobson of the Florida Second District Court of Appeal. His books include The Law of American State Constitutions, The New Jersey State Constitution, and State Constitutional Law: Cases and Materials.
Professor Williams earned his BA cum laude at Florida State University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi. He earned his JD with honors at the University of Florida School of Law, where he was executive editor of the law review and a member of the Order of the Coif. He also earned his LLM at NYU School of Law, where he was a Ford Foundation Urban Law Fellow. In addition, he has been a Chamberlain Fellow at Columbia University Law School, where he earned an LLM. He is admitted to the bars of Florida, New Jersey, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Robinson Woodward-Burns, Associate Professor, Howard University
Robinson Woodward-Burns is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Political Science at Howard University, where he researches constitutionalism, federalism, and voting rights.
His first book, Hidden Laws: How State Constitutions Stabilize American Politics, was published in 2021 by Yale University Press. His research is also published or forthcoming in the Journal of Politics, Polity, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Perspectives on Politics, Studies in American Political Development, the Maryland Law Review, the Nebraska Law Review, the Tulsa Law Review, the Atlantic, and the Washington Post. He is writing a second book, on state-level voting rights rollback, with support from the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress.
Mary R. Ziegler, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law
Mary Ziegler is the Martin Luther King Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Ziegler taught at St. Louis University, Florida State University, and Harvard University before joining the faculty at UC Davis in 2022.
One of the world’s leading historians of the abortion debate in the United States, she is the author of six books on social movement struggles around reproduction, democracy, and the polarization of U.S. politics. Her first book, After Roe, was published by Harvard University Press in 2015 and received the Thomas J. Wilson Prize for the best manuscript in any discipline.
Her work has consistently probed the sources of polarization of battles about reproduction, including the role played by disputes over science and campaign finance. Ziegler has studied these issues in both national and international contexts, recently editing a definitive collection of essays on abortion law around the globe with Elgar Press. Her most recent book, on the history of struggles over fetal personhood, won her a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2023–24.
She frequently educates the public about the history behind contemporary struggles over sex and reproduction, contributing pieces to the Atlantic, CNN, and the New York Times, and sharing commentary on NPR and PBS NewsHour.