Biographies of 2021 Supreme Court Preview Panelists
MEAGHAN VERGOW- O'Melveny & Myers
Meaghan VerGow is a partner at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, where she is a member of the firm’s Financial Services and Appellate Practices. Meaghan has briefed and argued cases in trial and appellate courts across the country, and has secured multiple unanimous Supreme Court victories. She maintains an active pro bono practice concentrating on First Amendment and criminal justice matters, and in 2020 she received the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project’s John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award.
Meaghan clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice David H. Souter on the Supreme Court. Meaghan received her B.A. from Columbia University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served as an Articles Editor for the Harvard Law Review.
TIFFANY R. WRIGHT- Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Tiffany R. Wright directs the Human and Civil Rights Clinic at Howard University School of Law as part of a Racial Justice Fellowship sponsored by Orrick, Herrington, & Sutcliffe LLP. Her practice focuses on significant civil rights cases in federal and state appellate courts. Tiffany was one of primary strategists and authors of briefing in Taylor v. Riojas (2020), where the U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed the grant of qualified immunity to prison guards who subjected an inmate to inhumane conditions. Taylor is one of the few times in history—and the first time in at least 16 years—that the Court reversed the grant of qualified immunity to law enforcement. Tiffany was also lead counsel and presented oral argument in the Second Circuit in Uniformed Fire Officers’ Association v. DeBlasio (2021), where she defeated police unions’ effort to prevent disclosure of police misconduct records following the repeal of a New York law that had kept such records secret for decades.
Tiffany is a former law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge David S. Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Royce C. Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She is a magna cum laude graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and earned her law degree while working full-time and raising a toddler.
Tiffany serves on the Board of Directors for The Appellate Project, an organization dedicated to increasing diversity in appellate practice. She also serves on the Supreme Court & Appellate Program Advisory Board of the MacArthur Justice Center.
ROBERT BARNES - Washington Post
Robert Barnes has spent most of his career at The Washington Post, as a reporter and editor. He joined the paper to cover politics in 1987, and has covered campaigns at the presidential, congressional and gubernatorial level. He served in various editing positions, including metropolitan editor, deputy national editor in charge of domestic issues and the Supreme Court, and national political editor.
He returned to reporting to cover the Supreme Court in November 2006, and has done so since then, with a brief break to cover the conclusion of the 2008 presidential campaign. He covered the Supreme Court nominations of Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
He is a native Floridian, and previously worked at the Associated Press and St. Petersburg (now, Tampa Bay) Times. He gave up law school plans for a life in newspapers after taking a journalism class at the University of Florida.
GREG STOHR - Bloomberg
Greg Stohr has been the Bloomberg News Supreme Court reporter for over 20 years. He won the New York Press Club spot news award for his coverage of the 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision, and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers breaking news award for the Court’s 2012 Obamacare decision. In 2004, he published a book on the University of Michigan affirmative action cases titled A Black and White Case: How Affirmative Action Survived its Greatest Legal Challenge.
Stohr has taught a course on Constitutional Law and the Supreme Court at the George Washington University School of Law. After graduating with honors from Harvard Law School in 1995, he clerked for Judge Frank A. Kaufman of the District of Maryland.
STEPHANOS BIBAS - U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Stephanos Bibas is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Bibas was previously a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As director of the Penn Law Supreme Court Clinic, he argued six cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and filed briefs in dozens of others. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1989 with a B.A. in political theory and from Oxford University in 1991 with a B.A. in jurisprudence. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994. After graduating from Yale Law, Judge Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C.
Thereafter, Judge Bibas served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world’s leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal priceless Tiffany windows from cemeteries. Before his tenure at Penn Law, Judge Bibas taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School. He has published two books and more than sixty scholarly articles.
JESS BRAVIN - Wall Street Journal
Jess Bravin covers the U.S. Supreme Court for The Wall Street Journal, following earlier postings as United Nations correspondent and editor of the WSJ/California weekly. His books include "The Terror Courts," an account of military trials at Guantanamo Bay, and "Squeaky: The Life and Times of Lynette Alice Fromme,” along with contributions to "Violence in America: An Encyclopedia," "Crimes of War 2.0" and "A Concise Introduction to Logic" (2nd ed.). Mr. Bravin is a regent emeritus of the University of California, delivered the John Field Simms Sr. Memorial Lecture in Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law and has taught at the University of California Washington Center. He served on the city Police Review Commission in Berkeley, Calif., and the UC Berkeley Police Review Board, and presently is a member of the Takoma Park, Md., Ethics Commission. He attended Harvard College and holds a law degree from UC Berkeley.
ERWIN CHEMERINSKY - UC Berkley School of Law
Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law. Prior to assuming this position, from 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science. Before that he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science.
He is the author of fourteen books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (2021) and The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State (with Howard Gillman) (2020). He also is the author of more than 250 law review articles. He is a contributing writer for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, and writes regular columns for the Sacramento Bee, the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.
BETH BRINKMANN - Covington & Burling
Beth Brinkmann is a partner in the DC office of Covington & Burling and serves as co-chair of the firm's Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Group. She joined the firm after serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, where she oversaw the Division’s nationwide appellate litigation. She also has practiced for more than two decades before the Supreme Court of the United States, including as Assistant to the Solicitor General and in private practice. She argued her 25th case before the Supreme Court in 2019, and regularly argues in federal and state appellate courts across the country.
As the Civil Division’s top appellate lawyer, Ms. Brinkmann represented federal agencies and Executive Branch officials in high-profile cases across a range of subject areas, including constitutional law, regulatory challenges, intellectual property matters, FOIA, federal preemption, and national security cases. She coordinated with government trial teams on analysis of potential legal arguments at early phases of litigation, and collaborated across offices on development of appellate and Supreme Court strategy. Ms. Brinkmann also presented congressional testimony and advised senior leadership of cabinet-level departments and regulatory agencies regarding litigation risk, legislative proposals, and rule-making matters.
Previously, Ms. Brinkmann served as Assistant to the Solicitor General, briefing and arguing Supreme Court cases on behalf of the federal government. She served as Assistant Federal Public Defender, representing indigent criminal defendants, including approximately a dozen felony jury trials. Following law school, she served as a law clerk to Hon. Phyllis A. Kravitch, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and to Hon. Harry A. Blackmun, Supreme Court of the United States. Ms. Brinkmann graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, A.B. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School.
JEFFREY FISHER - Stanford Law School
Jeffrey Fisher is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. He has argued 44 cases in the Supreme Court, on issues ranging from criminal procedure to maritime law to civil and human rights. He also has published academic articles on various constitutional issues and is a frequent commentator on the Court.
Professor Fisher’s successes include the landmark cases of Crawford v. Washington and Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, in which he persuaded the Court to adopt a new approach to the Constitution’s Confrontation Clause; Riley v. California, in which the Court for the first time applied the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches to digital information on smart phones; Blakely v. Washington, in which the Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial applies to sentencing guidelines; and Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits states from imposing capital punishment for crimes against individuals that do not result in death. Professor Fisher was also co-counsel for the plaintiffs in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees same-sex couples a right to marry.
In addition to his work at Stanford, Professor Fisher is also special counsel at O'Melveny & Myers. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mr. Fisher earned his B.A. from Duke University and his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.
IRVING GORNSTEIN - Supreme Court Institute, Georgetown Law Center
Professor Gornstein is the Executive Director of the Supreme Court Institute and a Professor from Practice at Georgetown Law Center. Professor Gornstein teaches Criminal Justice and Federal Courts, and he also co-teaches a Civil Rights seminar with Judge Srinivasan and a Current Issues seminar with Judge Pillard, both of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Professor Gornstein previously worked as an Assistant to the Solicitor General for many years, and he returned to the Solicitor General's Office as the Acting Principal Deputy for the last six months of the Obama administration. During his two stints at the Solicitor General's Office, Professor Gornstein argued 38 cases in the Supreme Court. Before that, Professor Gornstein worked in the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division.
KANNON SHANMUGAM - Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison LLP
Kannon Shanmugam is a partner at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He is chair of the firm’s Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice and managing partner of the Washington office. Kannon is widely recognized as one of the nation’s top appellate litigators. He was named 2021 Appellate Litigator of the Year by Benchmark Litigation. Kannon has argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court, including four cases in the recent 2020-2021 term. Beyond the Supreme Court, he has argued dozens of appeals in courts across the country, including arguments in all thirteen federal courts of appeals and in numerous state courts.
Kannon has been recognized as one of the top 500 lawyers in the nation (Lawdragon magazine) and as one of the top 10 lawyers in Washington (Super Lawyers). He has been featured on numerous lists of top Supreme Court advocates, with Washingtonian magazine naming him one of its 20 people in Washington to watch. Kannon has been named The American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Week” three times, and a Law360 “Legal Lion of the Week” eleven times for a series of victories at all three levels of the federal courts.
Benchmark Litigation noted that Kannon is “one of the most respected and admired appellate practitioners” in the country. One longtime Supreme Court reporter recently said that Kannon “has perhaps the most eloquent and elegant manner … that I’ve ever seen in my 40 years covering the Court,” adding that he “projects calm, confidence, and authority from the moment he takes to the lectern.” Chambers USA described him as “absolutely phenomenal,” “a master of his craft” who “sees things that others don’t.”
Kannon has served as the co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Appellate Practice Committee and is also a past president of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, the principal bench-bar organization for appellate judges and lawyers in the Washington area. Kannon is the only practicing American attorney who is an honorary bencher of the Inner Temple, one of the four English Inns of Court.
Kannon has taught Supreme Court advocacy as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. In the community, he has served as chair of the board of trustees of Thurgood Marshall Academy, a charter school in Southeast Washington that is one of the city’s highest-performing public high schools. He has devoted substantial time to pro bono representation in the areas of criminal law and religious liberty.
PAUL SMITH - Georgetown Law School and Campaign Legal Center
Professor Smith has four decades of experience litigating a wide range of cases. He has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court 21 times and secured numerous victories, including in important cases advancing civil liberties. Two examples are Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark gay rights case, and Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, which established First Amendment rights of those who produce and sell video games.
In addition, Paul has argued a number of important voting rights cases at the Supreme Court, including Gill v. Whitford and Vieth v. Jubelirer, involving partisan gerrymandering, LULAC v. Perry, involving the legality of Texas’s mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board¸ involving the constitutionality of a voter identification law, and Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, involving a constitutional challenge to Arizona’s legislative map.
Paul previously served as a partner in the law firm of Jenner & Block, where he was chair of the firm's Appellate and Supreme Court Practice and co-chair of the firm's Election Law and Redistricting Practice. He is now a Professor from Practice at Georgetown University Law Center and the VP for Litigation and Strategy at the Campaign Legal Center.
Paul graduated from Amherst College and Yale Law School, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. In 2010, he was given the Thurgood Marshall Award by the ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice for his work promoting civil rights and civil liberties.
ADAM LIPTAK - New York Times
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times’s news staff in 2002. In 2007, he began writing “Sidebar,” a column on legal affairs. In 2008, he became the paper’s Supreme Court correspondent.
Liptak was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2009. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He has taught courses on the Supreme Court and the First Amendment at the University of Chicago Law School, New York University School of Law and Yale Law School.
JEFF WALL - Sullivan & Cromwell
Jeff Wall is a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Litigation Group and the head of its Supreme Court and Appellate Practice. Mr. Wall is the former Acting Solicitor General of the United States. He has argued 30 cases in the Supreme Court in a number of areas, including securities, class actions, arbitration, intellectual property, taxation, labor and employment, bankruptcy, preemption, the False Claims Act, the First Amendment, and criminal law and procedure. Mr. Wall has briefed and argued numerous cases before federal and state courts of appeals and administrative agencies. In addition to his appellate experience, Mr. Wall has represented clients in a range of complex civil and criminal matters at the trial level, including as lead counsel in a successful federal criminal trial.
Before rejoining Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Wall served in the Office of the Solicitor General as the Principal Deputy for four years, twice leading the office as the Acting Solicitor General from March to September 2017 and again from July 2020 to January 2021. In that role, he was responsible for overseeing appellate litigation by the United States in the Supreme Court and the courts of appeals, which required coordinating with and counseling agencies throughout the federal government on their regulatory objectives. He successfully argued several major Supreme Court cases on the separation of powers, constitutional rights, executive authority, and religious liberty. Mr. Wall also served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General from 2008 to 2013.
Following law school, Mr. Wall clerked for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He has taught courses in law school on administrative law and federal jurisdiction. He is a member and former officer of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, a member of the Supreme Court Historical Society, and a former member of the Advisory Committee on Procedures for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
ANDREW PINCUS - Mayer Brown
Andrew Pincus focuses his appellate practice on briefing and arguing cases in the Supreme Court of the United States and in federal and state appellate courts; developing legal strategy for trial courts; and presenting policy and legal arguments to Congress, state legislatures, and regulatory agencies. Mr. Pincus has argued 30 cases in the Supreme Court. Law360 ranked his victory in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (2011), as the most important Supreme Court class action decision of the last 15 years.
A former Assistant to the Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice (1984-1988), Mr. Pincus co-founded and serves as co-director of the Yale Law School's Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic (2006-present), which provides pro bono representation in 10-15 Supreme Court cases each year. His practice also includes detailed written and oral advocacy before Congress, other legislative bodies, and regulatory agencies regarding a variety of policy and legal issues. He frequently testifies before Congress on a variety of subjects, including patent reform, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reform of the federal litigation system, and the Supreme Court's decisions in cases involving business law issues. Mr. Pincus successfully represented clients in connection with passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Reporters often turn to Mr. Pincus for commentary on Supreme Court cases. He also frequently speaks and writes on legal issues for academic, professional, and general audiences.
While serving as General Counsel of the United States Department of Commerce (1997-2000), Mr. Pincus had principal responsibility for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. He also participated in formulation of policy concerning intellectual property protection, privacy, domain name management, taxation of electronic commerce, export controls, international trade, and consumer protection. Before rejoining Mayer Brown, Mr. Pincus served as General Counsel of Andersen Worldwide S.C. Following law school graduation, Andy was Law Clerk to the Honorable Harold H. Greene, United States District Court for the District of Columbia (1981-1982), after which he practiced with another major law firm in Washington.
PRATIK A. SHAH - Akin Gump
Mr. Shah is head of Akin Gump’s Supreme Court and Appellate practice. He has argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court and dozens more in other appellate courts across the country, including in every circuit. Named a “litigation trailblazer” (National Law Journal), Mr. Shah has been recognized for “practicing before the highest court in the land on some of the most groundbreaking cases of the 21st century” (Washington Business Journal) and described as “the complete package: an extremely gifted writer and an extremely effective oral advocate” (Chambers USA).
Before joining Akin Gump, Mr. Shah served for more than five years as an Assistant to the Solicitor General at the Department of Justice. He received a number of awards for his advocacy before the Supreme Court during that time, including the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his role as lead drafter of the successful challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor.
Prior to his work in the Solicitor General’s office, Mr. Shah worked in the appellate practice of another international law firm, taught constitutional law, and clerked for Justice Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge William A. Fletcher on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.S.E. from Princeton University and with a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
PATRICIA MILLETT - U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit
Judge Millett was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals on December 10, 2013. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (summa cum laude) in 1985 and from Harvard Law School (magna cum laude) in 1988. After working in a private law firm (Miller & Chevalier) for two years, she clerked for Judge Thomas Tang of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Following her clerkship, she worked for four years on the Appellate Staff of the Civil Division in the United States Department of Justice and for eleven years as an Assistant in the Office of the Solicitor General. In September 2007, she became a leading partner the Supreme Court and appellate practices at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. She has argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
KEVIN NEWSOM - U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama. Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
ERIN E. MURPHY - Kirkland & Ellis
Erin Murphy is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Her practice focuses on Supreme Court, appellate, and constitutional litigation. She has argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including successfully arguing McCutcheon v. FEC; successfully arguing on behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives in Texas v. United States; and successfully arguing on behalf of the Wisconsin State Legislature in Gill v. Whitford.
Erin has been recognized by the National Law Journal as one of the nation’s “Outstanding Women Lawyers” and “Litigation Trailblazer”; has been ranked by Chambers & Partners as one of the nation’s top appellate lawyers; and has been named a “Rising Star” by numerous publications.
Erin’s work before the Supreme Court has included briefing such high-profile and high-impact cases as PennEast v. New Jersey, TransUnion v. Ramirez, Maine Community Health Options v. United States, Bond v. United States, and NFIB v. Sebelius. She also has a robust practice before the U.S. Courts of Appeals, where she has argued before most of the circuits on several important statutory and constitutional questions, including the scope of the First and Second Amendments, the Takings Clause, the Federal Power Act, and the National Labor Relations Act. Her extensive appellate experience spans a wide range of topics and has included several cases dealing with energy law, labor law, bankruptcy law, the Affordable Care Act, and property rights.
Erin is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, has served as the co-chair of programming for the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and frequently speaks on topics relating to the Supreme Court and appellate advocacy. She has appeared on national television to discuss the Supreme Court and has been featured in several publications.
DAVID SAVAGE - Los Angeles Times
Mr. Savage has written about the Supreme Court for the Los Angeles Times since 1986 and has covered the confirmations of all the current justices. Prior to that, he was an education writer for the paper in Los Angeles. He is the author of "Turning Right: the Making of the Rehnquist Supreme Court" (1992) and of the revised two-volume Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court published by the CQ Press. He has degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern University.
MARTINA STEWART - USA Today
Martina Stewart is a senior editor in USA TODAY’s Washington, D.C. bureau responsible for Supreme Court coverage and USAT’s fact-checking team. She’s been on the SCOTUS beat since the fall of 2019. Journalism is a second career for Stewart. She graduated from Yale in 1994 and from Harvard Law School in 1997. Stewart practiced law for nearly a decade before returning to school and getting a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia in 2007. As a young lawyer, she clerked on the federal district court in the Central District of California and for the Honorable Judith W. Rogers of the D.C. Circuit during the 2000-2001 term of the court. As a journalist, Stewart’s focus has always been on national politics/D.C. coverage often produced on digital platforms and often in breaking news settings. She previously worked at CNN, the Washington Post and NPR.
JOAN BISKUPIC - CNN
Joan Biskupic is a full-time CNN legal analyst and author of a 2019 biography of Chief Justice John Roberts. Before joining CNN in 2017, Biskupic was an editor-in-charge for Legal Affairs at Reuters and, previously, the Supreme Court correspondent for the Washington Post and for USA Today. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism in 2015.
In addition to her latest biography, “The Chief: The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts," Biskupic is the author of books on Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Sonia Sotomayor. Before joining CNN, she spent a year as a visiting professor at the University of California, Irvine, law school. A native of Chicago, Biskupic holds a law degree from Georgetown University and lives in Washington, D.C.
WALTER DELLINGER - O'Melveny & Myers
Walter Dellinger is an influential authority on appellate and Supreme Court decisions, lending his experience as a former Solicitor General and decades of legal knowledge to amicus briefs, a multitude of pro bono clients, and public and private companies involved in bet-the-company litigation. A frequent commentator for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and major television networks, Mr. Dellinger holds the designation of the Douglas B. Maggs Emeritus Professor of Law at Duke University. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal and recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Lawyer.
Mr. Dellinger served as Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 1993 to 1996. He was acting Solicitor General for the 1996-97 Term of the US Supreme Court. During that time, Walter argued nine cases before the Court, the most by any Solicitor General in more than 20 years. His arguments included cases dealing with physician-assisted suicide, the line item veto, the cable television act, the Brady Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the constitutionality of remedial services for parochial school children.
After serving in early 1993 in the White House as an advisor to the President on constitutional issues, Mr. Dellinger was nominated by the President to be Assistant Attorney General. He was confirmed by the Senate in October 1993 and served for three years. As head of the OLC, Walter issued opinions on a wide variety of issues, including: the President's authority to deploy United States forces in Haiti and Bosnia; whether the trade agreements required treaty ratification; and a major review of separation of powers questions. He provided extensive legal advice on questions arising out of the shutdown of the federal government, on national debt ceiling issues, and on loan guarantees for Mexico.
Mr. Dellinger has published articles on constitutional issues for scholarly journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Duke Law Journal, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New Republic, and the London Times. He has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Belgium and has given lectures to university faculties in Florence, Siena, Nuremberg, Copenhagen, Leiden, Utrecht, Tilburg, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, and has delivered major lectures at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Chicago, and other US law schools.
Mr. Dellinger graduated from the University of North Carolina with Honors in Political Science. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He also served as a law clerk to Justice Hugo L. Black for the 1968-69 term of the United States Supreme Court.
PAMELA KARLAN - Department of Justice
Pamela Karlan is the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. She previously served at the DOJ in the Civil Rights Division from 2014 to 2015 under the Obama administration, where she received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the department’s highest award for employee performance – as part of the team responsible for implementing the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor. Before serving at the Department of Justice, Professor Karlan was co-director of the Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. One of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Professor Karlan is the co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation, and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles.
Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, she was a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Abraham D. Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Karlan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and the American Law Institute.
STEPHEN VLADECK - University of Texas School of Law
Professor Vladeck is the A. Dalton Cross Professor in Law at the University of Texas School of Law. He is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice. Professor Vladeck has argued multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. He has served as an expert witness both in United States and foreign tribunals. He has been repeatedly recognized for his influential and widely-cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession.
Professor Vladeck is co-host, together with Professor Bobby Chesney, of the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and a co-author of Aspen Publisher’s leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. He is Executive Editor of the Just Security blog and a senior editor of the Lawfare blog.
Professor Vladeck earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College and his J.D. from Yale Law School. As a law student, he was the Executive Editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Student Director of the Balancing Civil Liberties & National Security Post-9/11 Litigation Project. Professor Vladeck clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
MELISSA MURRAY - New York University School of Law
Melissa Murray is a leading expert in family law, constitutional law, and reproductive rights and justice. Murray’s award-winning research focuses on the legal regulation of intimate life and encompasses such topics as the regulation of sex and sexuality, marriage and its alternatives, the marriage equality debate, the legal recognition of caregiving, and reproductive rights and justice. Her publications have appeared in the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, among others. She is an author of Cases on Reproductive Rights and Justice, the first casebook to cover the field of reproductive rights and justice, and a co-editor of Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories.
Murray has written for popular publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and The Nation, and has offered commentary for numerous media outlets, including NPR, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and PBS.
Murray is an honors graduate of the University of Virginia, where she was a Jefferson Scholar and an Echols Scholar, and Yale Law School, where she was notes development editor of the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, Murray clerked for Sonia Sotomayor, then of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Stefan Underhill of the US District Court for the District of Connecticut. She is a member of the New York bar and the American Law Institute.
Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Murray was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she was the recipient of the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction. From March 2016 to June 2017, she served as interim dean of the Berkeley Law.