February 14, 2005

Speaker Biographies

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at AEI.  He has conducted research on judicial nominations and his recent paper analyzes the length of the confirmation process.  Mr. Lott has held positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. Mr. Lott has published over ninety articles in academic journals. He is the author of The Bias against Guns. Previously, he has written More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws and more recently, a book on antitrust policy titled Are Predatory Commitments Credible?: Who Should the Courts Believe?. Opinion pieces by Mr. Lott have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.

William P. Marshall joined UNC-Chapel Hill as a permanent member of the faculty in spring 2001.  He served as deputy White House counsel and deputy Assistant to the president during the Clinton administration where he worked on issues ranging from freedom of religion to separation of powers. Mr. Marshall has published extensively on constitutional law issues and is a nationally recognized first amendment scholar. He is also a leading expert on federal judicial selection matters and on the interrelationship between media, law and politics. He teaches media law, civil procedure, constitutional law, first amendment, federal courts, and the law of the presidency. 

Todd J. Zywicki teaches at George Mason University Law School in the areas of bankruptcy and contracts. He came to the law school from the Mississippi College of Law, where he had held a faculty position since 1996. Mr. Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy law. He is the author of more than forty articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He has testified before Congress on bankruptcy reform issues and is a frequent commentator in the print and broadcast media. During the 2003–04 academic year, he served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. 

C. Boyden Gray is chairman of the Committee for Justice and a Partner of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP.  His practice focuses on a range of regulatory matters with emphasis on environmental issues, including those relating to biotechnology, trade, clean air, and the management of risk.  Mr. Gray joined Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in 1969 and became a partner in 1976.  In 1981, he left the firm to serve as legal counsel to Vice President George H. W. Bush.  He also served as Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, chaired by Vice President Bush.  Mr. Gray later served as director of the Office of Transition Counsel for the Bush transition team, and as counsel to President Bush from 1989 to 1993.  He returned to Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in 1993.

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