March 30, 2005

Speaker Biographies

Eric Posner is the Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He is coauthor, along with Jack Goldsmith, of  The Limits of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2005) and Law and Social Norms (Harvard University Press, 2000); and editor of Chicago Lectures in Law and Economics (Foundation Press, 2000) and (with Matthew Adler) Cost-Benefit Analysis: Legal, Economic, and Philosophical Perspectives (University of Chicago Press, 2001). He is also an editor of the Journal of Legal Studies. He has published articles on bankruptcy law, contract law, international law, cost-benefit analysis, constitutional law, and administrative law, and has taught courses on international law, contracts, employment law, bankruptcy law, secured transactions, and game theory and the law. His current research focuses on international law, including the laws of war, international adjudication, and war crimes trials.

Peter Berkowitz teaches at George Mason University School of Law and is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also co-founder and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government and has served as a senior consultant to the President's Council on Bioethics. Mr. Berkowitz is the author of several books, including Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999), and the editor of companion volumes, including Terrorism, the Laws of War, and the Constitution: Debating the Enemy Combatant Cases (Hoover Institution Press, forthcoming April 2005).  With co-editor Tod Lindberg, he has launched Hoover Studies, a series of concise books, the first volume of which will be Richard Posner's Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (Rowman and Littlefield, March 2005). Mr. Berkowitz has written for a variety of publications, including the American Political Science Review, the Atlantic Monthly,  Commentary, National Review, Policy Review, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Wilson Quarterly, and the Yale Law Journal. He is currently at work on two books: The Liberal Spirit in America, and Rediscovering Liberalism, a collection of his essays.

The Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg is chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Before joining the D.C. Circuit in 1986, Judge Ginsburg served as the assistant attorney general for Antitrust at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as administrator for Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. Judge Ginsburg was previously a professor at Harvard Law School (1975-83).  He has published numerous works on constitutional law, antitrust, and regulation, most recently including "On Constitutionalism" and "Multinational Merger Review." After graduating from law school, Judge Ginsburg clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall.

David Scheffer is a visiting professor of international law at the George Washington University Law School and the former U.S. ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997–2001). During the first term of the Clinton administration, he was senior adviser and counsel to the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and was a member of the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council.

Jack Goldsmith is a visiting scholar at AEI and a professor at Harvard Law School. Mr. Goldsmith took these positions in 2004 after serving for two years in the Bush administration; he served first as special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense and then as an assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. Mr. Goldsmith has held faculty positions at the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of Chicago Law School and practiced law privately as an associate at Covington & Burling. Prior to these positions, Mr. Goldsmith clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and he served as a legal assistant to Judge George Aldrich on the Iran-I.S. Claims Tribunal in the Netherlands. At AEI, Mr. Goldsmith works on international law, sovereignty, and intelligence reform. He is coauthor, along with Eric Posner, of  The Limits of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2005). 
 
John Yoo is a visiting scholar at AEI and a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where he has taught since 1993. From 2001–03, Mr. Yoo served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security, and the separation of powers. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96, where he advised on constitutional issues and judicial nominations. Mr. Yoo was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal and, after graduating from law school, clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit. He joined the Boalt faculty in 1993, and then clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Yoo has published articles on foreign affairs, national security, and constitutional law in a number of the nation's leading law journals. He is the author of War, Peace, and the Constitution, which will be published in 2005 by the University of Chicago Press.

Edwin Williamson is an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell, which he rejoined upon his resignation as the legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State in January 1993. He originally joined the firm in 1964 after graduating from law school, where he was an editor of the New York University Law Review, and became a partner of the firm in 1971. At Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Williamson has engaged in a broad and wide-ranging domestic and international financing and transactions practice. He is a vice chairman and a member of the Executive Board of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and a member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Council for International Business.