June 9, 2005
Speaker Biographies
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) chairs the Senate Education and Early Childhood Development Subcommittee, the Senate Energy Subcommittee, as well as the Tennessee Valley Authority Caucus. He served as governor of Tennessee from 1979 until 1987 and as the U.S. Secretary of Education from 1991 until 1993. He has also chaired the National Governors Association, served as co-director of Empower America, and founded the Republican Neighborhood Meeting. Senator Alexander is the Senate sponsor of the "Federal Consent Decree Fairness Act."
Representative Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) began serving the United States House of Representatives in 1997. Congressman Blunt serves as House Majority Whip and is on the House Energy and Commerce Committee; he is also on leave from the Committee on International Relations and the Committee on Financial Services. Before coming to Congress, he served four years as the president of his alma mater, Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri. Congressman Blunt is the House sponsor of the "Federal Consent Decree Fairness Act."
Michael S. Greve is the John G. Searle Scholar at AEI, where he directs the Federalism Project and the Liability Project. His research and writing cover American federalism and its legal, political, and economic dimensions. Mr. Greve co-founded and, from 1989 to February 2000, directed the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm that served as counsel in many precedent-setting constitutional cases, including United States v. Morrison and Rosenberger v. University of Virginia. He has written widely on constitutional and administrative law, federalism, environmental policy, and civil rights.
Wade Henderson is the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and counsel to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund. Prior to his role with the Leadership Conference, Mr. Henderson was the Washington Bureau director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Previously, he served as associate director of the Washington national office of the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Henderson is the Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. Professor of Public Interest Law at the David A. Clarke School of Law, University of the District of Columbia. He is the author of numerous articles on civil rights, human rights, and public policy issues.
Simon Lazarus is senior counsel with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP and public policy counsel to the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC). He contributes to the NSCLC's Herbert Semmel Federal Rights Project, providing analysis and advocacy on judicial and other developments affecting the enforceability of federal rights important to older Americans and other citizens. His articles on these issues have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post Outlook section, the Democratic Leadership Council's magazine Blueprint, The American Prospect, and in two anthologies. From 1977 to 1981, Mr. Lazarus served as associate director of President Jimmy Carter's White House Domestic Policy Staff.
R. Shep Melnick is the Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Professor of American Politics at Boston College and co-chair of the Harvard Program on Constitutional Government. His books include Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act (Brookings Institution Press, 1983) and Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights (Brookings Institution Press, 1994). He has also taught at Harvard and Brandeis Universities, and served on the research staff of the Brookings Institution. Mr. Melnick writes on regulation and political jurisprudence.
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