Speaker biographies

Kenneth W. Starr is dean and professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California. He is also counsel to the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, P.C., where he was a partner from 1993 to 2004, specializing in appellate work, antitrust, federal courts, federal jurisdiction, and constitutional law. Dean Starr formerly taught constitutional law as an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law and at Chapman Law School in Orange, California. He was also a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University School of Law. He published his first book, First Among Equals: The Supreme Court in American Life (Warner Books), in 2002. As solicitor general of the United States from 1989 to January 1993, Judge Starr argued twenty-five cases before the Supreme Court and represented the U.S. government on legal issues involving regulatory and constitutional statutes. He served as United States circuit judge for the District of Columbia circuit from 1983 to 1989, as counselor to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith from 1981 to 1983, and as law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger from 1975 to 1977 and Fifth Circuit judge David W. Dyer from 1973 to 1974. Judge Starr was appointed to serve as independent counsel for five investigations, including Whitewater, from August 1994 to October 1999. Judge Starr has numerous professional affiliations, including having served as president of the Institute of Judicial Administration as well as the Council on Court Excellence. Other boards on which he serves or has served include Advocates International, American Law Institute, American Judicature Society, Supreme Court Historical Society, American Inns of Court Foundation, Institute for United States Studies, American University, Shenandoah University, and American Bar Association Journal Board of Editors. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Jefferson Cup award from the FBI, the Edmund Randolph Award for Outstanding Service in the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.

Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1972. He has also been the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2000. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and a senior fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School since 1983. He served as editor of The Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of The Journal of Law and Economics from 1991 to 2001. At present he is a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. His books include Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago, 2003), Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 8th ed. 2004), Torts (Aspen Law & Business, 1999), Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books, 1998), Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care? (Addison-Wesley, 1997), Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995), Bargaining with the State (Princeton, 1993), Forbidden Grounds: The Case against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard, 1992), Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985), and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980). He has taught courses and written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects. Professor Epstein has had a long interest in the questions of federalism and constitutional structure, as well as many of the substantive areas of the law (torts, antitrust, health-care telecommunications) in which the issues of preemption are most salient.

Panel 1: Constitutional Foundations

Viet Dinh is a professor of law as well as co-director of the Asian Law and Policy Studies Program at Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Dinh was assistant attorney general for legal policy at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003. As the official responsible for federal legal policy, he conducted a comprehensive review of Department of Justice priorities, policies, and practices after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and played a key role in developing the USA Patriot Act and revising the Attorney General's Guidelines. Professor Dinh currently serves or has served on the boards of the News Corporation, Liberty's Promise, the American Judicature Society, the Transition Committee for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ABA Standing Committee on National Security, and the Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools. He also served as associate special counsel to the U.S. Senate Whitewater Committee, as special counsel to Senator Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) for the impeachment trial of President Clinton, and as counsel to the special master in In re Austrian and German Bank Holocaust Litigation. Professor Dinh was a law clerk for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to U.S. Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. His numerous publications include ''Defending Liberty: Terrorism and Human Rights'' in the Helsinki Monitor, ''Codetermination and Corporate Governance in a Multinational Business Enterprise'' in the Journal of Corporation Law, and ''Financial Sector Reform and Economic Development in Vietnam'' in Law and Policy in International Business.

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 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.

Nelson Lund is the vice dean and Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law, where he has served as co-editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review and acted as associate dean for academic affairs. In addition to experience in the United States Department of Justice at the Office of the Solicitor General and at the Office of Legal Counsel, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to President Bush from 1989 to 1992. Professor Lund has written on a variety of subjects including constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, federal election law, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Second Amendment, the Uniformity Clause, employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.

Panel 2: The Progressives, the Lochner Court, and the New Deal

Stephen Gardbaum is a professor at UCLA School of Law. He was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, and for three years focused on litigation and European community law at the London firm of Kingsley Napley. Before joining UCLA, he was a professor of law at Northwestern University. He currently teaches a variety of courses, including European Union Law, Comparative Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, Constitutional Law I, and International Human Rights. Professor Gardbaum has published articles on constitutional law in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Michigan Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and the American Journal of Comparative Law. His article "Rethinking Constitutional Federalism" (Texas Law Review, 1996) was cited in Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion in United States v. Morrison. His scholarship focuses on constitutional law, the foundations of liberal legal and political theory, and comparative constitutional law. His current research is on the comparative structure of constitutional rights.

Samuel Issacharoff recently joined the New York University (NYU) faculty as the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law. After clerking, he spent the early part of his career as a voting rights lawyer. He then began his teaching career at the University of Texas in 1989, where he held the Joseph D. Jamail Centennial Chair in Law. In 1999, he moved to Columbia Law School, where he was the Harold R. Medina Professor of Procedural Jurisprudence. Professor Issacharoff is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Over seventy of his articles have been published in every leading law review, as well as in leading journals in other fields. His wide-ranging research deals with issues in civil procedure (especially complex litigation and class actions), law and economics, constitutional law (particularly with regard to voting rights and electoral systems), and employment law. He is one of the pioneers in the law of the political process, for which his Law of Democracy casebook (co-authored with Stanford’s Pam Karlan and NYU’s Rick Pildes) and dozens of articles have helped create a vibrant new area of constitutional law. He is also a leading figure in the field of procedure, both in the academy and outside. In addition to ongoing involvement in some of the front-burner cases in this area, he now serves as the reporter for the newly created Project on Aggregate Litigation of the American Law Institute.

Catherine Sharkey joined the Columbia University Law faculty in 2003. Professor Sharkey is a senior editor for the Journal of Tort Law, a member of the American Law and Economics Association (ALEA), a member of the New York City Bar Association Products Liability Committee, and an executive committee member of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Torts and Compensation Systems. Before joining the faculty at Columbia, she was an appellate litigation associate at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, New York from 2000 to 2002. She also clerked for associate justice David H. Souter. Her recent publications include: "Punitive Damages as Societal Damages," Yale Law Journal (2003); "Punitive Damages: Should Juries Decide?" Texas Law Review (2003); "Unintended Consequences of Medical Malpractice Damages Caps," New York University Law Review (2005); "Revisiting the Noninsurable Costs of Accidents," Maryland Law Review (2005); "Dissecting Damages: An Empirical Exploration of Sexual Harassment Awards," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (forthcoming 2006); and "Backdoor Federalization: Grappling with the 'Risk to the Rest of the Country,'" UCLA Law Review (with Samuel Issacharoff, forthcoming 2006). Her current areas of teaching and research interest are torts, punitive damages, class actions, remedies, products liability, and empirical legal studies.

Mark Tushnet is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He was president of the Association of American Law Schools in 2003. In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas, University of Southern California, University of Chicago, Columbia University, New York University, and Harvard University law schools. Professor Tushnet is the co-author of four casebooks, including the most widely used casebook on constitutional law, Constitutional Law (with Stone, Seidman, and Sunstein; Little Brown & Co., 1991). He has written fourteen books, including a two-volume work on the life of Justice Thurgood Marshall and A Court Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law (W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), and edited eight others. He has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Humanities Program, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and has written numerous articles on constitutional law and legal history.

Panel 3: Modern Preemption Regimes: Financial and Network Industries

Douglas H. Ginsburg is chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to which he was appointed by President Reagan in 1986. He is also a distinguished adjunct professor of law at George Mason University School of Law, and a visiting lecturer and the Charles J. Merriam Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. Judge Ginsburg previously served as a professor of law at Harvard Law School, as director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, and as assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division of the United States Department of Justice. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the American Law and Economics Association, and the Mont Pelerin Society. Judge Ginsburg serves on the Judicial Advisory Board of the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University School of Law. He has published numerous works on constitutional law, antitrust, and regulation, most recently the articles “On Constitutionalism” and “Comparing Antitrust Enforcement in the United States and Europe.”

Jonathan R. Macey is the Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance and Securities Law at Yale University. From 1991 to 2004, Professor Macey was the J. DuPratt White Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at Cornell Law School, and professor of law and business at the Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Business. Professor Macey is the author of several books, including the two-volume treatise, Macey on Corporation Laws (Aspen Law & Business, 1998), and co-author of two leading casebooks, Corporations: Including Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies (Thompsen/West, 2003) and Banking Law and Regulation (Aspen Law & Business, 2002). He also is the author of over 100 scholarly articles. His recent articles have appeared in The Banking Law Journal, The University of Chicago Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Cornell Law Review, The Journal of Law and Economics, and Brookings Wharton Papers on Financial Institutions. He has published numerous editorials in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Los Angeles Times, and the National Law Journal. Professor Macey is a senior research fellow at the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy. He also serves on the academic advisory board (Comitato Scientifico) of the Associazione Disiano Preite for the study of corporate law. In 2000, Professor Macey became a member of the Legal Advisory Committee to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange. In 2002 Professor Macey was appointed to the Economic Advisory Board of the National Association of Securities Dealers.

Randal C. Picker is the Paul H. and Theo Leffmann Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow of the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago of Argonne National Laboratory. He practiced law for three years with Sidley Austin in Chicago, where he worked in the areas of debt restructuring and corporate reorganizations in bankruptcy. Professor Picker is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference and served as project reporter for the conference's bankruptcy code review project. He is also a commissioner to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and serves as a member of the drafting committee to revise Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Mr. Picker's primary areas of interest are the laws relating to intellectual property, competition policy, and regulated industries, and applications of game theory and agent-based computer simulations to the law. He is the co-author of Game Theory and the Law (Harvard University Press, 1994). He served as associate dean at the University of Chicago from 1994 to96. His preemption-related articles include "Overview of History and Eligibility: Preservation of State Authority in the Presence of Exclusive Federal Power," which was published in Municipal Bankruptcies: How to Handle a Chapter 9 from Start to Finish (PLI, 1995). Professor Picker currently teaches classes in Secured Transactions and Antitrust and a seminar on antitrust and intellectual property policy at the University of Chicago Law School. In prior years, Professor Picker has taught bankruptcy and copyright; technology, innovation and society; and corporate reorganizations, commercial law, and civil procedure. He has also taught seminars on game theory and the law, and the legal infrastructure of high-tech industries.

Panel 4: Modern Preemption Regimes: Environment, Health and Safety

Coleen Klasmeier practices food and drug law in Sidley Austin's Washington, D.C., office. Before joining the firm in January 2005, Ms. Klasmeier served as special assistant to the chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). At the FDA, she provided advice on the constitutional and statutory limitations on FDA authority and on policy matters to the chief counsel and to senior agency executives. She also focused heavily on the promotion of FDA-regulated products, the regulatory categorization of products, preemption of state product liability claims with respect to drugs and medical devices, and the relationship between FDA and the Securities and Exchange Commission. From 1996 to 2002, she practiced food and drug law in the Washington, D.C., and London offices of Covington & Burling.

Thomas W. Merrill is the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Formerly, he taught at Northwestern University School of Law from 1981 to 2003. From 1987 to 1990, Professor Merrill served as deputy solicitor general in the Department of Justice, where he represented the United States before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has published numerous articles, notably, "Agency Rules with the Force of Law: The Original Convention," Harvard Law Review (with Kathryn Watts, 2002); Property: Takings (with David Dana; Foundation Press 2002); "Chevron's Domain," Georgetown Law Journal (with Kristin Hickman, 2001); "Optimal Standardization in the Law of Property: The Numerus Clausus Principle," Yale Law Journal (with Henry Smith, 2000); "The Landscape of Constitutional Property," Virginia Law Review (2000); "The Economics of Public Use" Cornell Law Review (1986) and "The Making of the Second Rehnquist Court," St. Louis University Law Journal (2003). His teaching and research interests include administrative law, property, and environmental law.

Daniel Troy, a partner in Sidley Austin Brown & Wood’s life sciences practice as well its appellate litigation group, is the former chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Mr. Troy practices administrative and constitutional law and litigation, with a focus on the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food, medical-device, cosmetic, and media industries. He played a principal role in the FDA’s generally successful assertion of preemption in selected product liability cases. Before joining the FDA, Mr. Troy regularly argued cases in federal and state courts of appeals, including a successful appearance before the United States Supreme Court in Vera v. Bush (14th Amendment challenge to race-based redistricting plan). He has also filed numerous amicus briefs before the Supreme Court on preemption and other issues. Mr. Troy authored the book Retroactive Legislation (AEI 2000) and has also written thirteen law review articles and book chapters, including “Advertising: Not Low Value Speech,” Yale Journal on Regulation (1999) and, with Robert H. Bork, “Locating the Boundaries: The Scope of Congress’s Power to Regulate Commerce,” Harvard Journal of Public Policy (2002). He is a contributor to the Heritage Guide on the Constitution, and has published more than fifty-five articles in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Weekly Standard, Washington Times, Commentary, and Policy Review. Mr. Troy will head the American Bar Association’s section of administrative law and regulatory practice beginning in September 2006.

Alan E. Untereiner is an appellate litigator with Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck & Untereiner. Mr. Untereiner has substantial experience in the areas of product liability, constitutional law, and Supreme Court practice. Since 1989 he has been in private practice in Washington, D.C., first at Onek, Klein & Farr and then for almost a decade at Mayer, Brown & Platt, where he was a partner in the appellate practice group. In 2001, he started his own litigation boutique, Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck & Untereiner LLP. Mr. Untereiner has handled a wide range of civil and criminal appeals in the federal and state courts and has represented product manufacturers and other businesses, national trade groups, municipal governments, and individuals. His work in the Supreme Court includes unanimous or near-unanimous victories in the three cases he has argued: Scheidler v. NOW (2006), Wilkinson v. Dotson, and Bailey v. United States. He was also responsible for the victories of parties in many other cases, including Scheidler v. NOW (2003), Barnes v. Gorman, The Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs' Legal Committee, American Manufacturers Mutual Ins. Co. v. Sullivan, Rosenberger v. Rector, Degen v. United States, Hohn v. United States, McCarthy v. Madigan, and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael. Mr. Untereiner also submitted amicus briefs at the merits stage in numerous cases, including State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell, Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC, Lawrence v. Texas, and United States v. Morrison, and cert. petitions, briefs in opposition, and amicus briefs at the petition stage in scores of other cases. Mr. Untereiner has written and spoken extensively about Supreme Court practice, federal preemption, and the law of expert witnesses. He is a member of the Product Liability Advisory Council.

Panel 5: Federalism, Politics, and Preemption

Anne van Aaken is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research of Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany. From 2003 to 2005, she was a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. She is the author of Eine Okonomische Theorie der Offentlichen Meinung (Freiburg i.U.: Universitatsverlag, 1992) and Rational Choice in Der Rechtswissenschaft der Okonomischen Theorie im Recht (Nomos-Verlag, 2003). She has edited several books, including Deliberation and Decision: Economics, Constitutional Theory, and Deliberative Democracy (Ashgate, 2004). Professor van Aaken has also published more than twenty scholarly articles, including “Shareholder Suits as a Technique of Internalization and Control of Management: A Functional Comparative Analysis” (RabelsZ, 2004) and “Deliberative Institutional Economics” (Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2002). Her research interests include public international law (especially international economic law) investment law, human rights, regulation of financial markets, theories of regulation, administrative law, and regulatory impact assessment.

Robert Gasaway is a partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C., where his principle practice areas include trial and appellate constitutional law; administrative law and regulatory work focusing on litigation and counseling on high exposure issues; and federal and state court commercial trial work focusing on class-action litigation. Mr. Gasaway has extensive experience in environmental litigation and regulatory negotiations. His clients have included General Motors, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and the United States Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Gasaway has spoken on environmental issues before the Ohio Bar Association, the National Association of State Legislatures, the U.S. Business Summit, and on public television’s Nightly Business Report. His recent publications and presentations include “The Problem of Tort Reform: Federalism and the Regulation of Lawyers,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (2002); "Ozone: Where We Stand and How We Got Here," OSBA Ohio Environmental Law Seminar (2002); and "The Federalism Symposium: A National Dialogue Between Business and Government" (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2001).

Ashley Parrish is a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Washington, D.C., where he focuses his practice on appellate and strategic litigation. Mr. Parrish has experience litigating more than fifty cases in federal and state courts, including cases before the United States Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the District of Columbia and the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits. In addition to his involvement in appellate proceedings of all kinds, Mr. Parrish has significant experience handling critical motions and strategic litigation issues in both federal and state trial courts, and has advised clients on a wide range of administrative law matters. Before joining Kirkland & Ellis, Mr. Parrish was a clerk for the Honorable Emilio M. Garza on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He co-authored "A Critique of the FCC's Decision to Retain Limits On National Television Station Ownership," (with Jay P. Lefkowitz; Telecommunications & Electronic Media News, Fall 2000).

Ernest Young is the Judge Benjamin Harrison Powell Professor at the University of Texas School of Law. He teaches an introductory course to constitutional law, federal courts, and foreign affairs and the Constitution, and also serves as a faculty clerkship advisor and advisor to the Texas Law Review. In 2005, he won the Federalist Society's Paul M. Bator Award for excellence in teaching, scholarship, and public service. He has also received the Texas Exes Teaching Excellence Award in 2004, as well as the Robert Murff Excellence Award in 2002 (with Tony Reese) from the Texas Campus Career Council for service as student clerkship advisor. Professor Young joined the University of Texas faculty in 1999 after a year as a visiting assistant professor at Villanova University School of Law. He also practiced law with Cohan, Simpson, Cowlishaw & Wulff in Dallas and Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. Professor Young has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (2004–05), Dartmouth College (Summer 2005), and the Villanova School of Law (1998–99). He also taught as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center (1997). His publications include "The Rehnquist Court's Two Federalisms," Texas Law Review (2004), "Preserving Member State Autonomy in the European Union: Some Cautionary Tales from American Federalism," New York University Law Review (2002), "State Sovereign Immunity and the Future of Federalism," 1999 Supreme Court Review, and "Preemption at Sea," George Washington Law Review (1999).

Stephen F. Williams is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit who was appointed by President Reagan in 1986. Before taking the bench, Judge Williams was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from l966 to 1969. He was also a professor of law at University of Colorado School of Law from l969 to 1986, visiting professor of law at UCLA during l975 and 1976, visiting professor of law and fellow in law and economics at University of Chicago Law School from l979 to 1980, and visiting George W. Hutchison Professor of Energy Law at Southern Methodist University from 1983 to 84. He was a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States (1974–76) and the Federal Trade Commission on energy-related issues,(1983–85). He is a member of the American Law Institute and co-author of Cases on Oil & Gas (6th ed., Foundation Press, 1992).

View Event Details