Speaker Biographies
Charles Cooper is a founding member of the Washington, DC, law firm of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC. Recently named by The National Law Journal as one of the ten best civil litigators in Washington, he has over twenty-five years of legal experience in government and private practice. Mr. Cooper joined the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1981. In 1985, President Reagan appointed Mr. Cooper to the position of assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). While at OLC Cooper also served as the chairman of President Reagan’s Interagency Working Group on Federalism, and was a principle author of President Reagan’s Executive Order No.12612, entitled “Federalism.” Mr. Cooper reentered private practice in 1988 as a partner of McGuire Woods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge. In 1998, Mr. Cooper was appointed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to serve as a member of the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Cooper has published and spoken extensively on the subject of federalism and has litigated a number of cases involving the constitutionally assigned powers of the state and federal governments.
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. He is currently a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. His books include Overdose: How Excessive Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (2006), Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (2003), Torts (1999), Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (1998), and Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (1985).
Michael S. Greve is the John G. Searle Scholar at AEI, where he directs the Federalism 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.
Peter J. Wallison joined AEI in January 1999, is currently a senior fellow and co-director of AEI’s program on financial market deregulation, and holds the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Economic Policy Studies. He previously practiced banking, corporate, and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. From June 1981 to January 1985, Mr. Wallison was general counsel of the United States Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan administration’s proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. He also served as general counsel to the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee and participated in the Treasury Department’s efforts to deal with the debt held by less-developed countries. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan. Between 1972 and 1976, Mr. Wallison served first as special assistant to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller when he was vice president of the United States.
Judge Stephen F. Williams was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals in June 1986 and took senior status in September 2001. Judge Williams was engaged in private practice from 1962 to 1966 and became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1966. From 1969 until his appointment to the bench, Judge Williams taught at the University of Colorado School of Law. During this time, he also served as a visiting professor of law at UCLA, the University of Chicago Law School, and Southern Methodist University, and was a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States and the Federal Trade Commission.
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